“Goethe said that the worst thing in art is technical facility accompanied by triteness. Many an artist, like God, has never needed to think twice about anything. His works are the mad scene from Giselle, on ice skates: he weeps, pulls out his hair—holding his wrists like Lifar—and tells you what Life is, all at a gliding forty miles an hour.”

“Poetry, Unlimited”, p. 159
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

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 "Goethe said that the worst thing in art is technical facility accompanied by triteness. Many an artist, like God, has n…" by Randall Jarrell?
Randall Jarrell photo
Randall Jarrell 215
poet, critic, novelist, essayist 1914–1965

Related quotes

Sören Kierkegaard photo

“If the genius is an artist, then he accomplishes his work as art, but neither he nor his work of art has a telos outside him.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Source: 1840s, Two Ethical-Religious Minor Essays (1849), P. 108

Truman Capote photo
Joel Osteen photo
Fritz Leiber photo
Edouard Manet photo

“No one knows what it feels like to be constantly insulted [by art-critics in Paris]. It sickens and destroys you... The fools! They've never stopped telling me I'm inconsistent [in his painting style]; they couldn't have said anything more flattering.”

Edouard Manet (1832–1883) French painter

quote of Manet, recorded by his friend Antonin Proust in his last years, Manet by Himself, p. 304, as quoted in The private lives of the Impressionists, Sue Roe; Harpen Collins Publishers, New York 2006, p. 241
1876 - 1883

Ben Gibbard photo

Related topics