Joseph Kosuth, “Introduction” in Art After Philosophy and After: Collected Writings, 1960–1990 (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991); cited in: Thierry Mortier. " Semiotics as Art: Kosuth http://www.semionaut.net/semiotics-as-art-joseph-kosuth/," Sunday, 1 July 2012.
Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer
"The magician" by Maya Jaggi in The Guardian (17 December 2005) http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/childrenandteens/story/0,,1669112,00.html <br class="br">Context: Sometimes one’s very angry and preaches, but I know that to clinch a point is to close it. To leave the reader free to decide what your work means, that’s the real art; it makes the work inexhaustible.
“A genuine work of art must mean many things; the truer its art, the more things it will mean.”
George MacDonald (1824–1905) Scottish journalist, novelist
The Fantastic Imagination (1893)
Context: "Suppose my child ask me what the fairytale means, what am I to say?"
If you do not know what it means, what is easier than to say so? If you do see a meaning in it, there it is for you to give him. A genuine work of art must mean many things; the truer its art, the more things it will mean. If my drawing, on the other hand, is so far from being a work of art that it needs THIS IS A HORSE written under it, what can it matter that neither you nor your child should know what it means? It is there not so much to convey a meaning as to wake a meaning. If it do not even wake an interest, throw it aside. A meaning may be there, but it is not for you. If, again, you do not know a horse when you see it, the name written under it will not serve you much.
Clement Greenberg (1909–1994) American writer and artist
"Wyndham Lewis Against Abstract Art" (1957), p. 164
1960s, Art and Culture: Critical Essays, (1961)
Andrei Tarkovsky book Sculpting in Time
And we can only talk about its components rather arbitrarily, dividing it up artificially or the sake of theoretical discussion.
Source: Sculpting in Time (1986), p. 114
Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932
undated quotes, The Daily Practice of Painting, Writings (1962-1993)
“Works of art make rules but rules do not make works of art.”
Claude Debussy (1862–1918) French composer
As quoted in Companion to Contemporary Musical Thought (1992) by John Paynter, p. 590
Unsourced variant: Works of art make rules; rules do not make works of art.
Susan Sontag book Against Interpretation
"Against Interpretation" (1964), p. 8
Against Interpretation and Other Essays (1966)
“A work of art works because it is true, not because it is real.”
Yann Martel book Beatrice and Virgil
Source: Beatrice and Virgil
“One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art.”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet
