Quotes about art
page 45

“By his twentieth year he was a thorough adept in all of what we may term the “carnival arts,” and already a widely traveled young man. From mastery of the mountebank’s larcenous skills to the study of outright felonious appropriation, and all its subsidiary sciences, proved but a short step for Nifft, who always credited his early “dramatic training” with his success as a thief, vowing it had given him a rare grasp of his trade’s fundamentals: lying, imposture and nimble movement.”

Michael Shea book Nifft the Lean

Prologue (pp. 6-7)
Nifft the Lean (1982)

Travel, Lying, Study, Science

“It lies deep in our habits, confirmed by all manner of educational and other arrangements for several centuries back, to consider human talent as best of all evincing itself by the faculty of eloquent speech. Our earliest schoolmasters teach us, as the one gift of culture they have, the art of spelling and pronouncing, the rules of correct speech; rhetorics, logics follow, sublime mysteries of grammar, whereby we may not only speak but write. And onward to the last of our schoolmasters in the highest university, it is still intrinsically grammar, under various figures grammar. To speak in various languages, on various things, but on all of them to speak, and appropriately deliver ourselves by tongue or pen,—this is the sublime goal towards which all manner of beneficent preceptors and learned professors, from the lowest hornbook upwards, are continually urging and guiding us.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), Stump Orator (May 1, 1850)

Education, Learning, Universe

“The film moves at what I consider to be the speed of art — which is slow. Cremaster 2 does what I think sculpture does: It moves slowly and requires that one move around it to understand it, and to visit it repeatedly.”

Matthew Barney (1967) American artist

Attributed in "Matthew Barney – The Cremaster Cycle: Sculpture and Drawing", Guggenheim Arts Curriculum http://artscurriculum.guggenheim.org/lessons/cremaster_L1.php Attributed

Understanding, Thinking, Speed

“The conflict between the theories of Surrealism & pure abstraction leads many to look upon one as black & bad & the other as white & good. Yet it seems to me that a good work of art has always contained both abstract & surrealist elements – just as it has both classical & romantic elements (order & surprise?)... Surrealism is widening the field of contemporary art & is giving more freedom to the artist (& perhaps what is not unimportant, – stretching the appreciation of the public). Abstraction is re-establishing fundamental laws; bringing back form to painting & sculpture. There are many products of surrealism which I personally dislike,.... but equally Unimportant to me are the empty decorations produced in the name of abstraction.”

Henry Moore (1898–1986) English artist

Source: 1925 - 1940, Unpublished notes' for 'The Sculptor Speaks' (1937), pp. 112-113

Law, Freedom, Painting, Personality

“Great art is never extreme. Criticism moves in a false direction, as does art, when it aspires to be a social science... In this world modern artists form a kind of spiritual underground.”

Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) American artist

Motherwell's writing in 1944; as cited in 'Robert Motherwell, American Painter and Printmaker' https://www.theartstory.org/artist-motherwell-robert-life-and-legacy.htm#writings_and_ideas_header, on 'Artstory' 1940s

World, Science, Falseness

“Unto the third and fourth generation, General Motors, you have visited your greed on the children. Unto the twentieth, AEC, you have twisted their limbs and closed their eyes. Unto the last dawn of man you have cursed us, O Father. Our Father. Our Father Which art in Washington, give us this day our daily calcium propionate, sodium diacetate monoglyceride, potassium bromate, calcium phosphate, monobasic chloramine T, aluminium potassium sulphate, sodium benzoate, butylated hydroxyanisole, mono-iso-propyl citrate, axerophthol and calciferol. Include with it a little flour and salt.
Amen.”

John Brunner book The Sheep Look Up

January “EARTHMOVER”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

Children

“Alas! in nature, as in art, we gain only according to our capacity. You cannot put an ocean in a pint pot.”

Flora Thompson (1876–1947) English author and poet

November Chapter The Peverel Papers - A yearbook of the countryside ed Julian Shuckburgh Century Hutchinson 1986
The Peverel Papers

Nature

“.. I saw Gauguin; he told me his theories about art and assured me that the young [artists] would find salvation by replenishing themselves at remote and savage sources. I told him that this art did not belong to him, that he was a civilized man and hence it was his function to show us harmonious things. We parted, each unconvinced. Gauguin is certainly not without talent, but how difficult it is for him to find his own way! He is always poaching on someone's ground; now he is pillaging the savages of Oceania.”

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) French painter

Quote about Paul Gauguin 23 Nov. 1893, in Racontars d'un Rapin, Paul Gauguin; as quoted by John Rewald, in 'Introduction' of Camille Pissarro - Letters to His Son Lucien, ed. John Rewald, with assistance of Lucien Pissarro – (translated from the unpublished French letters by Lionel Abel); Pantheon Books Inc. New York, second edition, 1943, p. 221
1890's

Way, Parting

“Ultimately modelling, acting or dancing is a form of an art. There might be different ways to express these various arts but the basics are always same. We have only nine emotions all over the world and expressing those emotions in any form is going to be similar in one or the other way. there is a rhythm in everything. In modelling we hold the expressions or try to express with no emotions on face but with pride and attitude in acting we go with the flow of the emotions and in dance, we express through our face and body both in rhythm. So this rhythm and emotions are part of your expressions.”

Nikita Gokhale (1990) Indian Actress, Indian Model

"‘Interview with Nikita Gohkale’" https://vasfotios.wixsite.com/citylights/single-post/2017/12/12/Interview-with-Nikita-Gohkale. City Lights. December 12, 2017.

