“No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead. I mean this as a principle of æsthetic, not merely historical, criticism.”
Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919)
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T.S. Eliot 270
20th century English author 1888–1965Related quotes
“Leave him alone. He has already met his judge. I wage war on the living, not the dead.”
In response to the Duke of Alva who proposed to desecrate the tomb of Martin Luther, burn his body, and scatter his ashes to the wind.
Source: Luther and His Times Michael Grzonka
1963, Speech at Amherst College
Context: If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him. We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth.
Context: If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him. We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth. And as Mr. MacLeish once remarked of poets, there is nothing worse for our trade than to be in style. In free society art is not a weapon and it does not belong to the spheres of polemic and ideology. Artists are not engineers of the soul. It may be different elsewhere. But democratic society — in it, the highest duty of the writer, the composer, the artist is to remain true to himself and to let the chips fall where they may. In serving his vision of the truth, the artist best serves his nation. And the nation which disdains the mission of art invites the fate of Robert Frost's hired man, the fate of having "nothing to look backward to with pride, and nothing to look forward to with hope."
“While his brushstrokes are rudimentary, bystanders appreciated the artist's unorthodox style.”
[Annette Sharp, The Diary: Painting by members, The Sun-Herald, Sydney, Australia, 29 July 2007, 2, Fairfax Media Publications Pty Limited]
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Source: 1840s, Two Ethical-Religious Minor Essays (1849), P. 108
Quote from Van Doesburg's article: 'Towards elementary plastic expression', in 'Material zur elementaren Gestaltung', G-1, July 1923; as quoted in 'Theo van Doesburg', Joost Baljeu, Studio Vista, London 1974, p. 141
1920 – 1926
p 97.
So I think, so I paint (1947)