Quotes about art
page 17

“I do so many convention appearances and have a lot of face-to-face interaction with the fans. They tell me that they prefer seeing a live human being in a costume. Humans like to watch other humans, period, whether it’s in makeup or not. They can appreciate the artwork that goes into computer graphics—it’s an art form unto itself, getting better all the time—but there’s something connectable when you actually have a live person. The true fanboys actually want to connect with another person, that’s what I’m told. Me personally, as an audience member, I can appreciate the artistry of both types. When it’s completely rendered by an artist with no live performers involved, sometimes it can look like you’re watching a video game. That takes you out of the film for just a second. What I love about the medium is when they can be combined.”

Doug Jones (actor)

Doug Jones, Unmasked https://www.interviewmagazine.com/culture/doug-jones-falling-skies (July 30, 2013)

Love, Game, Appearance, Time

“.. of what use is a painting which does not realize its aesthetical problem? Underlying all sensible works of art, there must be somewhere in evidence the particular problems understood. It was so with those artists of the great past who had the intellectual knowledge of structure upon which to place their emotions. It is this structural beauty that makes the old [clssical] painting valuable. And so it becomes to me a problem. I would rather be sure that I had placed two colors in true relationship to each other than to have exposed a wealth of emotionalism gone wrong in the name of richness of personal expression... The real artists have always been interested in this problem, and you feel it strongly in the work of [Leonardo] Da Vinci, Piero della Francesca, Courbet, Pissarro, Seurat, and Cezanne.”

Marsden Hartley (1877–1943) American artist

n.p.
1921 - 1930, Art and the Personal Life', Marsden Hartley, 1928

Beauty, Color, Feeling, Knowledge

“Only through intuition does a work rise above more or less subjective expression. Different periods produce different feelings and conceptions, and in each period men differ. Consequently different art expressions even in a single period are not only logical but a tribute to the general development of art. Intuition always finds the way of progress, which is continuous growth toward a clearer establishment of the content of art: the unification of man with the universe.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

'A New Realism', p. 17
1940's, A New Realism', 1943-1945

Men, Way, Feeling, Universe

“For you it must be a great satisfaction that you have done so much for modern art. If Der Sturm had not worked like this for ten years then Germany would not have been at the forefront of the movement.”

Jacoba van Heemskerck (1876–1923) Dutch painter

translation from Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018, version in Dutch / citaat van Jacoba van Heemskerck, in het Nederlands vertaald: Voor jou een grote bevrediging dat je zo veel voor de moderne kunst gedaan hebt. Als Der Sturm niet tien jaren zo gewerkt had [met o.a. maandelijkse exposities!] dan had Duitsland niet aan de spits van de beweging gestaan.
In her letter to Herwarth Walden, 24 August 1921; as cited in Jacoba van Heemskerck van Beest, 1876 – 1923: schilderes uit roeping, A. H. Huussen jr. (ed. Marleen Blokhuis), (ISBN: 90-400-9064-5); Waanders, Zwolle, 2005, p. 183
Jacoba refers to the almost monthly exhibitions and the many publications of Der Sturm
1920's

“Your capable beggar on the street does not say "please." He rips off his spiel in such exact and precise language that he gets your dime without it. You so admire his "art" that you do not miss the "please" because he knows you do not use it except when you want the mustard.”

Jack Black (author)

Source: You Can't Win, Chapter Two

“It is clear to see that it is not them but me, who had lost my self-identity. As I hide behind these books I read, while scribbling my poetry, like art could save a wretch like me, with some ideal ideology that no one can hope to achieve. And I am never real; it is just a sketch of me. And everything I have made is trite and cheap and a waste of paint, of tape, of time”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

Waste of Paint
Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground (2002)

Books, Hope, Time, Reading

“Lacan is a tyrant who must be driven from our shores. Narrowly trained English professors who know nothing of art history or popular culture think they can just wade in with Lacan and trash everything in sight.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sex, Art and American Culture : New Essays (1992), Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders : Academe in the Hour of the Wolf, p. 213

History, Thinking, Training

“If you don’t call it art, you’re likely to get a better result.”

Brian Eno (1948) English musician, composer, record producer and visual artist

March 24, 1995, p. 83
A Year With Swollen Appendices (1996)

“Computer programming is like the ability or skill to see what Picasso saw from all the different angles at once. If it is an art, the crucial element of art is to look at things from an angle that produces new insight or at least has that potential.”

Erik Naggum (1965–2009) Norwegian computer programmer

Re: Guide to Lisp, v1.20 http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/f7bc99564506e851 (Usenet article). <br class="br">Usenet articles, Miscellaneous

“Poetry is a vocal art for me, not neccessarilyperformative, it might be reading to one self or recalling some lines by memory. The speaker bringing their own experience to it, changing it with their own sensibility.”

Robert Pinsky (1940) American poet, editor, literary critic, academic.

The Art of Poetry - interview 1995 with Downing & Kunitz

Memory, Change, Reading

“Muslims had two more advantages in addition to their aggressiveness and superiority in the art of warfare. “During this long period of Indian resistance”, observes Dr. Misra, “the infiltration of Arabs, and later on the Turks, continued almost unabated into India, both through armed invasions as well as through peaceful migration from Central Asia. The Hindus, true to their catholicity of religious outlook and rich tradition of tolerance, never obstructed the peaceful immigrants and even zealously granted them security and full religious freedom… The greatest Chishti saint of India, Shaikh Muinuddin Chishti, came to Ajmer just before the battles of Tarain and was able to attract a number of devoted followers… It is all the more remarkable that this Hindu tolerance towards the Muslim merchants and mystics should have continued even after the invasions of Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni… As Professor Habib points out, ‘the far-flung campaigns of Sultan Mahmud would have been impossible without an accurate knowledge of trade routes and local resources, which was probably obtained from Muslim merchants.’ The same can be said to hold good about the invasions of Muhammad Ghori or Qutbuddin Aibak.””

Ram Gopal (1925) Indian author and historian

The sufis were working not only as the spies of Islamic imperialism but also as deceivers of gullible Hindu masses.
Quoted from S.R. Goel, (1994) Heroic Hindu resistance to Muslim invaders, 636 AD to 1206 AD.
Indian Resistance to Early Muslim Invaders Upto 1206 A.D.

Peace, Knowledge, Freedom

“Telling the truth is the basis of all classic art.”

Margery Allingham (1904–1966) English writer of detective fiction

from Introduction
The Oaken Heart

Truth

“Art is not merely a decorative enhancement of our lives but a sign of our desire to live in the world fully and honestly.”