World, Way, Dance, Parting

“Shall we say, for example, that Science and Art are indebted principally to the founders of Schools and Universities? Did not Science originate rather, and gain advancement, in the obscure closets of the Roger Bacons, Keplers, Newtons; in the workshops of the Fausts and the Watts; wherever, and in what guise soever Nature, from the first times downwards, had sent a gifted spirit upon the earth? Again, were Homer and Shakspeare members of any beneficed guild, or made Poets by means of it? Were Painting and Sculpture created by forethought, brought into the world by institutions for that end? No; Science and Art have, from first to last, been the free gift of Nature; an unsolicited, unexpected gift; often even a fatal one.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1820s, Signs of the Times (1829)

World, School, Nature, Universe

“I have always said that, with any sculpture, you have to be able to say, 'although this is not a ready-made, it could be one'. That's what a sculpture has to look like. It must have a certain relation to reality. I mean, not airy-fairy, let alone fabricated, so aloof and polite… And I don't see this aspect in many artists' work. Often, my feeling is that they think something up that is supposed to be art. That's not what I want at all. Rather, a sculpture is really a photo – although it can be shifted, it must still always have an aspect that reality has too.”

Isa Genzken (1948) German sculptor

2001 - 2010, Isa Genzken in conversation with Wolfgang Tillmans' (2003)

Feeling, Photo, Thinking, Reality

“.. you [Otto] know me well enough to know that I am not bad and heartless. It just happen to be a 'Sturm und Drang' period which I have to get through, and there is no way to avoid hurting the people closest to me. It hurts me to cause you all this pain and suffering. Believe me when I say it is not easy for me either. But I must fight it through, to one exit or another – It has begun to be really beautiful here... I've seen wonderful Courbet's. I am sorry that he is now the latest mode. I think he is greater than either Manet or Monet. There was a colossal still life [of Courbet] with hollyhocks, in every conceivable colour, with a female figure in it. It was magnificently painted... Stay close to Elsbeth and to your art..”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

In a letter from Paris, 9 April 1906, to Otto Modersohn in Worpswede; as quoted in Paula Modersohn-Becker – The Letters and Journals, ed: Günther Busch & Lotten von Reinken; (transl, A. Wensinger & C. Hoey; Taplinger); Publishing Company, New York, 1983, p. 389
1906 + 1907

Life, Pain, People, Beauty

“The art of wrestling, which in the present day is chiefly confined to the lower classes of the people, was, however, highly esteemed by the ancients, and made a very considerable figure among the Olympic games. In the ages of chivalry, to wrestle well was accounted one of the accomplishments which a hero ought to possess. Wrestling is a kind of exercise that, from its nature, is likely to have been practiced by every nation, and especially by those the least civilised. It was probably well known in this country long before the introduction of foreign manners.”

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

pg. 80
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Wrestling

People, Age, Exercises, Game

“Art is polymorphic. A picture appears to each onlooker under a different guise.”

Georges Braque (1882–1963) French painter and sculptor

Quote by Braque from: 'Cahiers d'Art', No. 10, 1935, ed. Christian Zervos
1921 - 1945

Appearance

“Leg spin is an art. Not everybody has that art. Two or three people in the world can do what I do. Because of His help, His hand on me, I am going forward. That makes me down to earth and humble enough.”

Danish Kaneria (1980) Pakistani cricketer

Kaneria describing the role that his faith plays in his life and cricket, interview on Times Online http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/cricket/article580943.ece (October 21 2005)

People, World, Help

“O majesty unspeakable and dread!
Wert thou less mighty than Thou art,
Thou wert, O Lord, too great for our belief,
Too little for our heart.”

Frederick William Faber (1814–1863) British hymn writer and theologian

The Greatness of God.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Heart

“To evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced, and having evoked it in oneself, then by means of movements, lines, colors, sounds, or forms expressed through words, so to convey this so that others may experience the same feeling — this is the activity of art.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

What is Art? (1897)

Color, Feeling

“The art of self-transformation for the sake of developing practical capabilities seems to have a similar content in the most varied historical circumstances. The Mamluks and the Normans suffered defeat because they failed to open up and readjust the organizational and social contexts of warfare. The Seljuqs succeeded because they did just that. The West African coastal kingdoms used an extraneous technological advantage to avoid having to change radically. But they could neither go on the offensive against the savanna states nor prepare themselves to resist their European patrons and trading partners.
In all these instances success seems to have required the dissociation and recombination of available models of the organizational and social context of military activity. To have succeeded would not have meant, for the Mamluks, becoming like the Ottomans; it would have meant creating an order that never existed before. To possess the alien, you must change it.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger (1947) Brazilian philosopher and politician

Source: Plasticity Into Power: Comparative-Historical Studies on the Institutional Conditions of Economic and Military Success (1987), pp. 169-170

Suffering, Change, Success

“We should take counsel of both nature and art in the consideration of this question. When the architect intends a grand structure, he makes the foundation broad and strong. We should imitate this prudence in laying the foundations of the future Republic. There is a law of harmony in all departments of nature. The oak is in the acorn. The career and destiny of individual men are enfolded in the elements of which they are composed. The same is true of a nation. It will be something or it will be nothing. It will be great, or it will be small, according to its own essential qualities. As these are rich and varied, or pure and simple, slender and feeble, broad and strong, so will be the life and destiny of the nation itself. The stream cannot rise higher than its source. The ship cannot sail faster than the wind. The flight of the arrow depends upon the strength and elasticity of the bow, and as with these, so with a nation.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

Life, Men, Law, Question

“What is the defining difference between passive and active citizens? Curiously, it isn't income, geography, or even education. It depends on whether or not they read for pleasure and participate in the arts. These cultural activities seem to awaken a heightened sense of individual awareness and social responsibility.”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

Commencement speech, Stanford University (2007-06-17)
Speeches and lectures

Pleasure, Education, Sense, Reading

“I find above all that the expression, "atonal music," is most unfortunate — it is on a par with calling flying "the art of not falling," or swimming "the art of not drowning."”

Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) Austrian-American composer

"Hauer's Theories" (Notes of November 1923), in Style and Idea (1985), p. 210
1920s

Music, Flying

“Wilt thou not save me? once in every year
This rightful form of mine that thou dost see
By favour of the Goddess have I here
From sunrise unto sunset given me,
That some brave man may end my misery.
And thou — art thou not brave? can thy heart fail,
Whose eyes e'en now are weeping at my tale?”

William Morris (1834–1896) author, designer, and craftsman

The Earthly Paradise (1868-70), The Lady of the Land

Heart

“The relation of feeling toward art and its bringing-forth can be one of production or one of reception and enjoyment.”

Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) German philosopher

Source: Nietzsche (1961), p. 78

Feeling

“It is not the word that is the original material of poetry, rather the letter.
Word is:
1. Composition of letters
2. Sounds
3. Description (meaning)
4. Vehicle for idea associations
Art is uninterpretable, unending; material must be unequivocal in a consistent formation.”

Kurt Schwitters (1887–1948) German artist

1920s
Source: 'Consistent Poetry Art', Schwitters' contribution to 'Magazine G', No. 3, 1924, ed. Hans Richter.

Idea

“And, ev'n while fashion's brightest arts decoy,
The heart distrusting asks, if this be joy.”

Oliver Goldsmith The Deserted Village

Source: The Deserted Village (1770), Line 263.

Fashion, Heart, Joy

“We [the American Abstract-expressionist artists of the 1940's] were formed by the Depression [1930's], when the American dream lay in pieces on the floor. The possibility of making money was inconceivable to us. America was innocent in relation to modern art, and no one cared. The reigning painters in America were very parochial in relation to the international tradition... What held us together was our ambition to use the standards of international modernism as a gauge, not those of Thomas Hart Benton or Grant Wood or Guy Pene du Bois. We did have a terrible struggle, but not for success. It was to make painting that would stand up under international scrutiny, and all the rest was a byproduct.”

Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) American artist

as cited by Grace Glueck, in 'Robert Motherwell, Master of Abstract, Dies', by Grace Glueck, 'New York Times, 18 July 1991 https://www.nytimes.com/1991/07/18/obituaries/robert-motherwell-master-of-abstract-dies.html Undated

Money, Dreams, Guy, Boy

“The Arts, especially film, transcend all cultural barriers, hopefully offering an avenue where all people can find a common place to meet, understand each other, and nurture a safe world for all our children to grow strong within.”

Carson Grant (1950) American actor

Kaminsky, Denise, Aug 2006, "Carson Grant: Actor/Artist- A Lifetime of Art", Denise's Interviews and Media News, p. 1
About his thought on the Arts

Children, People, World, Understanding

“Guide me, O Thou great Jehovah,
Pilgrim through this barren land;
I am weak, but Thou art mighty;
Hold me with Thy powerful hand;
Bread of heaven!
Feed me till I want no more.”

William Williams Pantycelyn (1717–1791) Welsh hymnwriter

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 263.

“Neither in the arts, nor in logic, nor in life should an idea by in any way treated as a thing.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist

Life, Way, Idea

“The blues is an art of ambiguity, an assertion of the irrepressibly human over all circumstances, whether created by others or by one's own human failing.”

Ralph Ellison (1914–1994) American novelist, literary critic, scholar and writer

"Remembering Jimmy" (1958), in The Collected Essays, ed. John F. Callahan (New York: Modern Library, 1995), p. 277.

“This art [riding] brings, besides other advantages, courage to the heart.”

Bem Cavalgar (1391–1438) King of Portugal

Part I

Courage, Heart

“If future society assumes the contours foretold by Marxism, if the jungle of our cities turns to the polis of man and the dreams of anger are made real, the representative art will be high comedy. Art will be the laughter of intelligence, as it is in Plato, in Mozart, in Stendhal.”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

"Literature and Post-History" (1965).
Language and Silence: Essays 1958-1966 (1967)

Dreams, Intelligence, Laughter, Future

“I think continually of some way of painting without the dot. I hope to achieve this but I have not been able to solve the problem of dividing the pure tone without harshness... How can one combine the purity and simplicity of the dot with the fullness, suppleness, liberty, spontaneity and freshness of sensation postulated by our impressionist art? This is the question which preoccupies me, for the dot is meager, lacking in body, diaphanous, more monotonous than simple, even in the Seurat's, particularly in the Seurat's [paintings]... I'm constantly pondering this question, I shall go to the Louvre to look at certain painters who are interesting from this point of view. Isn't it senseless that there are no Turners [here]..”

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) French painter

Quote of Pissarro, Paris, 6 September 1888, in a letter to his son Lucien; from Camille Pissarro - Letters to His Son Lucien ed. John Rewald, with assistance of Lucien Pissarro; from the unpublished French letters; transl. Lionel Abel; Pantheon Books Inc. New York, second edition, 1943, pp. 131-132
1880's

Hope, Way, Question, Problem

“To me more dear, congenial to my heart,
One native charm, than all the gloss of art.”

Oliver Goldsmith The Deserted Village

Source: The Deserted Village (1770), Line 253.

Heart

“Science and art may invent splendid modes of illuminating the apartments of the opulent; but these are all poor and worthless compared with the common light which the sun sends into all our windows, which he pours freely, impartially over hill and valley, which kindles daily the eastern and western sky; and so the common lights of reason, and conscience, and love, are of more worth and dignity than the rare endowments which give celebrity to a few.”

