Art

"All art is autobiographical; the pearl is the oyster's autobiography."

"No government has the right to decide on the truth of scientific principles, nor to prescribe in any way the character of the questions investigated. Neither may a government determine the aesthetic value of artistic creations, nor limit the forms of literacy or artistic expression. Nor should it pronounce on the validity of economic, historic, religious, or philosophical doctrines. Instead it has a duty to its citizens to maintain the freedom, to let those citizens contribute to the further adventure and the development of the human race."

"Art is necessary in order that man should be able to recognize and change the world. But art is also necessary by virtue of the magic inherent in it."

"Reason...to suppose any production, worthy to be called a work of art, can be made without its use is foolish. ...By the use of reason many mistakes in design may be avoided and many counterfeits of art readily detected....Beauty alone is an excellent reason for many things, but when a design is in direct conflict with common sense it cannot be a work of art."

"A master in art need not go into the highways and byways for affects; he knows the straight course and follows it. ...With dignity and simplicity come repose... the natural state of one at home in his surroundings and sure of his ground."

"[A]n association called La Peau de l'Ours... had been founded in 1904 by André Level for the express purpose of buying modern art, holding it for ten years, and then selling it for a substantial profit. ...[T]he group acquired 145 works, including ten paintings by Matisse and a dozen paintings and drawings by Picasso. ...[T]he investors believed their undertaking could further the cause of modern art by establishing a sound value for it. ...[T]hey agreed that each living artist would receive 20 percent of the profit from the resale... (Not until 1920 would this resale principle, known as ', be incorporated into French law.)"

"One must not always think that feeling is everything. Art is nothing without form. (12 August 1846)"

"One becomes a critic when one cannot be an artist, just as a man becomes a stool pigeon when he cannot be a soldier. (22 October 1846)"

"You can calculate the worth of a man by the number of his enemies, and the importance of a work of art by the harm that is spoken of it. (14 June 1853)."

"Great artists are people who find the way to be themselves in their art. Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike."

""Collective art,"… is not an individual "leisure time" occupation, added to life, it is an integral part of life. It corresponds to a basic human need, and if this is not fulfilled, man remains as insecure and anxious as if the need for a meaningful thought picture of the world were unrealized."

"In order to grow out of the receptive into the productive orientation, he [man] must relate himself to the world artistically and not only philosophically or scientifically."

"There is undoubtedly a difference between people who manipulate other people and people who create things."

"A relatively primitive village in which there are still real feasts, common artistic shared expressions, and no literacy at all—is more advanced culturally and more healthy mentally than our educated, newspaper-reading radio-listening culture."

"The need for the creation of collective art and ritual on a nonclerical basis is at least as important as literacy and higher education."

"The transformation of an atomistic into a communitarian society depends on creating again the opportunity for people to sing together, walk together, dance together, admire together—together, and not, to use Riesman's succinct expression, as a member of a "lonely crowd.""

"On the whole, our modern ritual is impoverished and does not fulfill man's need for collective art and ritual."

"But there is a solution, there is an answer, there is redemption available for all of us and any one of us, and to the Catholic Church, funny enough I think it is a novel by Morris West, The Pope could decide that all this power, all this wealth, this hierarchy of princess, bishops, archbishops, priests, monks, and nuns could be sent out in the world with money and art treasures, to put them back in the countries that they once raped and violated, whose original systems of animism and belief in simplicity they told them would (tell them) take them straight to hell. They could give that money away, and they could concentrate on the apparent essence of their belief. Then, I would stand here and say the Catholic Church may well be a force for good in the world. But until that day, it is NOT."

"I don't consider myself an artist. I go out there and I try to play what's right for the music. It seems to be a much more open approach and it would seem to allow me to be able to expand as the music of the time expands. I think people who get hung up in their own artistry often get into a certain style they think is them and if they do anything different the public won't be able to identify their artistry, which is kind of limiting. I don't think that way. I have a good time playing. I try to play the best I can. I know I can play the drums and I want to play the best that I can possibly play. I want to play better a year from now than I'm playing now, not because my artistry is at stake, but just because I like it."

