“The techniques for making art thus morally acceptable, of drawing its fangs, are endless; and each generation finds its own. Just now the democratic machinery for rendering art safe is so efficient that it seems that the system can absorb anything. It would be exciting to think that somewhere in Europe there was a man making art which was so violent and true that the system could not take it.”

— Patrick Swift

X magazine (1959-62)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The techniques for making art thus morally acceptable, of drawing its fangs, are endless; and each generation finds its…" by Patrick Swift?

Patrick Swift 60

British artist 1927–1983

Related quotes

“Art's means of representing a thing – style, technique and the object represented – are circumstances of art, just as the artist's individual qualities (way of life, abilities, environment and so on) are circumstances of art. Art can just as well be made in harmony with the circumstances of its making as in defiance of them. In itself art is neither visible nor definable: all that is visible and imitable is its circumstances, which are easily mistaken for the art itself.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

undated quotes, The Daily Practice of Painting, Writings (1962-1993)

“Each age finds its own technique... I mean, the strangeness will wear off and I think we will discover the deeper meanings in modern art.”

Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) American artist

As quoted in Francis V. O'Connor (1967) Jackson Pollock, p. 79
in posthumous publications

“The contemporary thing in art and literature is the thing which doesn't make enough difference to the people of that generation so that they can accept it or reject it.”

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays

"How Writing is Written," Choate Literary Magazine (February 1935)
How Writing Is Written: Previously Uncollected Writings, vol.II (1974)

“The art system operates on its own terms, but an observer of art can choose many different distinctions to indicate what he observes.”

Niklas Luhmann (1927–1998) German sociologist, administration expert, and social systems theorist

Source: Art As a Social System (2000), p. 102.

“Each work of art generate its own rules”

Robert Pinsky (1940) American poet, editor, literary critic, academic.

Singing School

“There is an art in taking the whiplash of suffering full in the face, an art you must learn. Let each single attack exhaust itself; pain always makes single attacks, so that its bite may be more intense, more concentrated. And you, while its fangs are implanted and injecting their venom at one spot, do not forget to offer it another place where it can bite you, and so relieve the pain of the first.”

Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

“Systems science and technology constitute one aspect of systems thinking, but the humanities and arts make up the other. The fact that design plays such a large part in the systemic treatment of problems makes it apparent that art has a major role in it as well. Ethics and aesthetics are integral aspects of evaluating systems… the systems approach involves the pursuit of truth (science) and its effective use (technology), plenty (economics), the good (ethics and morality), and beauty and fun (aesthetics). To compare systems methodology with that of any of the so-called ‘hard’ disciplines—for example, physics—is to misunderstand the nature of systems. The worry is not that the systems approach is not scientific in the sense which physics or chemistry or biology is, but that some try to make it scientific in that sense. To the extent they succeed, they destroy it.”

Russell L. Ackoff (1919–2009) Scientist

Ackoff (1999). "Disciplines, the two cultures and the scianities". Systems Research and Behavioral Science. 16 (6), p. 537. Cited in: Sherryl Stalinski (2005) A Systems View of Social Systems, Culture and Communities. Saybrook Graduate School. p. 5.
1990s

“Some teachers of mankind — as Plato… the first Christians, the orthodox Muslims, and the Buddhists — have gone so far as to repudiate art. …[They consider it] so highly dangerous in its power to infect people against their wills, that mankind will lose far less by banishing all art than by tolerating each and every art. …such people were wrong in repudiating all art, for they denied that which cannot be denied — one of the indispensable means of communication, without which mankind could not exist. …Now there is only fear, lest we should be deprived of any pleasures art can afford, so any type of art is patronized. And I think the last error is much grosser than the first and that its consequences are far more harmful.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

What is Art? (1897)

“Thus each successive epoch of theology found its own thoughts in Jesus; that was, indeed, the only way in which it could make Him live. But it was not only each epoch that found its reflection in Jesus; each individual created Him in accordance with his own character. There is no historical task which so reveals a man's true self as the writing of a Life of Jesus.”

Albert Schweitzer book The Quest of the Historical Jesus

Source: The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1906), p. 4

“To present universal Nature as the deep in which each soul with its moral hopes is to be engulfed, is to transform existence into a system of radical and irremediable evil, and thus to make genuine religion impossible;”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), Modern Science and Pantheism, p.79-80

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Patrick Swift 60

Related quotes

Related topics