William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) United States Unitarian clergyman

Self-Culture (1838)

Love, Light, Science, Sun

“I found much that was alarming about being a citizen during the tenures of Richard Nixon and George W. Bush. But, whatever I may have seen as their limitations of character or intellect, neither was anything like as humanly impoverished as Trump is: ignorant of government, of history, of science, of philosophy, of art, incapable of expressing or recognizing subtlety or nuance, destitute of all decency, and wielding a vocabulary of seventy-seven words that is better called Jerkish than English.”

Philip Roth (1933–2018) American novelist

As quoted in "Roth on Trump" by Judith Thurman, in The New Yorker (30 January 2017), p. 17

History, Science

“It is particularly displeasing to hear professional critics using the term "layman" to describe people who are amateurs and patrons of those arts with which they are themselves professionally concerned. The fact that the critic gets money for knowing something, and giving public expression to his opinion, does not entitle him to consider the amateur, who may be as well informed and as sensitive as himself, an outsider.”

Robertson Davies book A Voice from the Attic

A Voice from the Attic (1960)

Money, People

“Religion and art spring from the same root and are close kin. Economics and art are strangers.”

Willa Cather (1873–1947) American writer and novelist

"Four Letters: Escapism" first published in Commonweal (17 April 1936)
Willa Cather on Writing (1949)

Religion, Spring

“Things rarely happen for a single reason. Even the cleverest and most skilled manipulators recognize that their real art lies in making use of that which they cannot predict.”

Tom Clancy book Debt of Honor

Debt of Honor (1994), ch. 5
1990s

“It may safely be asserted that the art of war will soon be reduced to a simple question of expenditure and credit, and that the largest purse will be the strongest arm.”

William Winwood Reade (1838–1875) British historian

Source: The Martyrdom of Man (1872), Chapter I, "War", pp. 24-5.

War, Question

“Painting has turned back from the non-objective way to the object, and the development of painting has returned to the figurative part of the way that had led to the destruction of the object. But on the way back, painting came across a new object that the proletarian revolution had brought to the fore and which had to be given form, which means that it had to be raised to the level of a work of art... I am utterly convinced that if you keep to the way of Constructivism, where you are now firmly stuck, which raises not one artistic issue except for pure utilitarianism and in theater simple agitation, which may be one hundred percent consistent ideologically but is completely castrated as regards artistic problems, and forfeits half its value... If you go on as you are.... then Stanislavski will emerge as the winner in the theater and the old forms will survive. And as to architecture, if the architects do not produce artistic architecture, the Greco-Roman style of Zyeltovski will prevail, together with the Repin style in painting..”

Kazimir Malevich (1879–1935) Russian and Soviet artist of polish descent

Quote of Malevich from his letter 8 April 1932, to Meyerhold, in 'Two Letters to Meyerhold', in Kunst & Museumjournaal 6, (1990), pp. 9-10; as quoted by Paul Wood in The great Utopia, - The Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde, 1915-1932; Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1992, p. 24 – note 112
This quote clarifies Malevich's famous return to the figuration of the Russian peasant life, in the time of forced collectivization of Russian agriculture: 'for him [= Malevich] the return to figuration was not a break with the Revolution but a way of safeguarding it and preventing the return of Classicism and Naturalism' (Paul Wood in The great Utopia; Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1992, p. 24 – note 112)
1931 - 1935

Way, Problem, Parting, Painting

“I can bear this - that I am not the young wild guy [as he was in the 1970's]. I hope that the lust to work doesn't leave me. That would be sad. I am glad to get honors and high prices. But artists are valued today in terms of money, auctions. I wish society would need art more, but it doesn't. So I feel very lonely in this culture.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

after 2000, Gerhard Richter: An Artist Beyond Isms' (2002)

Money, Sadness, Hope, Guy

“Great works of art can be produced in barbarous societies — in fact the very narrowness of primitive society gives their ornamental art a peculiar concentration and vitality. At some time in the ninth century one could have looked down the Seine and seen the prow of a Viking ship coming up the river. Looked at today in the British Museum, it is a powerful work of art; but to the mother of a family trying to settle down in her little hut, it would have seemed less agreeable — as menacing to her civilisation as the periscope of a nuclear submarine.”

Kenneth Clark (1903–1983) Art historian, broadcaster and museum director

Source: Civilisation (1969), Ch. 1: The Skin of Our Teeth

Family, Time

“Art is the language of the tormented, but the world is blind to that, for ever blind.”

Steven Erikson book Forge of Darkness

Forge of Darkness (2013)

World

“Chess for me is not a game, but an art. Yes, and I take upon myself all those responsibilities which an art imposes on its adherents.”

Alexander Alekhine (1892–1946) Russian / French chess player, chess writer, and chess theoretician

Quoted in: Daniel James Brooks (2013) Poetics. Book 1, p. 72.

Game

“The sculptors of the cathedral porches of the Middle Ages already knew that we can identify many legendary figures by their attributes, not their physical appearance. How is one to recognize Orpheus without his lyre, or Saint Lawrence without his grid? At the same time it seems a bit absurd, In an art that claims to be realistic, to have Orpheus always carrying his lyre, like a German businessman his briefcase. There must have been moments when Orpheus and Saint Lawrence left their lyre or their grid at the checkroom, for instance.. [c. 1960, in France]”

Ossip Zadkine (1890–1967) French sculptor

Source: 1960 - 1968, Dialogues – conversations with.., quotes, c. 1960, p. 153

Age, Appearance, Time

“We must know, as much as possible, in our beautiful art…what we are talking about — and the only way to know is to have lived and loved and cursed and floundered and enjoyed and suffered. I think I don't regret a single "excess" of my responsive youth — I only regret, in my chilled age, certain occasions and possibilities I didn't embrace.”