"Do we not say that the judicious discovering of a most lovely Statua in a piece of Marble, hath sublimated the wit of Buonarruotti far above the vulgar wits of other men? And yet this work is onely the imitation of a meer aptitude and disposition of exteriour and superficial mem­bers of an immoveable man; but what is it in comparison of a man made by nature, composed of as many exteriour and inte­riour members, of so many muscles, tendons, nerves, bones, which serve to so many and sundry motions? but what shall we say of the senses, and of the powers of the soul, and lastly, of the understanding? May we not say, and that with reason, that the structure of a Statue falls far short of the formation of a living man, yea more of a contemptible worm?"

"If I behold a statue of some excellent master, I say with my self: "When wilt thou know how to chizzle away the refuse of a piece of Marble, and discover so lovely a figure as lyeth hid therein? When wilt thou mix and spread so many colors upon a Cloth, or Wall, and represent therewith all visible objects, like a Michael Angelo, a Raphaello, or a Tizvano? If I behold what invention men have had in comparting Musical intervals, in establishing Precepts and Rules for the management thereof with admirable delight to the ear, when shall I cease my astonishment? What shall I say of such and so various instruments of that Art? The reading of excellent Poets, with what admiration doth it swell anyone who attentively considereth the invention of concepts and their explanation? What shall we say of Architecture? What of Navigation? But, above all other stupendous inventions, what sublimity of mind was that in him, that imagined to himself to find out a way to communicate his most secret thoughts to any other person, though very far distant from him either in time or place, speaking with those that are in the Indies, speaking to those who are not yet born, nor shall be this thousand, or ten thousand years? And with how much facility? but by the various collection of twenty-four little letters upon a paper?"

"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 is the one form of human energy in the whole world, which really works for union, and destroys the barriers between man and man. It is the continual, unconscious replacement, however fleeting, of oneself by another; the real cement of human life; the everlasting refreshment and renewal. For, what is grievous, dompting, grim, about our lives is that we are shut up within ourselves, with an itch to get outside ourselves. And to be stolen away from ourselves by Art is a momentary relaxation from that itching, a minute's profound, and as it were secret, enfranchisement. The active amusements and relaxations of life can only rest certain of our faculties, by indulging others; the whole self is never rested save through that unconsciousness of self, which comes through rapt contemplation of Nature or of Art."

"Slowly, under our feet, beneath our consciousness, is forming that new philosophy, and it is in times of new philosophies that Art, itself in essence always a discovery, must flourish."

"Truth admits but the one rule: No deficiency, and no excess! Disobedient to that rule — nothing attains full vitality. And secretly fettered by that rule is Art, whose business is the creation of vital things."

"He is but a poor philosopher who holds a view so narrow as to exclude forms not to his personal taste. No realist can love romantic Art so much as he loves his own, but when that Art fulfils the laws of its peculiar being, if he would be no blind partisan, he must admit it. The romanticist will never be amused by realism, but let him not for that reason be so parochial as to think that realism, when it achieves vitality, is not Art. For what is Art but the perfected expression of self in contact with the world; and whether that self be of enlightening, or of fairy-telling temperament, is of no moment whatsoever. The tossing of abuse from realist to romanticist and back is but the sword-play of two one-eyed men with their blind side turned toward each other. Shall not each attempt be judged on its own merits? If found not shoddy, faked, or forced, but true to itself, true to its conceiving mood, and fair-proportioned part to whole; so that it lives — then, realistic or romantic, in the name of Fairness let it pass! Of all kinds of human energy, Art is surely the most free, the least parochial; and demands of us an essential tolerance of all its forms. Shall we waste breath and ink in condemnation of artists, because their temperaments are not our own?"

"Art is the great and universal refreshment. For Art is never dogmatic; holds no brief for itself; you may take it, or you may leave it. It does not force itself rudely where it is not wanted. It is reverent to all tempers, to all points of view. But it is wilful — the very wind in the comings and goings of its influence, an uncapturable fugitive, visiting our hearts at vagrant, sweet moments; since we often stand even before the greatest works of Art without being able quite to lose ourselves! That restful oblivion comes, we never quite know when — and it is gone! But when it comes, it is a spirit hovering with cool wings, blessing us from least to greatest, according to our powers; a spirit deathless and varied as human life itself."