Jan Zwicky (1955) Canadian philosopher

Governor Generals Award for Poetry, Nov. 1999.
Other

World

“Every man lives in two realms, the internal and the external. The internal is that realm of spiritual ends expressed in art, literature, morals, and religion. The external is that complex of devices, techniques, mechanisms, and instrumentalities by means of which we live. Our problem today is that we have allowed the internal to become lost in the external. We have allowed the means by which we live to outdistance the ends for which we live.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, The Quest for Peace and Justice (1964)
Context: Every man lives in two realms, the internal and the external. The internal is that realm of spiritual ends expressed in art, literature, morals, and religion. The external is that complex of devices, techniques, mechanisms, and instrumentalities by means of which we live. Our problem today is that we have allowed the internal to become lost in the external. We have allowed the means by which we live to outdistance the ends for which we live. So much of modern life can be summarized in that arresting dictum of the poet Thoreau: "Improved means to an unimproved end". This is the serious predicament, the deep and haunting problem confronting modern man. If we are to survive today, our moral and spiritual "lag" must be eliminated. Enlarged material powers spell enlarged peril if there is not proportionate growth of the soul. When the "without" of man's nature subjugates the "within", dark storm clouds begin to form in the world.

Religion, Literature, Problem

“In previous conditions, extreme states came under the jurisdiction of the arts… People substituted writing (fiction) for what was once spiritual life, poetry (chaotic words) for actual ecstasies. Art constitutes a minor free zone outside action, paying for its freedom by giving up the real world. A heavy price!”

Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French intellectual and literary figure

Source: On Nietzsche (1945), p. xxxii

Life, People, World, Freedom

“Neurosis was caused by our attempt to separate physical and metaphysical levels, to set them up in opposition to each other, thus engaging in an internecine war. If it is true that we do live on several levels simultaneously- drama and action, past and present, personal and collective- we are given ways to unify them: one by religion, the other by art. Separating such levels is only necessary when they conflict, and separation is a result of conflict. Seeing how these levels can work together in harmony is the task of our contemporary writers.”

Anaïs Nin book The Novel of the Future

The Novel of the Future (1969)

War, Religion, Way, Past

“Motion study is the science of eliminating wastefulness resulting from using unnecessary, ill-directed, and inefficient motions. The aim of motion study is to find and perpetuate the scheme of least waste methods of labor.
By its use we have revolutionized several of the trades. There is probably no art or trade that cannot have its output doubled by the application of the principles of motion study.”

Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Sr. (1868–1924) American industrial engineer

Source: Primer of scientific management, 1912, p. 8

Study, Science

“Suddenly I am like the poster boy of music, but I think the whole idea is to realise how deep is the base of Indian art and culture, how many fabulous young artistes there are, how many incredible great senior artistes are present today but not seen in limelight. We all have our turn at being the spokesperson for something or the other," the renowned musician.”

Zakir Hussain (musician) (1951) Indian tabla player, musical producer, film actor and composer

Quote, I am not torchbearer of Indian classical music: Zakir Hussain

Music, Boy, Idea, Thinking

“Our common actions in reality are simply the sackcloth covering which hides the cloth-of-gold - the meaning of the pattern. For us artists there waits the joyous compromise through art with all that wounded or defeated us in daily life; in this way, not to evade destiny, as the ordinary people try to do, but to fulfil it in its true potential—the imagination.”

Lawrence Durrell The Alexandria Quartet

The Alexandria Quartet (1957–1960), Justine (1957)

Life, People, Way, Imagination

“I didn’t want to be the kind of man that my father was. So I’ve tried, my entire life, to be the complete and utter opposite of that. And it has served not only the art well, but I think the audience well.”

Tyler Perry (1966) American actor, director, screenwriter, playwright, producer, author, and songwriter

Interview: Tyler Perry, movie mogul, 21 August 2010

Life, Thinking

“Memoir is the art of inventing the truth.”

William Zinsser (1922–2015) writer, editor, journalist, literary critic, professor

Source: On Writing Well (Fifth Edition, orig. pub. 1976), Chapter 12, Writing About Yourself: The Memoir, p. 99.

Truth

“Astronomers… have a common ground for discussion with musicians in the harmony of the stars and musical concords in tetrads and triads of the fourth and the fifth, and with geometricians in the subject of vision; and in all other sciences many points, perhaps all, are common so far as the discussion of them is concerned. But the actual undertaking of works which are brought to perfection by the hand and its manipulation is the function of those who have been specially trained to deal with a single art.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book I, Chapter I, Sec. 16

Music, Star, Science, Perfection

“And so the arbitrary union of three incommensurate, mutually disconnected concepts became the basis of a bewildering theory… [by which] one of the lowest renderings of art, art for mere pleasure — against which all of the master teachers warned — was idealized as the ultimate in art.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

What is Art? (1897)

Pleasure, Teachers

“The proper form of science is explanation and argument, and the proper form of religion and morality is exhortation and command; but that of art is simply the directest embodiment of its theme as the theme itself requires. Assured that the theme is compatible with the ideal nature of art, the artist knows that it will justify itself and work its own work, if it can only find expression in its natural embodiment.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), The Art-Principle as Represented in Poetry, p.201-2

Religion, Nature, Science

“We do not confine people to looking at poor pictures and listening to poor music. We urge them to look at as many good pictures and hear as much good music as they can, convinced that this is the way in which they will come to understand and appreciate art and music.”

Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899–1977) philosopher and university president

Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education (1954)

People, Music, Way, Understanding

“So the majority of the highest classes of that age, even the popes and ecclesiastics, really believed in nothing at all. They did not believe in the Church doctrine, for they saw its insolvency; but neither could they follow Francis of Assisi, Kelchitsky, and most of the sectarians in acknowledging the moral, social teaching of Christ, for that undermined their social position. And so these people remained without any religious view of life. And, having none, they could have no standard with which to estimate what was good and what was bad art, but that of personal enjoyment.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

What is Art? (1897)

Life, People, Age, Christ

“One must always paint in opposition to nature, and to one’s own 'mood'. To let oneself go is a weakness, a sort of hysterics. If you are full of red, choose a green or a blue; if you feel like yellow, choose grey or black. In this continuous opposition lies the entire secret of plastic creation… To create a great work of art demands self-mortification.”

Theo van Doesburg (1883–1931) Dutch architect, painter, draughtsman and writer

Quote in his article 'Elementarism', as cited in De Stijl – Van Doesburg Issue, January 1932, pp. 17–19
1926 – 1931

Secret, Feeling, Mood, Nature

“The pipe-call, mentioned by Burton, is noticed under a different denomination by Chaucer; "Lo," says he, "the birde is begyled with the merry voice of the foulers' whistle, when it is closed in your nette," --alluding to the deceptive art of the bird-catchers in his time.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 39
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Hunting

Bird, Time

“Proun is the the Step-over from the art of painting to Architecture [original text in German:] (Umsteige-station von Malerei nach Architectur).”