Henry James (1843–1916) American novelist, short story author, and literary critic

Letter to Hugh Walpole (21 August 1913).

Love, Youth, Age, Beauty

“Far from affording artists continuous inspiration, mass-media sources for art have become a dead end. They have combined with the abstractness of institutional art teaching to produce a fine-arts culture given over to information and not experience. This faithfully echoes the drain of concreteness from modern existence— the reign of mere unassimilated data instead of events that gain meaning by being absorbed into the fabric of imaginative life.”

Robert Hughes (1938–2012) Australian critic, historian, writer

"Introduction: The Decline of the City of Mahagonny"
Nothing If Not Critical (1991)

Life, Imagination, Dead

“[Art is] a means to function thoroughly and passionately in a world that has a lot more to it than paint.”

Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008) American artist

Source: 1960's, The Bride and the Bachelors, (1962), p. 3

World, Passion, Painting

““Sight-seeing is the art of disappointment,” I quoted.”

Kage Baker book Mendoza in Hollywood

Part 1 “Establishing Shot” Chapter 7 (p. 93)
Mendoza in Hollywood (2000)

Disappointment, Quotes

“The new art must be based upon science — in particular, upon mathematics, as the most exact, logical, and graphically constructive of the sciences.”

Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) German painter, printmaker, mathematician, and theorist

As quoted in Dictionary of Scientific Biography (1970 - 1990) edited by M Steck.

Mathematics, Science

“With head upraised, and look intent,
And eye and ear attentive bent,
And locks flung back, and lips apart,
Like monument of Grecian art,
In listening mood, she seemed to stand,
The guardian Naiad of the strand.”

Walter Scott (1771–1832) Scottish historical novelist, playwright, and poet

Canto I, stanza 17. The Lady of the Lake http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/3011 (1810)

Mood

“We spent them not in toys, in lusts, or wine,
But search of deep philosophy,
Wit, eloquence, and poetry;
Arts which I lov'd, for they, my friend, were thine.”

Abraham Cowley (1618–1667) British writer

On the Death of Mr. William Harvey; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Search, Wine

“T is woman that seduces all mankind;
By her we first were taught the wheedling arts.”

John Gay (1685–1732) English poet and playwright

Act I, scene i
The Beggar's Opera (1728)

“This science gave me a taste for the arts. It is Number that gives value to sounds and silences, lights and shadows, forms and spaces. Michelangelo and Bach seemed to me like divine mathematicians [calculateurs]. Already I felt that only mathematics enables works that can last. Whether as a result of patient study, or of a stormy [fulgurante] intuition, number alone can reduce all our diversities of feeling to the strict unity of a mass, a fresco, or a sculpted head.”

Jean Metzinger (1883–1956) French painter

Cubism was born

Feeling, Mathematics, Study, Light

“Our Father, who art in Cribari, hallowed be thy glass. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth as it is in the lounges. Give us this day our daily splash, and forgive us our hangovers as we forgive those who continue to hangover against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil…and somebody give us all a ride home.”

Tom Waits (1949) American singer-songwriter and actor

The live recording of "The Piano Has Been Drinking", "Bounced Checks" (1981).

Home, Forgiveness, Evil

“What I am trying to do is something different — an effect of reality, but what some fools call Impressionism, a term that is usually misapplied, especially by the critics who don't hesitate to apply it to Turner, the greatest creator of mysterious effects in the whole world of art.”

Claude Debussy (1862–1918) French composer

As quoted in The Lives of the Great Composers (1997) by Harold C. Schonberg, p. 464

World, Fools, Reality

“The art of eloquence belongs to the realm of probability because it constantly directs its glance at the specific, variable psychic state of the audience.”

Ernesto Grassi (1902–1991) Italian philosopher

Source: Rhetoric as Philosophy (1980), p. 40

“Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile. In protest, I declined election to the National Institute of Arts and Letters some years ago, and now I must decline the Pulitzer Prize.”

Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951) American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright

Letter declining the 1926 Pulitzer Prize for Arrowsmith

“Entrepreneurship is an art, not a job.”

Steve Blank (1953) American businessman

Forbes "Entrepreneurship is an Art Not a Job" http://www.forbes.com/sites/steveblank/2013/03/29/entrepreneurship-is-an-art-not-a-job/#754e53231d5b. March 29, 2013.

“The so-called bourgeoisie doesn't provide any substance for my art. The character [of the models] there is too faint and without any spirit. It doesn't represent a race in an artistic sense. So there is no other choice for me [than folk women].”

George Hendrik Breitner (1857–1923) Dutch painter and photographer

translation from the original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek
version in original Dutch (citaat van Breitner, in het Nederlands:) De zogenaamde burgerij levert geen stof voor mijn kunst. Het karakter [van de modellen] dáár is te flauw en geesteloos. Het vertegenwoordigt in artistieken zin geen ras. Mij rest dus geen andere keuze [dan volksvrouwen].
Quote of Breitner; as cited by B. van Garrel, in his article 'Het getekende bestaan van G.H. Breitner', Dutch newspaper Haagse Post, 23 June 1973, jrg. 60, nr. 25
The young saleswoman of hats, nl:Geesje Kwak was Breitner's model for several years
undated quotes

Women, Sense

“Science is not an impersonal construction. It is no less, and no more, personal than any other form of communicated thought. …Science searches the common experience of people; and it is made by people, and it has their style. …The style of Newton's work, as much as the content, dominated science for two centuries… The science of an age, like its art or its music, has style… But it has content and structure too, larger than the work of any one man…”

