“Painting is literature in colors. Literature is painting in language.”
Pramoedya Ananta Toer book Bumi Manusia
Source: Bumi Manusia
“Painting is literature in colors. Literature is painting in language.”
Pramoedya Ananta Toer book Bumi Manusia
Source: Bumi Manusia
“Black literature is taught as sociology, as tolerance, not as a serious, rigorous art form.”
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) American writer
Rebecca West (1892–1983) British feminist and author
Source: The Paris Review interview (1981), p. 31
Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer
The Chinese Novel (1938)
Context: I grew up believing that the novel has nothing to do with pure literature. So I was taught by scholars. The art of literature, so I was taught, is something devised by men of learning. Out of the brains of scholars came rules to control the rush of genius, that wild fountain which has its source in deepest life. Genius, great or less, is the spring, and art is the sculptured shape, classical or modern, into which the waters must be forced, if scholars and critics were to be served. But the people of China did not so serve. The waters of the genius of story gushed out as they would, however the natural rocks allowed and the trees persuaded, and only common people came and drank and found rest and pleasure. For the novel in China was the peculiar product of the common people. And it was solely their property.
Jean-Luc Godard (1930) French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic
Quoted in: Richard Roud, Godard, introduction (1970).
Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor
RODIN, AUGUSTE. L'Art. Entretiens réunis par Paul Gsell, 1911
Mubarak Ali (1941) Historian, activist, scholar
In Search of History, Chapter I: War and Peace in Historical Perspectives, p. 1
Culture
Max Beerbohm book Mainly on the Air
"Fenestralia" http://books.google.com/books?id=YZMhAAAAMAAJ&q=%22There+is+much+virtue+in+a+window+It+is+to+a+human+being+as+a+frame+is+to+a+painting+as+a+proscenium+to+a+play+as+form+to+literature+It+strongly+defines+its+content%22&pg=PA147#v=onepage, Mainly on the Air (1946), The Atlantic ( April 1944 http://books.google.com/books?id=5KAGAQAAIAAJ&q=%22There+is+much+virtue+in+a+window+It+is+to+a+human+being+as+a+frame+is+to+a+painting+as+a+proscenium+to+a+play+as+form+to+literature+It+strongly+defines+its+content%22&pg=PA85#v=onepage)
Jeff VanderMeer book City of Saints and Madmen
"The Strange Case of X", p. 196
City of Saints and Madmen (2001–2004)