El Lissitsky (1890–1941) Soviet artist, designer, photographer, teacher, typographer and architect

quote, 1925: in 'Kunstismen' ('Artisms', art magazine published by Lissitzky and Hans Arp, 1925); as quoted in: Richtingen in de Hedendaagsche schilderkunst (Trends in the Present Day Art of Painting), Jacob Bendien; W.L & J. Brusse N.V. Rotterdam, 1935 (transl: Anne Porcelijn), p. 99
1915 - 1925

Painting

“Roman! be thine the sovereign arts of sway;
Nobly to rule, and make the world obey:
Give peace its laws; respect the prostrate foe:
Abase the lofty, and exalt the low.”

Charles Symmons (1749–1826) Welsh poet

Book VI, lines 1134–1137
The Æneis (1817)

World, Peace, Law

“Of the range of images in Upper Paleolithic art, the most arresting are the therianthropes. There are not many… but they seize the imagination. The most famous is the so-called sorcerer… In a manner unusual for Upper Paleolithic images, the sorcerer is staring directly out of the wall, a full-face stare that transfixes the spectator.”

Richard Leakey (1944) Kenyan paleoanthropologist, conservationist, and politician

Origins Reconsidered: In Search of What Makes Us Human (1992)

Imagination

“The one question, the one principle, the one crisis in art of the twentieth century centers in the uncompromising 'purity' of art, and in the consciousness that art comes from art only, not from anything else.”

Ad Reinhardt (1913–1967) American painter

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

Question

“By the time I was 16, the everlasting copying of stuffed birds and withered flowers at the Strasbourg School of Applied Art not only poisoned drawing for me but destroyed my taste for all artistic activity. I took refuge in poetry.”

Hans Arp (1886–1966) Alsatian, sculptor, painter, poet and abstract artist

Looking, Arp, Jean; as quoted by Soby, James Thrall. Arp: The Museum of Modern Art. Doubleday, New York, 1958, Print. p. 12
1960s

School, Flowers, Bird, Time

“In the mean time, synthetic organic methodology has experienced an explosive expansion, which is due to two fundamentally different types of developments: (i) theclassical reactionshave been modified to become regio-, diastereo-, and enantioselective, and to become catalytic (cf. organocatalysis). (ii) The—mostly catalytic—use of transition-metal derivatives has enriched organic synthesis withnew types of reactions(cf. metathesis), which can almost all be rendered enantioselective by employing chiral ligands on the metal centers. Many of the resulting procedures for carrying out certain transformations have turned out to be of broad scope and to be generally reliable, so that—for brevity—they were named after their inventor(s) in synthetic discussions, and that’s all about Name Reactions. It is, therefore, not surprising that several monographs on this subject have appeared and that new editions of books on Name Reactions are essential. (…)
Name Reactions are at the core of the art of organic synthesis!”

Dieter Seebach (1937) German chemist

Foreword to A. Hassner and I. Namboothiri, Organic Syntheses Based on Name Reactions: A practical guide to 750 transformations Third Edition (2012)

Books, Appearance, Time

“It is an outrage towards the masses.... It's wanting to treat them as though they're incapable of raising themselves up to this new realism [promoted by Léger and Le Corbusier ] which is that of their area, which they've made with their hands... To want to say to these men 'the modern is not for you it's an art for the rich bourgeoisie..”

Fernand Léger (1881–1955) French painter

attack on the notion of Social Realism art
Quote, c. 1949, in: Fernand Léger - The Later Years, catalogue ed. Nicolas Serota, published by the Trustees of the Whitechapel Art gallery, London, Prestel Verlag, 1988, p. 58
Quotes of Fernand Leger, 1940's

Men

“It is clearly apparent that in building the best results should accrue in proportion as every element in the structure is fitted both to the function it has to perform and the materials of which it is made. It follows from this that disguise and complication are hindrances, both to good construction and good design, and as complication and disguise are expensive and wasteful, that the interests of good art and true economy run on parallel lines.”

Ernest Flagg (1857–1947) American architect

Introduction
Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)

“I have found a boat, small with two sails, that would make me happy. Unfortunately, I need one hundred francs.... and I haven't got it! If you want, I could give you two canvases which you could sell, just to make you some many and you could give me the hundred francs... Kahnweiler [Paris' art-dealer] is the only one who gives me money, and just what we need to live on.”

André Derain (1880–1954) French painter and engraver

Quote from Derain's letter, 23 August 1909 to Maurice de Vlaminck, in Lettres à Vlaminck, p. 205; as cited and translated in 'Report: André Derain's 'Trees by a Lake', by F. Whitlum-Cooper and Cleo Nisse http://courtauld.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Report-Derain-by-F-Whitlum-Cooper-and-Cleo-Nisse.compressed.pdf, p. 10 - note 8

Money, Happiness

“Apparently an "art"—which almost by definition cannot be put into words—is probably best communicated by approaching it from many sides and doing so repeatedly, hoping thereby students will finally master enough of the art, or if you wish, style, to significantly increase their future contributions to society.”

Richard Hamming (1915–1998) American mathematician and information theorist

The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn (1991)

Hope, Communication, Future

“The picture story fantasy cuts loose the hampering debris of art and artifice and touches the tender spots of universal human desires and aspirations. Comics speak, without qualm or sophistication to the innermost ears of the wishful self.”

William Moulton Marston (1893–1947) American psychologist, lawyer, inventor and comic book writer

"Why 100,000,000 Americans Read Comics", The American Scholar, 13.1 (1943): pp 35-44. as quoted in The Ages of Wonder Woman: Essays on the Amazon Princess in Changing Times, edited by Joeph J Darowski, p.9; in the essay "William Marston's Feminist Agenda" by Michelle R. Finn,

Universe

“It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints as long as it is well painted. This is the essence of academism. There is no such thing as good painting about nothing. We assert that only that subject matter is valid which is tragic and timeless. That is why we profess spiritual kinship with primitive and archaic art.”