Jacob Bronowski (1908–1974) Polish-born British mathematician

"The Scientific Revolution and the Machine"
The Common Sense of Science (1951)

People, Age, Music, Search

“The science you enjoy now is the science we taught you. The medicine you treat yourselves with is the medicine we gave you. It’s the same with the astronomy you know, the mathematics, the literature, the art…”

Muammar Gaddafi (1942–2011) Libyan revolutionary, politician and political theorist

Interview with Oriana Fallaci (2 December 1979), Corriere della Sera
Interviews

Literature, Mathematics, Science

“The subject matter of creation is chaos. The present feeling seems to be that the artist is concerned with form, color, and spatial arrangement. This objective approach to art reduces it to a kind of ornament. The whole attitude of abstract painting, for example, has been such that it has reduced painting to an ornamental art whereby the picture surface is broken up in geometrical fashion into a new kind of design-image. It is a decorative art built on a slogan of purism where the attempt is made for an unworldly statement…”

Barnett Newman (1905–1970) American artist

Source: 1940 - 1950, The Plasmic Image 1. 1943-1945, p. 139

Color, Feeling, Fashion, Painting

“Men are the dominant sign-using animals. Animals other than man do, of course, respond to certain things as signs of something else, but such signs do not attain the complexity and elaboration which is found in human speech, writing, art, testing devices, medical diagnosis, and signaling instruments. Science and signs are inseparably interconnected, since science both presents men with more reliable signs and embodies its results is systems of signs. Human civilization is dependent upon signs and systems of signs, and the human mind is inseparable from the functioning of signs - if indeed mentality is not to be identified with such functioning.”

Charles W. Morris (1903–1979) American philosopher

Source: "Foundations of the Theory of Signs," 1938, p. 1 (1971:17), Lead paragraph first chapter

Men, Science, Animals, Dependency

“My mind has touched the farthest horizons of mortal imagination and reaches ever outward to embrace infinity. There is no knowledge beyond my comprehension, no art or skill upon this entire planet that lies beyond the mastery of my hand. And yet, like Faust, I look in vain, I learn in vain… For as long as I love, no woman will ever look on me in love.”

Susan Kay Phantom

Erik (p. 303)
Phantom (1990)

Love, Imagination, Knowledge, Learning

“The "Democrats" have learned from the unlamented KGB, whose primary weapon of desinformatsiya, or disinformation, was a million agents whose job was to ruin the reputation of every key opponent of worldwide Communism by making up vicious rumors and peddling them via a plethora of front organizations. The left have done their best to trash my reputation because I have dared to question the climate scare with which they had hoped to bully the West into shutting itself down without a shot being fired. Just look at my CreepyMedia page. I know what it is like to be on the receiving end of artful lies told over and over again by a host of paid trolls and useful idiots.”

Christopher Monckton (1952) British public speaker and hereditary peer

7 steps that'll land Obama in jail http://www.wnd.com/2013/12/7-steps-thatll-land-obama-in-jail/ WorldNetDaily, December 31, 2013.

Hope, Communication, Question, Learning

“The Age of Empty Freedom … does not know that man must first through labour, industry, and art, learn how to know; but it has a certain fixed standard for all conceptions, and an established Common Sense of Mankind always ready and at hand, innate within itself and there present without trouble on its part;—and those conceptions and this Common Sense are to it the measure of the efficient and the real. It has this great advantage over the Age of Science, that it knows all things without having learned anything; and can pass judgment upon whatever comes before it at once and without hesitation,—without needing any preliminary evidence:—'That which I do not immediately comprehend by the conceptions which dwell within me, is nothing,'—says Empty Freedom.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) German philosopher

Source: The Characteristics of the Present Age (1806), p. 20

Age, Sense, Freedom, Learning

“The man who speaks and writes about art should refrain from censuring or pontificating. He will thus avoid doing anything foolish, for in the presence of primordial depth all art is but dream and nature.”

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

Arp on Arp: poems, essays, memories. p. 327 (1958)
1950s

Dreams, Nature

“And when the reckless crowd among
I speak of one sweet art,
How lightly can I name the song,
Which yet has wrung my heart!
That lute and heart alike have chords
Not to be spoken of in words”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

(1826-2) The Wish
The Monthly Magazine

Heart

“Music must take rank as the highest of the fine arts — as the one which, more than any other, ministers to human welfare.”

Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist

On the Origin and Function of Music
Essays on Education (1861)

Music

“We know that the tail must wag the dog, for the horse is drawn by the cart;
But the Devil whoops, as he whooped of old: “It's clever, but is it Art?””

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

The Conundrum of the Workshops, Stanza 6.
Other works

Dogs, Horse

“Truth is the secret of eloquence and of virtue, the basis of moral authority; it is the highest summit of art and of life.”

Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1821–1881) Swiss philosopher and poet

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Journal

Life, Truth, Secret

“I think today 'beautiful', which is always a tricky word, but now it's become an incendiary word, because in many ways today beauty is obsolete and not the main concern of art. And you can't prove beauty, it's there as a fact.... and you know it, and you feel it, and it's real. But you can't say to somebody.. this has it. I might be able to say it and others might recognize it. But it gives no specific message, other than itself, which in turn should be able to move you in to some sort of truth and insight, and something beyond art. I mean initially it's pleasure that grows. But it isn't just the shock of a message that you can have and dismiss. Once you've had it, it's over.”

Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) American artist

Quote in 1993 from: 'Helen Frankenthaler interviewed by Charlie Rose', April 12, 1993, at 40:02 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3385833841734265950# 1990s - 2000s

Pleasure, Truth, Beauty, Way

“I feel that music is the art which can best express the emotions which flow within us. It conveys something bigger than it is.”

