“What happens when a new work of art is created, is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art which preceded it.”

—  T.S. Eliot , book Tradition and the Individual Talent

Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919)
Context: What happens when a new work of art is created, is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art which preceded it. The existing monuments form an ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new (the really new) work of art among them. The existing order is complete before the new work arrives; for order to persist after the supervention of novelty, the whole existing order must be, if ever so slightly, altered; and so the relations, proportions, values of each work of art toward the whole are readjusted; and this is conformity between the old and the new.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update July 8, 2022. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "What happens when a new work of art is created, is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art which …" by T.S. Eliot?
T.S. Eliot photo
T.S. Eliot 270
20th century English author 1888–1965

Related quotes

“A good work of art reveals something that is in reality. A new metaphor, a new myth, a new type of character, all these reveal a feature of reality for which we previously had no name.”

Michael Roberts (writer) (1902–1948) English schoolteacher and man of letters

Hulme and Modrern Poetry' in ' T E Hulme ',Carcanet Press,Manchester, 1982

Bram van Velde photo

“When I am painting, driven by lively tensions, I want to express what’s going on in me. When that tension has ceased, when the life in me became visible, then something happened which had to happen. Over and over again you experience a work which is created in this way. What happened? It is hard to say, because it was not my mind that led but the inner desire that revealed its inner life.”

Bram van Velde (1895–1981) Dutch painter

Letter to H.P. Bremmer, 17-11-1930, City Archive The Hague, as quoted in: Bram van Velde, A Tribute, Municipal Museum De Lakenhal Leiden, Municipal Museum Schiedam, Museum de Wieger, Deurne 1994, p. 50 (English translation: Charlotte Burgmans)
1930's

Jean Dubuffet photo

“A work of art is only of interest, in my opinion, when it is an immediate and direct projection of what is happening in the depth of a person's being.... It is my belief that only in this Art Brut can we find the natural and normal processes of artistic creation in their pure and elementary state.”

Jean Dubuffet book Prospectus et tous écrits suivants

Source: 1960-70's, Prospectus et tous écrits suivants, 1967, pp. 203-204

Tony Blair photo

“That's the art of leadership. To make sure that what shouldn't happen, doesn't happen.”

Tony Blair (1953) former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

[Stryker Mcguire, I Did It My Way, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17202843/site/newsweek/, Newsweek International, 2007-02-26, 2007-02-20]
Interview with Newsweek.
2000s

“You might say that a creative person is a person who simply has a desire to have something, to add something to the world that's not there yet, and goes about arranging fort that to happen.... when you desire a work of art and make it, you've added to the stock of art in the world. Artists are one of the people who can do that: add to the stock of things.”

Carl Andre (1935) American artist

Source: Artists talks 1969 – 1977, p. 15

David Allen photo

“Changing what you want to get done takes a second. Recalibrating & getting the new thing to happen is a martial art.”

David Allen (1945) American productivity consultant and author

7 December 2011 https://twitter.com/gtdguy/status/144476364966346752
Official Twitter profile (@gtdguy) https://twitter.com/gtdguy

Joseph Kosuth photo

“Works of art are analytic propositions. That is, if viewed within their context – as art – they provide no information whatsoever about any matter of fact. A work of art is a tautology in that it is a presentation of the artist’s intention, that is, he is saying that that particular work of art is art, which means, is a definition of art.”

Joseph Kosuth (1945) American conceptual artist

Art after Philosophy, 1969

“One cannot condemn tendencies in art; one can only condemn works of art. To be categorically against a current art tendency or style means, in effect, to pronounce on works of art not yet created and not yet seen. It means inquiring into the motives of artists instead of into results. Yet we all know — or are supposed to know — that results are all that count in art.”

Clement Greenberg (1909–1994) American writer and artist

"Wyndham Lewis Against Abstract Art" (1957), p. 164
1960s, Art and Culture: Critical Essays, (1961)

Related topics