Mark Rothko (1903–1970) American painter

Joint statement with Adolph Gottlieb, to Edwin A. Jewell, often referred to as a Manifesto. (written 7 June 1943; published 13 June 1943)
1940's

Painting

“Those who expect from a people like the Hindus a species of composition of precisely the same character as the historical works of Greece and Rome commit the very gregarious error of overlooking the peculiarities which distinguish the natives of India from all other races, and which strongly discriminate their intellectual productions of every kind from those of the West. Their philosophy, their poetry, their architecture, are marked with traits of originality; and the same may be expected to pervade their history, which, like the arts enumerated, took a character from its intimate association with the religion of the people. It must be recollected, moreover,… that the chronicles of all the polished nations of Europe, were, at a much more recent date, as crude, as wild, and as barren, as those of the early Rajputs.” … “My own animadversions upon the defective condition of the annals of Rajwarra have more than once been checked by a very just remark: ‘When our princes were in exile, driven from hold to hold, and compelled to dwell in the clefts of the mountains, often doubtful whether they would not be forced to abandon the very meal preparing for them, was that a time to think of historical records?’ ”… “If we consider the political changes and convulsions which have happened in Hindustan since Mahmood’s invasion, and the intolerant bigotry of many of his successors, we shall be able to account for the paucity of its national works on history, without being driven to the improbable conclusion, that the Hindus were ignorant of an art which has been cultivated in other countries from almost the earliest ages. Is it to be imagined that a nation so highly civilized as the Hindus, amongst whom the exact sciences flourished in perfection, by whom the fine arts, architecture, sculpture, poetry, music, were not only cultivated, but taught and defined by the nicest and most elaborate rules, were totally unacquainted with the simple art of recording the events of their history, the character of their princes and the acts of their reigns?”

James Tod (1782–1835) 1782-1835, English officer of the British East India Company and an Oriental scholar

[The fact appears to be that] “After eight centuries of galling subjection to conquerors totally ignorant of the classical language of the Hindus; after every capital city had been repeatedly stormed and sacked by barbarous, bigoted, and exasperated foes; it is too much to expect that the literature of the country should not have sustained, in common with other interests, irretrievable losses.”
James Tod, Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, Routledge and Kegan Paul (London,l829,1957), 2 vols., I quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 3

People, Age, Religion, Music

“I can count on one of my hands, how many competent people are working in the [Hungarian] media today. But the situation is also woeful in the areas of theatre, film production and fine arts. The whole Hungarian culture is in a deep crisis, the putrescence reigning this country – in a cultural, economic, political, moral and mentalecological sense – consumes everything.”

Róbert Puzsér (1974) hungarian publicist

Egy kezemen meg tudom számolni, hány alkalmas ember dolgozik ma a médiában. De siralmas a helyzet a színház, a filmgyártás és a képzőművészet területén is. Az egész magyar kultúra mélységes válságban van, a rothadás, ami uralja az országot – kulturálisan, gazdaságilag, politikailag, etikailag és mentálökológiailag – mindent elemésztő.
Idegen test az RTL Klubon - Puzsér Róbert-interjú, hvg.hu, 2012. március 20.
Quotes from him, Interviews

People, Sense, Country

“Great art is an instant arrested in eternity.”

James Huneker (1857–1921) American music critic

The Pathos of Distance (1915), p. 120

“Business is the "art" of making money by selling things or services people want for more than their cost.”

Patrick Dixon book Building a Better Business

Building a Better Business (2005)

Money, People, Business

“Each line is now the actual experience with its own innate history. It does not illustrate — it is the sensation of its own realization. [a written art note by Twombly on a painting he created in 1957].”

Cy Twombly (1928–2011) American painter

Quote of Twombly in 'Writings', Flash Art International, Laura Cherubini, October 2008 (translation from Italian: Beatrice Barbareschi)
1950 - 1960

History, Painting

“Joni's genius is that she creates chords that are ambiguous, chords that have two or more different roots. …Joni's music is as close to impressionist visual art as anything I've heard. …harmonic complexity born out of her strict insistence that the music not be anchored in a single harmonic interpretation.”

Daniel Levitin (1957) American psychologist

This is Your Brain on Music (2006)

Music

“A book at the very start comes to me as a nebulous geometric form, a kind of tension in space that has to be resolved. The resolution is effected by fleshing out the form with character, plot, dialogue, etc. But the original structure perseveres throughout, even when, or perhaps especially when, I am not conscious of it being at work. Art is a mysterious business.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

Fully Booked: Q & A with John Banville (2012)

Books, Business, Perseverance

“In: POPism (1980); as quoted in Warhol in his own words – Untitled Statements ( 1963 – 1987), selected by Neil Printz, as quoted in Andy Warhol, retrospective, Art and Bullfinch Press / Little Brown, 1989, pp. 457 – 467”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

1975 - 1987

Quotes

“There is a great deal to be said for the Arts. For one thing they offer the only career in which commercial failure is not necessarily discreditable.”

Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) British writer

"The Way to Fame" HTTP://BOOKS.GOOGLE.COM/books?&id=FWxbAAAAMAAJ&q=%22there+is+a+great+deal+to+be+said+for+the+arts+for+one+thing+they+offer+the+only+career+in+which+commercial+failure+is+not+necessarily+discreditable%22&pg=PA9#v=onepage

Failure

“Cage's Music of Changes was a further indication that the arts in general were beginning to consciously deal with the "given" material and, to varying degrees, liberating them from the inherited, functional concepts of control.”

Earle Brown

quoted in Classic Essays on Twentieth-Century Music, ISBN 0028645812

Music, Change

“As I understand it, art is one of the chief organs of what, for want of a better word, I must call the spiritual life.”

Roger Fry (1866–1934) English artist and art critic

Essay-Art And Socialism The Artist in the Great State ed H G Wells (1912)
Art Quotes

Life, Understanding

“the art-critic has provided the products of my lab with a (new) label: 'abracadabra'.... [but] one can not speak about abracadabra-ism, and that is its advantage on all –isms: it doesn't know time and limits and especially not the 'periods of time' [but] only seasons.... all -isms are dead, blown away, sprayed in the air, gone (here imagery does not fit, imagery is always wrong) - only for the 'abracadabra' is the future wall, the coming wall in the next house - how much the 'peinture' of other fabrics is curving and folding itself, polished or blown-up, it's all for nothing... We are not addressing those offspring but only the artists in this world..”

Hendrik Werkman (1882–1945) Dutch artist

version in original Dutch (origineel citaat van Hendrik Werkman, in het Nederlands): de critiek heeft de producten van mijn laboratorium voorzien van een (nieuw) etiket: abracadabra.. ..van abacadabraïsme kan men niet spreken en dat is haar voorsprong op alle ismen: het kent geen tijd en geen grenzen en vooral geen 'perioden' [maar] slechts jaargetijden.. ..alle ismen zijn dood, verwaaid, verstoven, weg (hier past beeldspraak niet, beeldspraak is altijd valsch) slechts voor het abracadabra is de toekomstige wand, de komende wand in het komende huis hoe ook de peintuur van ander maaksel zich kromt en plooit, poets of opblaast, het is al om niet.. ..wij richten ons immers niet tot deze nakomers maar uitsluitend tot de artisten op deze globe..
Quote of Werkman from his 'Proclamatie / Procamation 2. Nov. 1932, published at nr. 13, at the left border of the river Aa'; print on paper; (transl. Fons Heijnsbroek) - from the collection of Gemeentemuseum The Hague
Werkman is referring to an article by nl:Johan Dijkstra in the 'Provinciale Groninger Courant' who called Werkman's art-works 'abacadraba', but meant in a rather positive sense, because Dijkstra missed it at the exhibition of De Ploeg, Autumn 1932
1930's

World, Time, Future, Housing

“If thou shalt aspire after the glorious acts of men, thy working shall be accompanied with compunction and strife, and thy remembrance followed with distaste and upbraidings; and justly doth it come to pass towards thee, O man, that since thou, which art God's work, doest him no reason in yielding him well-pleasing service, even thine own works also should reward thee with the like fruit of bitterness.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

Of The Works Of God and Man
Meditationes sacræ (1597)

Men, God

“They could not see the effort which went into the art, and would consequently grow bored with it more quickly.”

