Works Of Art Quotes - Page 18

• There are many schools of painting. Why should there not be many schools of photographic art? There is hardly a right and a wrong in these matters, but there is truth, and that should form the basis of all works of art.

  Alfred Stieglitz

  Art, School, Matter

  Alfred Stieglitz, Richard Whelan, Sarah Greenough (2000). “Stieglitz on photography: his selected essays and notes”

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• Every work of art is the child of its age and, in many cases, the mother of our emotions. It follows that each period of culture produces an art of its own which can never be repeated.

  Wassily Kandinsky

  Mother, Art, Children

  Wassily Kandinsky (2015). “Concerning the Spiritual in Art”, p.15, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• Great works of art are only great because they are accessible and comprehensible to everyone.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Art, Great Work

  Leo Tolstoy (2016). “The Complete Works of Leo Tolstoy: Novels, Short Stories, Plays, Memoirs, Letters & Essays on Art, Religion and Politics: Anna Karenina, War and Peace, Resurrection, The Death of Ivan Ilych, A Confession, The Cossacks, Correspondences with Gandhi, The Kreutzer Sonata, Fables and Stories for Childrenand Many More”, p.8083, e-artnow

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• Why shouldn't we, so generally addicted to the gigantic, at last have some small works of art, some short poems, short pieces of music [...], some intimate, low-voiced, and delicate things in our mostly huge and roaring, glaring world?

  Elizabeth Bishop

  Art, Delicate Things, Roaring

  Elizabeth Bishop (2008). “Elizabeth Bishop: Poems, Prose, and Letters”

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• Now, the language that had grown up and formed itself on those principles is what one is dealing with, and the problem is to bring a work of art in that medium into another medium formed on different principles and heard and understood in a different way.

  Robert Fitzgerald

  Art, Principles, Different

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• It does not follow, that because a particular work of art succeeds in charming us, its creator also deserves our admiration.

  Plutarch

  Art, Doe, Succeed

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• Political institutions, no matter how well or badly designed, depend for continued existence upon acting men; their conservation is achieved by the same means that brought them into being. Independent existence marks the work of art as a product of making; utter dependence upon further acts to keep it in existence marks the state as a product of action.

  Hannah Arendt

  Art, Mean, Independent

  Hannah Arendt (2000). “The Portable Hannah Arendt”, Penguin Group USA

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• A work of art can be called revolutionary if, by virtue of the aesthetic transformation, it represents, in the exemplary fate of individuals, the prevailing unfreedom and the rebelling forces, thus breaking through the mystified (and petrified) social reality, and opening the horizon of change (liberation).

  Herbert Marcuse

  Art, Fate, Reality

  Herbert Marcuse (2007). “Art and Liberation: Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse”, p.62, Routledge

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• How certain human beings are able to create works of art is a mystery, and why they should wish to do so, at a great cost to themselves usually, is another mystery. Works are not created by one's life; every life is rich in material.

  Elizabeth Hardwick

  Art, Wish, Cost

  Elizabeth Hardwick (1998). “Sight-readings: American Fictions”, Random House Incorporated

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• What is essential in a work of art is that it should rise far above the realm of personal life and speak to the spirit and heart of the poet as man to the spirit and heart of mankind.

  Carl Jung

  Art, Men, Essentials

  Carl Gustav Jung (2001). “Modern Man in Search of a Soul”, p.172, Psychology Press

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• A work of art when placed in a gallery loses its charge, and becomes a portable object or surface disengaged from the outside world.

  Robert Smithson

  Art, World, Surface

  Robert Smithson, Jack D. Flam (1996). “Robert Smithson, the Collected Writings”, p.154, Univ of California Press

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• The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art - and, by analogy, our own experience - more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.

  Susan Sontag

  Art, Real, Mean

  Susan Sontag (1983). “A Susan Sontag reader”, Vintage

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• In architecture it isn't enough to just have the right building that works well. It can also be beautiful. It can also be different. It can create surprise. And surprise is the main thing in a work of art. [] I like and respect Brasí­lia very much. It is a simple city, a rational one. I always defend the urban design of Brasí­lia

  Oscar Niemeyer

  Beautiful, Art, Simple

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• Any authentic work of art must start an argument between the artist and his audience.

  Rebecca West

  Art, Women, Criticism

  Rebecca West (1957). “The Court and the Castle: Some Treatments of a Recurrent Theme /$Rebecca West”

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• Conversations...begin with the sort of imaginative engagement you get when you read a novel or watch a movie or attend to a work of art that speaks from some place other than your own. So I'm using the word 'conversation' not only for literal talk but also as a metaphor for engagement with the experience and ideas of others. And I stress the role of the imagination here because the encounters, properly conducted, are valuable in themselves. Conversation doesn't have to lead to consensus about anything, especially not values; it's enough that it helps people get used to one another.

  Kwame Anthony Appiah

  Art, Stress, Ideas

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• My body is a gradual work of art

  Rick Genest

  Art, Body

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• Through our own creative experience we came to know that the real tradition in art is not housed only in museums and art galleries and in great works of art; it is innate in us and can be galvanized into activity by the power of creative endeavour in our own day, and in our own country, by our own creative individuals in the arts.

  Lawren Harris

  Country, Art, Real

  "The best of the Group of Seven".

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• A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.

  Oscar Wilde

  Art, Work, Unique

  Oscar Wilde (1969). “The Artist as Critic: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde”, p.270, University of Chicago Press

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• We attempted perfection; we wanted an object to be without flaw, so we cut the papers with a razor, pasted them down meticulously, but it buckled and was ruined... that is why we decided to tear prewrinkled paper, so that in the finished work of art imperfection would be an integral part, as if at birth death were built in.

  Hans Arp

  Art, Cutting, Perfection

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• Nature does not create works of art. It is we, and the faculty of interpretation peculiar to the human mind, that see art.

  Man Ray

  Art, Mind, Doe

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  A work of art does not answer questions, it provokes them; and its essential meaning is in the tension between the contradictory answers.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Art, Essentials, Doe

  Leonard Bernstein (2007). “The Infinite Variety of Music”, p.141, Amadeus Press

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• A work of art does not need an explanation. The work has to speak for itself. The work may be subject to many interpretations, but only one was in the mind of the artist. Some artists say to make the work readable for the public is an artist’s responsibility, but I don’t agree with that. The only responsibility to be absolutely truthful to the self. My work disturbs people and nobody wants to be disturbed They are not fully aware of the effect my work has on them, but they know it is disturbing.

  Louise Bourgeois

  Art, Responsibility, Self

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• A work of art doesn't have to be explained.

  Louise Bourgeois

  Art

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• I don't think any movie or any book or any work of art can solve the stalemate in the Middle East today. But it's certainly worth a try.

  Steven Spielberg

  Art, Book, Thinking

  "Spielberg: Israel entitled to strong response" by Yitzhak Benhorin, www.ynetnews.com. June 12, 2005.

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• Most works of art, like most wines, ought to be consumed in the district of their fabrication.

  Simone Weil

  Art, Wine, Ought

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