Andrew Sega (1975) musician from America

NAID '95 http://www.club.cc.cmu.edu/pub/scene.org/parties/1995/naid95/misc/dn-naid_089.txt

Music, Feeling

“A burglar who respects his art always takes his time before taking anything else.”

O. Henry (1862–1910) American short story writer

“Makes the Whole World Kin,” Sixes and Sevens (1911)

Time

“A thrown-stone trajectory is a good metaphor for so many phenomena: the curve of an event, any event; the curve of a life, any life; the curve of a hypothesis; the curve experienced in the manufacture of a work of art; the curve of interest experienced in the manufacture of a catalogue.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Flying Out of This World

Life

“This struggle must be organised, according to “all the rules of the art”, by people who are professionally engaged in revolutionary activity.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

What is to be Done? (1902)

People

“The storming of the Mannerheim Line was regarded as a model of operational and tactical art. Troops were taught to overcome the enemy's protracted defense by a gradual accumulation of forces and a patient "gnawing through" of breaches in the enemy's fortifications in accordance with all the rules of engineering science. Insufficient attention was paid to questions of co-operation among different branches and services of the armed forces under rapidly changing conditions. We had to retrain ourselves under enemy fire, paying a high price for the experience and knowledge without which we could not beat Hitler's army.”

Sergei Biriuzov (1904–1964) Soviet military commander

Quoted in "The Winter War: The Soviet Attack on Finland" - Page 146 - by Eloise Engle, Eloise Paananen, Lauri Paananen - History - 1992

Question, Knowledge, Science, Change

“The theory of perspective was taught in painting schools from the sixteenth century onward according to principles laid down by the masters… However, their treatises on perspective had on the whole been precept, rule, and ad hoc procedure; they lacked a solid mathematical basis. In the period from 1500 to 1600 artists and subsequently mathematicians put the subject on a satisfactory deductive basis, and it passed from quasi-empirical art to a true science. Definitive works on perspective were written much later by eighteenth-century mathematicians Brook Taylor and J. H. Lambert.”

Morris Kline (1908–1992) American mathematician

Source: Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times (1972), p. 183

School, Mathematics, Science, Painting

“Most might think that in America, you can freely publish what you wish, then (and now) an over-zealous prosecutor can put you on trial simply because the government does not like your art. And, there is no way to know if your content is “obscene” and thus punishable by prison, until after a jury rules that it is so.”

Marc Randazza (1969) American writer

Way, Thinking

“I have never agreed to the word of creative activity. Man does not create. In the best case, he interprets, in a good or bad way; in the worst case, he manipulates, cheats and causes confusion; like in all the walks of life, in art as well…”

Sadik Kaceli (1914–2000) Albanian artist

Source: Sadik Kaceli Source: Monografi Kaceli

Life, Way, Cheating

“With the black ones [his 'Black Paintings'] I was interested in getting complexity without their revealing much – in the fact that there was much to see but not much showing. I wanted to show a painting that could have the dignity of not calling attention to itself. In both the blacks and the whites [paintings] there was none of the familiar aggressiveness of art that says, 'Well, here it is, whether you like it or not.”

Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008) American artist

Source: 1960's, The Bride and the Bachelors, (1962), pp. 203-204

Painting

“Art and religion would not be able to stop the war any more than they would be able to stop tomorrow.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

Something About a Soldier (1940)

War, Religion

“The art of thinking is also the art of believing, because no human being at the present stage of civilization could safely call all his individual and social beliefs into question again or submit them to his conscience. To change all one's opinions is a mental diversion which requires leisure for its indulgence. In order to live a life of action, man must accept most of the moral, social, and religious laws which have been recognized as necessary by his predecessors.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Thinking

Life, Law, Question, Thinking

“Freedom of expression is a very essential condition for me to make any art. Also, it is an essential value for my life. I have to protect this right and also to fight for the possibility.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

" Artist Ai Weiwei: China Crushes Dissenting Voices http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/06/11/artist-ai-weiwei-china-crushes-dissenting-voices/.," in: Fox News, June 11, 2012. 2010-, 2012

Life, Freedom, Fight

“All art is to some extent shaped by what has gone before. But that is an organic process, not a conscious intention. Novels are made out of novels as much as they are out of life.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

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

Life

“Through all these researches into an art that would lead to immaterialisation, Werner Ruhnau [German architect] and I came together in the architecture of the air. He was hindered by the last obstacle that even a w:Mies van der Rohe [also a German architect, famous for his reflecting glass skyscrapers in the U. S. ] hadn’t been able to overcome: the roof, the screen that separates us from the sky, from the blue sky. And I was hindered by the screen that the tangible blue on the canvas constitutes, which deprives man of a constant vision of the horizon.”

Yves Klein (1928–1962) French artist

In 1958; p. 45
before 1960, "Yves Klein, 1928 – 1962, Selected Writings"

“The present is distinguished from every precenn hvjh vding age by an universal ardour of enterprise in arts and manufactures. Nations convinced at length that war is always a losing game, have converted their swords and muskets into factory implements, and now contend with each other in the bloodless but still formidable strife of trade. They no longer send troops to fight on distant fields but fabrics to drive before them those of their old adversaries in arms, and to take possession of a foreign mart. To impair the resources of a rival at home, by underselling his wares abroad, is the new belligerent system, in pursuance of which every nerve and sinew of the people are put upon the strain.”