Mary Robinette Kowal (1969) American writer and puppeteer

Source: Shades of Milk and Honey (2010), Chapter 3 (p. 38)

Effort

“In our world, in which religious images are losing their meaning, in which our customs are getting more and more secular, we are losing our sense of the eternal. I think it’s a loss that has done a great deal of damage to modern art. Painting is a return to origins.”

Antoni Tàpies (1923–2012) Catalan painter, sculptor and art theorist

In an interview on the BBC arts program 'Omnibus', (1990); as quoted in 'Antoni Tàpies a Painter With Textures, Dies at 88', by William Grimes, in 'The New York Times', 8 Febr, 2012, p. B17
1981 - 1990

World, Thinking, Sense, Loss

“Both in Greece and in Provence the poetry attained its highest rhythmic and metrical brilliance at times when the arts of verse and music were most closely knit together, when each thing done by the poet had some definite musical urge or necessity bound up within it.”

Ezra Pound (1885–1972) American Imagist poet and critic

"The Tradition", in Poetry, ed. by Harriet Monroe, III, 3 (Dec. 1913), p. 137; reprinted in Literary Essays of Ezra Pound (1968), p. 91.

Music, Time

“I have been strongly influenced by the Mahabharata, discourses of the Buddha, Sri Aurobindo and Plato. My masters have been Vyasa, Buddha and Sri Aurobindo, as elucidated by Ram Swarup. … Paganism was a term of contempt invented by Christianity for people in the countryside who lived close to and in harmony with Nature, and whose ways of worship were spontaneous as opposed to the contrived though-categories constructed by Christianity’s city-based manipulators of human minds. In due course, the term was extended to cover all spiritually spontaneous culture of the world – Greek, Roman, Iranian, Indian, Chinese, native American. It became a respectable term for those who revolted against Christianity in the modern West. But it has yet to recover its spiritual dimension which Christianity had eclipsed. For me, Hinduism preserves ancient Paganism in all its dimensions. In that sense, I am a Pagan. The term "Polytheism' comes from Biblical discourse, which has the term 'theism' as its starting point. I have no use for these terms. They create confusion. I dwell in a different universe of discourse which starts with 'know thyself' and ends with the discovery, 'thou art that'…
I met her [Mother Theresa] briefly in Calcutta in 1954 or 1955 when she was unknown. I had gone to see an American journalist who was a friend and had fallen ill, when she came to his house asking for money for her charity set-up. The friend went inside to get some cash, leaving his five or six year old daughter in the drawing room. Teresa told her, "He is not your real father. Your real father is in heaven." The girl said, "He is very ill." Theresa commented, "If he dies, your father does not die. For your real father who is in heaven never 'dies."”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

The girl was in tears. <br class="br">Interview, The Observer. Date : February 22, 1997. http://sathyavaadi.tripod.com/truthisgod/Articles/goel.htm https://egregores.blogspot.com/2009/10/buddha-sri-aurobindo-and-plato.html https://egregores.wordpress.com/2009/11/16/hindus-and-pagans-a-return-to-the-time-of-the-gods/

Money, People, World, Way

“[Design is] an expression of purpose. It may, if it is good enough, later be judged as art.”

Charles Eames (1907–1978) American designer, half of duo the Eames

In answer of the question: Is Design an expression of art?
Design Q & A with Charles Eames, 1972

“But fantasy kills imagination, pornography is death to art.”

Iris Murdoch book The Message to the Planet

The Message to the Planet (1989) p. 43.

Death, Imagination

“Inspirations come differently, sometimes you are just sleeping and get a bad dream, others are stories in papers. So people have different stories, it’s about art. I make sure I keep my brains awake.”

Usama Mukwaya (1989) Ugandan screenwriter

Source: " Ugandan film maker: I am living my dream http://www.newvision.co.ug/new_vision/news/1444750/ugandan-film-maker-living-dream#sthash.7Qz8HNn5.dpuf:" at New Vision. 24 January 2017 written by Glorias Musiime

People, Dreams, Sleep

“Many thanks for your letter and the Gauguin woodcuts... One can see, incidentally, that Gauguin had Persian miniatures, Indian batik and Chinese art in his very blood. The shapes of the birds and the horse show that clearly. But although it looks very well, Gauguin can't stimulate us present-day artists much. We need a direct route from life to plastic form. And we get it by perpetually drawing everything we see.”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) German painter, sculptor, engraver and printmaker

Letter to Nele van de Velde ((daughter of Henry van de Velde), Frauenkirch, 29 November 1920; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, pp. 224-225
1920's

Life, Bird, Horse, Drawing

“Rubens, when past fifty years of age, used the time he did not give to the business of his mission to the King of Spain in copying the superb Italian originals he found in Madrid... Accuracy of the eye, sureness of the hand, the art of carrying the picture on from the indications of the lay-in to the rounding out of the work, and so many other matters which are all of primary importance, demand application at every moment, and the practice of a lifetime.”

Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) French painter

Quote in Journal of Delacroix, Crown Publishers, New York, pp. 543-544
1831 - 1863

Age, Business, Time, Past

“The whole of French art is a matter of seeing Nature as beautiful, very beautiful, in fact. But on the whole this is not enough. You have to create your own Nature – Van Gogh!”

Alexej von Jawlensky (1864–1941) Russian painter

Jawlensky is looking back on his encounter with French art through his voyage with Marianne Werefkin to Normandy and Paris, in 1903 when he discovered Van Gogh
1900 - 1935
Source: Expressionism: A Revolution in German Art, Dietmer Elger, Taschen, 2002, p. 166

Beauty, Nature

“Rationality is what we do to organize the world, to make it possible to predict. Art is the rehearsal for the inapplicability and failure of that process.”

