Vague Thoughts On Art (1911)
Context: Art is that imaginative expression of human energy, which, through technical concretion of feeling and perception, tends to reconcile the individual with the universal, by exciting in him impersonal emotion. And the greatest Art is that which excites the greatest impersonal emotion in an hypothecated perfect human being.
“Art always opts for the individual, the concrete; art is not Platonic.”
"Gauchesque Poetry" ["La poesía gauchesca"]
Discussion (1932)
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Jorge Luis Borges 213
Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator… 1899–1986Related quotes
“Art is the concrete representation of our most subtle feelings. That's the end”
of the interview
1980 - 2000, Perfection Is in the Mind', 1995
1880s, The Sentiment of Rationality (1882)
“Only a distinctive individual can produce great art. Great art is synonymous with anonymous art.”
Source: The Human Form: Sculpture, Prints, and Drawings, 1977, p. 73.
Source: 1970s and later, Themes and Conclusions (1982), p. 188.
“In art, immorality cannot exist. Art is always sacred”
Albert Edward Elsen (1985). The Gates of Hell by Auguste Rodin. p. 131
1950s-1990s
Context: In art, immorality cannot exist. Art is always sacred even when it takes for a subject the worst excesses of desire; since it has in view only the sincerity of observation, it cannot debase itself. A true work of art is always noble, even when it translates the stirrings of the brute, for at that moment, the artist who has produced it had as his only objective, the most conscientious rendering possible of the impression he has felt.
Vol. 1: 'My beautiful One, My Unique!', pp. 130-140
1895 - 1905, Lettres à un Inconnu, 1901 – 1905; Museo Communale, Ascona
“Individuality of expression is the beginning and end of all art.”
Maxim 739, trans. Stopp
Maxims and Reflections (1833)