“Art's purpose is to sober and quiet the mind so that it is in accord with what happens.”
1982, quoted in John Cage Visual Art: To Sober and Quiet the Mind, ISBN 1891300164
1980s
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John Cage 43
American avant-garde composer 1912–1992Related quotes
This Business of Living (1935-1950)
“Be plain in dress, and sober in your diet;
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The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), IX The Practice of Painting
L'art d'enseigner n'est que l'art d'éveiller la curiosité des jeunes âmes pour la satisfaire ensuite.
Pt. II, ch. 4
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“Why reel I thus, confused and blind?
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“Almost nobody dances sober, unless they happen to be insane.”
“The art of life is not controlling what happens to us, but using what happens to us”
Source: The Society of Mind (1987), Ch.2
Context: Questions about arts, traits, and styles of life are actually quite technical. They ask us to explain what happens among the agents of our minds. But this is a subject about which we have never learned very much... Such questions will be answered in time. But it will just prolong the wait if we keep using pseudo-explanation words like "holistic" and "gestalt." …It's harmful, when naming leads the mind to think that names alone bring meaning close.
“What can art accomplish? The purpose of art is to accumulate the human within the human being.”
Speech at the Nobel Banquet https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2015/alexievich-speech_en.html (10 December 2015)