Brian Eno (1948) English musician, composer, record producer and visual artist

December 7, 1995, p. 272
A Year With Swollen Appendices (1996)

World, Failure

“Extreme states of being, whether individual or collective, were once purposefully motivated. Some of those purposes no longer have meaning (expiation, salvation). The well-being of communities is no longer sought through means of doubtful effectiveness, but directly, through action. Under these conditions, extreme states of being fell into the domain of the arts, and not without a certain disadvantage. Literature (fiction) took the place of what had formerly been the spiritual life; poetry (the disorder of words) that of real states of trance. Art constituted a small free domain, outside action: to gain freedom it had to renounce the real world. This is a heavy price to pay, and most writers dream of recovering a lost reality. They must then pay in another sense, by renouncing freedom.”

Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French intellectual and literary figure

The Bataille Reader (1997), p. 340

Life, World, Dreams, Communication

“The first impulse towards painting, or toward art in general, stems from the need to communicate, the effort to fix one's own vision, to deal with appearances (which are alien and must be given names and meanings.) Without this, all work would be pointless and unjustified, like Art for Art's Sake.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

undated quotes, The Daily Practice of Painting, Writings (1962-1993)

Communication, Effort, Appearance, Painting

“On the reverse side, we have failed to give the immigrant accessibility to American traditions, beliefs, art, and literature. He has had little cooperative participation in the creation, maintenance, and management of our economic forces. He has not been permitted to incorporate into the processes of American invention and research the processes of his own genius.”

Frances Kellor (1873–1952) American sociologist

What is Americanization? (1919)

Literature

“At present there is an extremely exaggerated formation of groups (students on the School of Art in Vitebsk) around 'trend'; there are 1. young people following Malevich and 2. young people following me. We both belong to the left-wing artistic movement, although we have different ideas about ends and means. Obviously it would take too long to talk about this problem now… But there is one thing I will tell you: Although I was born in Russia - and what is more: in the "settlement territory" – I was trained abroad and am all the more sensitive to everything that is taking place here in the field of art (the fine arts). The memory of the splendour of the original is much to painful for me.. [to live – crossed out]”

Marc Chagall (1887–1985) French artist and painter

Quote in Chagall's letter to Pavel Davidovitch Ettering, 2 April, 1920, as quoted in Marc Chagall - the Russian years 1906 – 1922, editor Christoph Vitali, exhibition catalogue, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 1991, p. 73
1920's

Pain, People, School, Idea

“In the Soviet Union, he knew, great art hangs in public galleries. No scholars, no men and women waiting to mend their souls before a Raphael or a Matisse need wait, cap in hand at the mansion door.”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

"The Cleric of Treason".
George Steiner: A Reader (1984)

Women, Men, Soul, Waiting

“There was a time when I should have felt terribly ashamed of not being up-to-date. I lived in a chronic apprehension lest I might, so to speak, miss the last bus, and so find myself stranded and benighted, in a desert of demodedness, while others, more nimble than myself, had already climbed on board, taken their tickets and set out toward those bright but, alas, ever receding goals of Modernity and Sophistication. Now, however, I have grown shameless, I have lost my fears. I can watch unmoved the departure of the last social-cultural bus—the innumerable last buses, which are starting at every instant in all the world’s capitals. I make no effort to board them, and when the noise of each departure has died down, “Thank goodness!” is what I say to myself in the solitude. I find nowadays that I simply don’t want to be up-to-date. I have lost all desire to see and do the things, the seeing and doing of which entitle a man to regard himself as superiorly knowing, sophisticated, unprovincial; I have lost all desire to frequent the places and people that a man simply must frequent, if he is not to be regarded as a poor creature hopelessly out of the swim. “Be up-to-date!” is the categorical imperative of those who scramble for the last bus. But it is an imperative whose cogency I refuse to admit. When it is a question of doing something which I regard as a duty I am as ready as anyone else to put up with discomfort. But being up-to-date and in the swim has ceased, so far as I am concerned, to be a duty. Why should I have my feelings outraged, why should I submit to being bored and disgusted for the sake of somebody else’s categorical imperative? Why? There is no reason. So I simply avoid most of the manifestations of that so-called “life” which my contemporaries seem to be so unaccountably anxious to “see”; I keep out of range of the “art” they think is so vitally necessary to “keep up with”; I flee from those “good times” in the “having” of which they are prepared to spend so lavishly of their energy and cash.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

“Silence is Golden,” p. 55
Do What You Will (1928)

Life, People, World, Fear

“Young, blond fags with powder-blue eyes and soft shoes skipped along arm-in-arm. Chinese girls with long hair and black stockings carried metal pots into Ernie’s Delicatessen for bean cake, barbequed duck, Chinese curds and steamed rice. Art students from the Art Institute, draftsmen from Heald’s College and law students from S. F. Law School walked by in carefree abandon, none of them in pain, all with beautiful girls in red slippers. They had leather, beads and books and pipes and scabs of hair on their interesting faces. Polk Street at night was always Christmas Eve for lonely men such as myself.”

Oscar Zeta Acosta book Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo

Source: Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo (1972), p. 51.

Men, Pain, Books, School

“These years of Kunti’s life were comparatively peaceful. Hardly had Kunti heaved a sigh of relief when fresh troubles arose. Though the Pandavas were received as princes, they were not acknowledged as sole heirs to the throne. Dhritarashtra continued to rule though uncrowned and quarrels broke out among the cousins. Kunti’s Bhima, a hefty fellow, delighted in frightening his cousins. Apparently they in their turn tried to poison him. Kunti’s children proved themselves to be quick in learning the art.”

Kunti character from Indian epic Mahabharata

Source: The End Of An Epoch, p. 33.

Life, Children, Peace, Learning

“What is art really? The outcome of dissatisfaction with life, the point of impact for the creative force, the continual movement of life.... in my art I attempt to explain life and its meaning to myself.”

Edvard Munch (1863–1944) Norwegian painter and printmaker

N 45, as quoted in Edvard Much – behind the scream, Sue Prideaux; Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2007, p. 35
after 1930

Life

“The pace of life has increased in the last few decades just as the speed of the motor bicycle has been exceeded many times over by the aeroplane. After art passed through a whole series of intermediate stages it reached cubism where for the first time the creative urge to construct instinctively overcame conscious resolve.... from this point the picture started to gain stature as a new world of reality and in this way the foundation stone for a new representation of the shapes and forms of the material world was laid.”

El Lissitsky (1890–1941) Soviet artist, designer, photographer, teacher, typographer and architect

1915 - 1925, Suprematism' in World Reconstruction (1920)

Life, World, Way, Reality

“Early Christian art during the first two or three centuries of its existence was merely a development or even a variant of late Roman art. So great is the similarity between late pagan and early Christian work that the decisive change of style must have occurred between the classical and post-classical, not between the pagan and Christian eras.”

