“The art of 'figuring' or 'picturing' is not a fine art. An artist who is lobbying as a 'creature of circumstances' or log rolling as a 'victim of fate' is not a fine master artist. No one ever forces an artist to be pure.”

—  Ad Reinhardt

Source: 1956 - 1967, Art-as-Art Dogma' part II, (1964), pp. 156-157

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update July 30, 2022. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The art of 'figuring' or 'picturing' is not a fine art. An artist who is lobbying as a 'creature of circumstances' or l…" by Ad Reinhardt?
Ad Reinhardt photo
Ad Reinhardt 22
American painter 1913–1967

Related quotes

Elfriede Jelinek photo

“There are no holidays for art; and that’s just fine with the artist.”

Elfriede Jelinek book The Piano Teacher

P 29
The Piano Teacher (1988)

Arthur Wesley Dow photo

“.. art lies in the fine choice. The artist does not teach us to see facts: he teaches us to feel harmonies.”

Arthur Wesley Dow (1857–1922) painter from the United States

"Talks on the Appreciation of Art", The Delinator (Jan 1915)
Other

William Empson photo

“To produce pure proletarian art the artist must be at one with the worker; this is impossible, not for political reasons, but because the artist never is at one with any public.”

William Empson (1906–1984) English literary critic and poet

Some Versions of Pastoral (London: Chatto & Windus, 1935) p. 15.
Other

Gottfried Helnwein photo

“Helnwein is a very fine artist and one sick motherfucker.”

Gottfried Helnwein (1948) Austrian photographer and painter

Robert Crumb, letter to his San Francisco art-dealer Martin Muller, 1992

“The one thing to say about art and life is that art is art and life is life, that art is not life and life is not art. A 'slice-of-life' art is no better or worse than a 'slice-of-art' life. Fine art is not a 'means of making a living' or a 'way of living a life', and a artist who dedicates his life to his art or his art to his life burdens his art with his life and his life with his art. Art that is a matter of life and death is neither fine nor free.”

Ad Reinhardt (1913–1967) American painter

Source: 1956 - 1967, Art-as-Art Dogma' part II, (1964), p. 155

Oscar Wilde photo

“The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Kurt Schwitters photo

“Well, art is not communist -- not bourgeois either
It's no club and has no party line
Not wild nights make an artist -- not drugs or manifestos
It's art -- HA HA -- that's no secret
The one who makes art -- he's the artist..”

Kurt Schwitters (1887–1948) German artist

1920s, Huelsendada', Kurt Schwitters, 1920

“It was not the inexperienced art public that became American Scenists. It was the artists themselves, a highly sophisticated group, thoroughly familiar with the art work and the art traditions of the world, who had flocked to Paris to participate in the great cultural center, who were very conscious of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists revolutions, who fell for this propaganda [to strive for a pure national American art]. It is upon them that responsibility falls. Their support of this reactionary philistinism is an inexcusable betrayal... It is time for the artists to wake up and re-examine their aesthetic foundations; to rid themselves of the millstone that has made art in America an expensive picture postcard-factory... It is time that artists refused isolationist money, repudiated the art dealers, the favor of the museum directors. It is time artists forgot about success..”

Barnett Newman (1905–1970) American artist

Quote of 1942; in Barnett Newman', by Thomas B. Hess, museum of Modern art, New York 1971; as cited in Abstract Expressionism: Creators and Critics, ed. Clifford Ross, Abrahams Publishers, New York 1990, p. 124-125
1940 - 1950

Patrick Swift photo

“In the remote purity of his solitariness, where the work of art is made, the artist is supremely the anti-social creature.”

Patrick Swift (1927–1983) British artist

X magazine (1959-62)
Context: It is not necessary to subscribe to the tiresome conception of the artist as rampaging Bohemian to understand that the activity of painting is socially useless, or at best occupies a dubious position... In the remote purity of his solitariness, where the work of art is made, the artist is supremely the anti-social creature.

“For the artist, fulfillment of self consists not in marching in the ranks of the liberators but in being entered in the roll of the Masters. The artist tends to find himself in the position of a deserter from his social group — or, at best, one who collaborates, with secret reservations.”

Harold Rosenberg (1906–1978) American writer and art critic

Source: Art & Other Serious Matters, (1985), p. 271, "Being Outside"

Related topics