Andrew Ure (1778–1857) Scottish doctor and chemist

Source: The Philosophy of Manufactures, 1835, p. vii; Preface, lead paragraph

War, People, Age, Home

“Every place radically imbues (formally, architecturally, sociologically, politically) with its meaning the object (work creation) shown there. Art in general refuses to be implied a priori and so pretends to ignore or reject the draconian role imposed by the museum (the gallery), a role both cultural and architectural. To reveal this limit (this role), the object presented and its place of display must dialectically imply one another”

Daniel Buren (1938) sculptor from France

Daniel Buren (1975), in: Studio International. Vol. 189-190, (1975), p. 124
1970s

“I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn [the art of decorative or hand lettering]. I learned about serif and sans-serif typefaces, about varying the space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful. Historical. Artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture. And I found it fascinating. None of this had any hope of any practical application in my life. But 10 years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would never have multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

2000s, Address at Stanford University (2005)

Life, Beauty, Hope, Way

“The cultural clock runs mainly upon ruined fragments of matter. No matter to what hazardous lengths we let out our line they still withdraw again, and further, into the depths. … however, runs mainly upon ruined fragments of matter recovered from refuse heaps and graveyards, from abandoned cities and buried villages. Only the arts of material nature have survived; of music and dance, of talk and ritual, of all the arts of temporal expression practically nothing is known elsewhere than in the Mediterranean world, save through traditional survivals among remote groups.”

George Kubler (1912–1996) American art historian

Source: The Shape of Time, 1982, p. 14.

World, Music, Nature, Dance

“Cleavage Sister: "What do you feel about erotic art?"
Morrissey:"I don't know much about rotting art?"
Cleavage Sister: "What about erotic music?"
Morrissey:"I know a great deal about rotting music."”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

Interview at a concert (RPLA - whose singer James Maker is a friend of Morrisseys)
About the Notre Dame fire, Odds & Ends

Music, Feeling, Sister

“I respect a man who can recognize a quotation. It's a dying art.”

David Lodge (1935) writer

Part IV, ch. 1, p. 245.
Small World (1984)

“The representation of an object, in itself (the objectivity as the aim of the representation), is something that has nothing to do with art, although the use of representation in a work of art does not rule out the possibility of its being of a high artistic order. For the Suprematist, therefore, the proper means is the one that provides the fullest expression of pure feeling and ignores the habitually accepted object. The object in itself is meaningless to him; and the ideas of the conscious mind are worthless. Feeling is the decisive factor.... and thus art arrives at non-objective representation – at Suprematism.”

Kazimir Malevich (1879–1935) Russian and Soviet artist of polish descent

Quote of Malevich, 1927 in Artists on Art; from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, pp. 452
1921 - 1930

Feeling, Idea, Decision

“Art is apotheosis; often, the complaint of beauty.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

Dancing of Sounds http://www.poetrysoup.com/famous/poem/21378/Dancing_of_Sounds From the poems written in English

Beauty

“O thou who art the sparrow's friend," he said, "have mercy on this world that knows not even when it sins. O holy dove, descend and roost on Godric here so that a heart may hatch in him at last. Amen.”

Frederick Buechner book Godric

Godric (1980)

World, Heart

“There’s a theory that if you have an interesting childhood then you have enough material to last a lifetime. But that implies that art is always autobiographical when reinvention and imagination are the most important elements. But it doesn’t hurt to have a mad family! Of course I didn’t notice until I’d escaped – when I left home as a teenager on a diplomatic scholarship – how odd my family were.”

Carole Morin British writer

Chin Wag At The Slaughterhouse (2013)

Family, Home, Imagination, Childhood

“When I came back [from a temporary stay in Paris] and heard you play with Charles Mingus, and when you and Cecil Taylor [also a free Jazz musician] opened up the 'Five Spot' in the Fall of 1956, I felt better about being in New York. All the musicians who create from the gut as well as their intellect can change things. People will never understand what we are doing if they can't feel... All art is abstract. All music is abstract. But it's all real... When you improvise, I can see the seeds of a symphony you could write. When I first heard Charlie Parker in Chicago, I could see he was a symphony.... we were all trying to bring that spirit, that spontaneous energy, into our work.”

Joan Mitchell (1925–1992) American painter

talking to jazz-player David Anram in the jazz club the 'Five Spot', in 1956, she was visiting with Franz Kline
Quoted by David Anram in 'Introduction', in The Stamp of Impulse, Abstract expressionist prints, ed. David Acton, David Amram, David Lehman, Worcester Art Museum, 2001 p. 21
1950 - 1975

People, Music, Feeling, Understanding

“[I have] all respect for that neoclassicism [of Piet Mondrian ], but it would sacrifices me too much to architecture. That kind of art does indeed fit perfectly in very modern rooms of modern buildings in equally modern cities, but never again a handcart can drive in there and never again someone can speak or think of a white dog cart in the fog. I am longing for a painting that can hang in a modern environment and still have its 'personal' life.”

Roger Raveel (1921–2013) painter

version in original Flemish (citaat van Roger Raveel, in het Vlaams): Al mijn respect voor dat neo-klassicisme [van Mondriaan], maar dat offert me teveel aan de architectuur. Dat werk past inderdaad gegoten in zeer moderne vertrekken van moderne gebouwen in even moderne steden maar er kan dan nooit meer een stootkar in rijden en nooit kan nog iemand spreken of denken aan een witte hondenkar in de mist. Ik verlang een schilderij die kan hangen in een moderne omgeving en die toch een ‘eigen’ leven heeft.
Quote of Raveel, in a letter to his friend Hugo Claus, from Machelen aan de Leie, after February 1951; as cited in Hugo Claus, Roger Raveel; Brieven 1947 – 1962, ed. Katrien Jacobs, Ludion; Gent Belgium, 2007 - ISBN 978-90-5544-665-0, p. 133 (translation: Fons Heijnsbroek)
1945 - 1960

Life, Dogs, Thinking, Painting

Quotes about art page 45

Quotes about art
page 45