Arnold Hauser (1892–1978) Hungarian art historian

The Social History of Art, Volume I. From Prehistoric Times to the Middle Ages, 1999, Chapter IV. The Middle Ages

Decision, Change

“Its culture: the fruit of its life, the product of its own efforts in thought and art. This culture is not international. It is the expression of the national genius, of the blood. The culture is international in its brilliance but national in origin. Someone made a fine comparison: bread and wheat may be internationally consumed, but they always bear the imprint of the soil from which they came.”

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899–1938) Romanian politician

For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936), Nation and Culture

Life, Effort

“Arriving in Berlin, I found myself in my element, and began to breathe freely. Jerusalem and Lessing had given us letters of introduction to the greatest men in Berlin; but they knew us already, Leisewitz as author of "Julius Von Tarent," and myself as author of my Dissertation. We had daily the choice of the first society; covers were laid for us in the first families daily, for dinner as well as supper. Von Zetlitz sent a general invitation that covers were laid for us every day during our stay in Berlin. Most of the time we could spare was divided between physicians and philosophers, of which the latter had the greater share. Spalding, Mendelsohn, Eberhard, Engel, Nicolai, Reichard, and Madame Bamberger, daughter of Doctor Sack, Bishop of Berlin, honoured us with their most sincere friendship. The latter, a highly gifted and accomplished lady, possessed the rare art of spreading over the most abstract hypothesis and theorem the brightest and most charming light; Jerusalem, the father of the ill-fated Werther (see the "Sorrows of Werther," by Goethe), used to send her his works to correct, and she alone was able to console and comfort him, when he was informed of the death of his beloved son. This amiable lady assumes in common life the character of a plain woman, and when at court, as friend of the Queen and the Princess Amalie, she won all hearts by her truly noble man ners and unconstrained courtesy: at court beloved, she was admired, nay, adored in the philosophical clubs. But do not think that here alone we spent all our time; Madame Bamberger knew how to blend study with amusement; she issued frequently cards of invitation to select parties, for suppers and balls, and her house was the point of union of all that was learned, beautiful, and amiable. Thus Berlin became my Paradise. I had the most tempting offers from the Minister of State to stay here; but the illness of my father obliged me, after a stay of three months, to return home. I visited Lessing on my journey back; stayed two days, which were the most interesting of all days I ever remember.”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

My Life and Confessions, for Philippine, 1786

Life, Death, Men, Friendship

“In choosing my materials I wanted to keep an organic feel to the book. Some might consider this an art book, but I was really just trying to give it some life. Having seen what is being printed by majors these days with poor quality paper, I wanted to provide the reader with a book that carries more value near the same price and that can last for generations. Nothing would be more inspiring to me than to know my books are treasured like an heirloom.”

Lorin Morgan-Richards (1975) American poet, cartoonist, and children's writer

Regarding producing his books; as quoted in "Disdeinen" https://archive.is/Nsa8X (13 October 2009).

Life, Books, Feeling

“Bureaucracy is simultaneously the most crippling of Indian diseases and the highest of Indian art forms.”

Shashi Tharoor book The Great Indian Novel

The Great Indian Novel (1989)

Disease

“Poetry is a highly visible art in Ireland; in our rapidly secularised society, it has become a kind of erzatz religion, applying the elevated ceremonial language without the divisive doctrine.”

Dennis O'Driscoll (1954–2012) Irish poet, critic

Other Quotes

Religion

“I had given up [around 1950] any ambition of making a career as an artist... I had lost all interest in the art shown in galleries and museums, and I no longer aspired to fit in that world. I loved the paintings done by children, and my only desire was to do the same for my own pleasure.”

Jean Dubuffet (1901–1985) sculptor from France

Source: posthumous, Batons rompus, 1986, pp. 7-8

Love, Children, Pleasure, World

“The UK has two things, the arts and education, and both of them it pushes into the corner. It's the hugest, hugest mistake. Why do British ministers meet anyone from the arts other than to cut them? Compared to Germany, Britain has got quite a long way to go there, frankly.”

Anish Kapoor (1954) British contemporary artist of Indian birth

Education, Way

“We properly judge a critic's virtue not by his freedom from error but by the nature of the mistakes he does make, for he makes them, if he is worth reading, because he has in mind something besides his perceptions about art in itself — he has in mind the demands that he makes upon life.”

Lionel Trilling (1905–1975) American academic

Note to the "Criticism" section
The Portable Matthew Arnold (Viking Press, 1949)

Life, Error, Nature, Freedom

“Basically I hate categorical labels. As a young artist I already was very clear about this — that 'objectification' is not the final aim of art. For there are greater things than the object. The greatest thing is the human mind.”

Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) American artist

As quoted in The Artist's Voice : Talks With Seventeen Modern Artists (1962) by Katharine Kuh, p. 118
1960s

Hate

“There is no question that advertising is an art, and manipulation is the art of advertising through the medium of the tape.”

Edwin Lefèvre book Reminiscences of a Stock Operator

Source: Reminiscences of a Stock Operator (1923), Chapter XX, p. 236

Question

“If I was accused of neglecting my art, or sacrificing my ideas for the sake of stupid ambition, then I would understand the critics; but as that isn't the case, there is nothing to be said. I sent a picture to the Salon for purely commercial reasons. Anyway, it is like some medicines – even if it does no good, it does no harm.”

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) French painter and sculptor

other impressionist artists then refused to send in their work to the Salon
Source: 1880's, Renoir – his life and work, 1975, p. 128 : in a letter to art-dealer Durand-Ruel, March 1881

Stupidity, Idea, Understanding

“Art seeks ever to conceal the means by which its effects are produced and the method in which the work is wrought.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton (1863–1908) British photographer

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, Printing the picture and controlling its formation, p. 90

“When I was…. in the surroundings of pictures and things of art… I then had a violent passion for them… And I do not repent it, for even now, far from that land, I am often homesick for the land of pictures. Now for more than five years already, I do not know exactly how long, I'm more or less without employment, wandering here and there… But you will ask what is your definite aim? That aim becomes more definite, will stand out slowly and surely, as the rough draft becomes a sketch and the sketch becomes a picture…. my only anxiety is: how can I be of use in the world, cannot I serve some purpose and be of any good, how can I learn more and study profoundly certain subjects?”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

In his letter to brother Theo, from Cuesmes, Belgium July 1880; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 133) p. 19 <br class="br">1880s, 1880

World, Study, Learning, Passion

“In our time it has been seen, as I hope to show quite shortly, that simple children, roughly brought up in the wilderness, have begun to draw by themselves, impelled by their own natural genius, instructed solely by the example of these beautiful paintings and sculptures of Nature. Much more then it is probable that the first men, being less removed from their divine origin, were more perfect, possessing a brighter intelligence, and that with Nature as a guide, a pure intellect for master, and the lovely world as a model, they originated these noble arts, and by gradually improving them brought them at length, from small beginnings, to perfection. I do not deny that there must have been an originator, since I know quite well that there must have been a beginning at some time, due to some individual.”

Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) Italian painter, architect, writer and historian

Source: The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, 1900, p. 5-6

Love, Men, Children, World

“As in hunting, so in hawking, the sportsmen had their peculiar impressions, and therefore the tyro in the art of falconry is recommended to learn the following arrangement of terms as they were to be applied to the different kinds of birds assembled in companies. A sege of herons, and of bitterns; an herd of swans, of cranes, and of curlews; a dopping of sheldrakes; a spring of teels; a covert of cootes; a gaggle of geese; a badelynge of ducks; a sord or sute of mallards; a muster of peacoccks; a nye of pheasants; a bevy of quails; a covey of partridges; a congregation of plovers; a flight of doves; a dule of turtles; a walk of snipes; a fall of woodcocks; a brood of hens; a building of rooks; a murmuration of starlings; an exaltation of larks; a flight of swallows; a host of sparrows; a watch of nightingales; and a charm of goldfinches.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 37
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Collective nouns

Spring, Bird, Learning

“If the advancement of the general art of programming requires the continuing invention and elaboration of paradigms, advancement of the art of the individual programmer requires that he expand his repertory of paradigms.”

Robert Floyd (1936–2001) American computer scientist

The Paradigms of Programming (1979)

“Well, then, Lord Jesus! I will creep if I cannot walk; I will take hold of Thy word. When I stumble, Thou wilt support me; when I fall, Thou wilt hold out Thy cross, and help me with it to rise again, until at length I reach the place where Thou art, and with all my weaknesses and wants, cast myself into Thy bosom.”

Christian Scriver (1629–1693) German hymnwriter

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 100.

Support, Help

“Throughout the nineteenth century, apart from the division in theoretical sciences and arts, classifiers attempted to divide the sciences into two groups. Already they had before them the examples of Francis Bacon (speculative and descriptive) and Hobbes (quantitative and qualitative). For Coleridge, the sciences were either pure (Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric, Mathematics, Metaphysics) or mixed. Arthur Schopenhauer’s similar groups were called pure and empirical, Wilhelm Wundt in 1887 called them formal and empirical, Globot mathematical and theoretical, and the St. Louis Congress of Arts and Sciences (1904) normative and physical.”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

Karl Pearson made similar division of the sciences into abstract and concrete
Source: Classification and indexing in science (1958), Other Chapters, p. 154.

Mathematics, Science

“You may lose something, but you gain a double perspective, a double vision. Especially in terms of writing, or in terms of art, I think it's tremendously useful.”

Jeet Thayil (1959) Indian writer

On the intermingling of cultures
Jeet Thayil on why 'Where are you from?' is a complicated question for all of us

Thinking

“Only a male intellect clouded by the sexual drive could call the stunted, narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped and short-legged sex the fair sex: for it is with this drive that all its beauty is bound up. More fittingly than the fair sex, women could be called the unaesthetic sex. Neither for music, nor poetry, nor the plastic arts do they possess any real feeling or receptivity: if they affect to do so, it is merely mimicry in service of their effort to please. This comes from the fact that they are incapable of taking a purely objective interest in anything whatever, and the reason for this is, I think, as follows. Man strives in everything for a direct domination over things, either by comprehending or by subduing them. But woman is everywhere and always relegated to a merely indirect domination, which is achieved by means of man, who is consequently the only thing she has to dominate directly. Thus it lies in the nature of women to regard everything simply as a means of capturing a man, and their interest in anything else is only simulated, is no more than a detour, i. e. amounts to coquetry and mimicry.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena

Vol. 2 "On Women" as translated in Essays and Aphorisms (1970), as translated by R. J. Hollingdale
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Counsels and Maxims

Women, Beauty, Music, Sex

“All the art since the Renaissance seemed too men-oriented. I liked (the) object quality. An Egyptian pyramid, a Sung vase, the Romanesque church appealed to me. The forms found in the vaulting of a cathedral or even a splatter of tar on the road seemed more valid and instructive and a more voluptuous experience than either geometric or action painting.”

Ellsworth Kelly (1923–2015) American painter, sculptor, and printmaker

Source: 1969 - 1980, In: "Ellsworth Kelly: Works on Paper," 1987, p. 9 : 'Notes from 1969'

Men, Painting

“My work will use everything that it can to communicate. It will use any trick; it'll do anything — absolutely anything — to communicate and to win the viewer over. Even the most unsophisticated people are not threatened by it; they aren't threatened that this is something they have no understanding of. They can look at it and they can participate with it. And also somebody who has been very highly educated in art and deals with more esoteric areas can also view it and find that the work is open as far as being something that wants to add more to our culture. The work wants to meet the needs of' the people. It tries to bring down all the barriers that block people From their culture. that shield and hide them. It tells them to embrace the moment instead of always feeling that they're being indulged by things that they do not participate in. It tells them to believe in something and to eject their will. The idea of St. John and baptism right now is that there are greater things to come. And it's about embracing guilt and shame and moving forward instead of letting this negative society always thwart us — always a more negative society, always more negative.”

Jeff Koons (1955) American artist

Partly cited in: Linda Weintraub, Arthur Coleman Danto, Thomas McEvilley. Art on the edge and over: searching for art's meaning in contemporary society, 1970s-1990s. Art Insights, Inc., 1996. p. 201; And cited in Kristine Stiles, ‎Peter Howard Selz (1996). Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists' Writings. p. 381
"From Full Phantom Five," 1988

People, Education, Feeling, Communication

“All art originates in an act of intuition or vision.”

Herbert Read (1893–1968) English anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art

Form in Modern Poetry(1932)

“I Am Curious (Yellow) is not merely not erotic. It is anti-erotic. Two hours of this movie will drive thoughts of sex out of your mind for weeks. See the picture and buy twin beds… I think there actually is a director in Sweden who is dull and square enough to seriously consider this an art of moviemaking.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/i-am-curious-yellow-1969 of I Am Curious (Yellow) (23 September 1969) <br class="br">Reviews, One-star reviews

Sex, Thinking

“Modern art has led me to the comprehension and appreciation of Indian painting and sculpture. It seems paradoxical but I know for certain that had we not come away to Europe, I should perhaps never have realised that a fresco from Ajanta or a small piece of sculpture in the Musee Guimet is worth more than a whole Renaissance.”

Amrita Sher-Gil (1913–1941) Hungarian Indian artist

In 1934 on her new art form
Sikh Heritage,Amrita Shergil

Painting

Quotes about art page 17

Quotes about art
page 17