“An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them.”

— Oscar Wilde , book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Last update Sept. 27, 2023. History

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Oscar Wilde 812

Irish writer and poet 1854–1900

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“The artist should have as little desire to rule as to serve. He can only create, do nothing but create, and so help the state only by … exalting politicians and economists into artists.”

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) German poet, critic and scholar

Der Künstler darf eben so wenig herrschen als dienen wollen. 15 Er kann nur bilden, nichts als bilden, für den Staat also nur das thun, dass er Herrscher und Diener bilde, dass er Politiker und Oekonomen zu Künstlern erhebe.
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“The artist creates his own elite, and the elite its own artists.”

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“A film is its own thing and in an ideal world I think a film should be discovered knowing nothing and nothing should be added to it and nothing should be subtracted from it.”

David Lynch (1946) American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor

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“The worst evil which can befall the artist is that his work should appear good in his own eyes.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

“The artist is the only one who detaches himself from life, opposes his personality against it, he is the only one who orders things as he wishes them to be in place of things as they are. Thus for him life is not a fait accompli, it is something to remake, to do again. He takes possession of his gifts in order to continue, to change, He makes his choice, it is he who creates the conceptions of beautiful and ugly, those are the things to preserve, the things to change. At the seat of the things that it is necessary to change he puts his desires, his aspirations, in one word, his personality…”

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“If we can't, as artists, improve on real life, we should put down our pencils and go bake bread.”

Barbara Kingsolver (1955) American author, poet and essayist

“As an artist, you should not wish to create what you don’t feel you have to create.”

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830–1916) Austrian writer

Künstler, was du nicht schaffen mußt, das darfst du nicht schaffen wollen.
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“Ideally a painter (and, generally, an artist) should not become conscious of his insights: without taking the detour through his reflective processes, and incomprehensibly to himself, all his progress should enter so swiftly into the work that he is unable to recognise them in the moment of transition. Alas, the artist who waits in ambush there, watching, detaining them, will find them transformed like the beautiful gold in the fairy tale which cannot remain gold because some small detail was not taken care of.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

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“But alone, without any reference to his neighbours, without any interference, the artist can fashion a beautiful thing; and if he does not do it solely for his own pleasure, he is not an artist at all.”

Oscar Wilde book The Soul of Man under Socialism

The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)
Context: Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known. I am inclined to say that it is the only real mode of individualism that the world has known. Crime, which, under certain conditions, may seem to have created individualism, must take cognisance of other people and interfere with them. It belongs to the sphere of action. But alone, without any reference to his neighbours, without any interference, the artist can fashion a beautiful thing; and if he does not do it solely for his own pleasure, he is not an artist at all.

“I, who believe that every artist should be his own teacher, cannot dream of setting myself up as a professor.”

Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) French painter

1860s, Realist Manifesto' - an open letter, 1861

“An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them.”

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