"L'Art supreme Seule a l'eternité Et le buste Survit la cité."

"The five genres of horror, porn, melodrama, suspense and comedy correspond to five bodily excretions: Vomit, semen, tears, sweat and urine. And each genre aims to bring about one of these excretions: Melodrama wants tears, porn wants semen, horror wants vomit, suspense wants sweat. Comedy wants two things: people should either piss themselves with laughter or laugh themselves to tears. That is the difference to high art: all five genres clearly want to have the consumer thrown out of gear."

"Whores are the most honest girls. They present the bill right away. The others hang on and never let go."

"The great artists are the ones who dare to entitle to beauty things so natural that when they’re seen afterward, people say: Why did I never realize before that this too was beautiful?"

"Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self."

"I dream my painting, and then I paint my dream."

"As all Nature's thousand changes But one changeless God proclaim; So in Art's wide kingdom ranges One sole meaning still the same: This is Truth, eternal Reason, Which from Beauty takes its dress, And serene through time and season Stands for aye in loveliness."

"Peter Griffin: What's the difference between art and pornography... a government grant!"

"His pencil was striking, resistless, and grand; His manners were gentle, complying, and bland; Still born to improve us in every part, His pencil our faces, his manners our heart."

"The canvas glow'd beyond ev'n nature warm; The pregnant quarry teem'd with human form."

"The perfection of an art consists in the employment of a comprehensive system of laws, commensurate to every purpose within its scope, but concealed from the eye of the spectator; and in the production of effects that seem to flow forth spontaneously, as though uncontrolled by their influence, and which are equally excellent, whether regarded individually, or in reference to the proposed result."

"Let me formulate the artistic disposition as follows: it is reacting with one’s ideal to the flaw in oneself and in the world, and somehow making that reaction formation solid enough in the medium so that it indeed becomes an improved bit of real world for others."

"Perhaps there is no other way of reaching some understanding of being than through art?"

"One cannot condemn tendencies in art; one can only condemn works of art. To be categorically against a current art tendency or style means, in effect, to pronounce on works of art not yet created and not yet seen. It means inquiring into the motives of artists instead of into results. Yet we all know — or are supposed to know — that results are all that count in art."

"The artistic contribution of any nation and any age must be in terms of creation. Performers, symphony organizations, opera houses, museums, libraries - important as they are - are not enough. The arts, if they are to live, must be living arts."

"To find ourselves spoken for in art gives dignity to our pain, our anger, our losses."

"Wir haben eine besondere Verantwortung für das Ökosystem dieses Planeten. Indem wir andere Arten schützen, sichern wir unser eigenes Überleben."

"Man muss doch sehen, dass Gottes Rolle seit Äonen schrumpft. Anfangs wurde er noch für Adam und Eva gebraucht, dann hieß es, er habe die Evolution ins Rollen gebracht. Die Erkenntnisse der Kosmologie zeigen uns jedoch: Leben entwickelt sich überall dort, wo es kann. Gott kann keine neuen Arten erschaffen, er vollbringt keine Wunder, er passt auf keine Stellenausschreibung."

"Wandern ist die vollkommenste Art der Fortbewegung, wenn man das wahre Leben entdecken will. Es ist der Weg in die Freiheit."

"Unter den Gelehrten sind die Fremdwörter eine Art wissenschaftlicher Freimaurerhändedruck, an dem sich die Eingeweihten erkennen."

"Und wenn wir in der Lage sind, alle Ansichten gleichermaßen zu betrachten, werden wir vielleicht fähig, uns auf kreative Weise in eine neue Richtung zu bewegen."

"Solange ich lebe, habe ich nicht einfach nur zu atmen, sondern diese Art Kraft, die ich durchs Atmen aufnehme, habe ich auch nach außen zu tragen."

"So ist der Wucher hassenswert, weil er aus dem Geld selbst den Erwerb zieht und nicht aus dem, wofür das Geld da ist. Denn das Geld ist um des Tausches willen erfunden worden, durch den Zins vermehrt es sich dagegen durch sich selbst. […] Diese Art des Gelderwerbs ist also am meisten gegen die Natur."