Modernism Quotes

• The modern mind is in complete disarray. Knowledge has stretched itself to the point where neither the world nor our intelligence can find any foot-hold. It is a fact that we are suffering from nihilism.

  Albert Camus

  Feet, Intelligence, Mind

  Albert Camus (1963). “Carnets: 1942-1951”

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• Don't bother about being modern. Unfortunately it is the one thing that, whatever you do, you cannot avoid.

  Salvador Dali

  Modern, Bother, One Thing

  "Diary of a Genius" by Salvador Dali, Creation Books, (p. 42), 1998.

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• Modernism may be seen as an attempt to reconstruct the world in the absence of God.

  Bryan Appleyard

  World, May, Absence

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• One cannot spend one's time in being modern when there are so many more important things to be.

  Wallace Stevens

  Time, Important, Modern

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “Opus Posthumous: Poems, Plays, Prose”, p.255, Vintage

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• Modernism was influenced by what they call a primativist ethic.

  Theaster Gates

  Ethics

  "Theaster Gates’ Monastic Orders". Interview with Ann Binlot, www.interviewmagazine.com. September 22, 2014.

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• In sharp contrasts to traditional art, modern art does not hide the fact that it is something made and produced: on the contrary, it underscores the fact.

  Theodor Adorno

  Art, Doe, Facts

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• You are born modern, you do not become so.

  Jean Baudrillard

  Modern, Born, Postmodernism

  Jean Baudrillard (1989). “America”, p.73, Verso

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• Decoration is asked to be 'merely' pleasing, 'merely' embellishing, and the 'functional' logic of Modernism leaves no room, apparently, for such 'mereness.' This is part of the pity of Modernism, one of the sacrifices it enjoins.

  Clement Greenberg

  Sacrifice, Rooms, Logic

  Clement Greenberg, Robert C. Morgan (2007). “Clement Greenberg, Late Writings”, Univ Of Minnesota Press

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• 

  The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but the earth is still going round the sun.

  George Orwell

  Lying, Cities, Police

  1946 'Some Thoughts on the Common Toad'.

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• Form, color, composition, drawing, are auxiliaries, any one of which... can be dispensed with.

  Harold Rosenberg

  Color, Drawing, Form

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• War is the highest form of modern art.

  Filippo Tommaso Marinetti

  Art, War, Modern

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• No matter how brilliant, amusing or intelligent the creek of abstraction, Dadaism, Minimalism and Conceptualism of the 20th century was, it didn't much affect the historical river of figuration. I predict that in 50 years and in 300 years, figurative art will still be strong and important.

  Mark Kostabi

  Art, Strong, Intelligent

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• Surface is a modernist concept. What surface does is to encourage one to see the painting as object rather than as a window on the world.

  Kay WalkingStick

  Doe, World, Painting

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• Pop art is the inedible raised to the unspeakable.

  Leonard Baskin

  Art, Pops, Raised

  1965 In Publisher's Weekly, 5 Apr. See Wilde 909:22.

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• I wore one of my Tanguy earrings and one made by Calder in order to show my impartiality between Surrealist and Abstract Art.

  Peggy Guggenheim

  Art, Order, Abstract

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• History reveals that left-brain people have been creating art for a long time now.

  David Luiz

  Art, Creating, Long

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• Modern paintings often seem to have been made quickly, by comparison with the paintings of earlier centuries, and that seems to give us the license to look at them quickly - to consume them and move on.

  James Elkins

  Moving, Giving, Looks

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• I am not the avant-garde. I am the artist who comes after the advancing guard. I am more concerned with continuity of ideas and tradition than in inventing a unique imagery.

  Nathan Oliveira

  Artist, Unique, Ideas

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• I noticed that the large windows between the paintings [in the Musee d'Art Moderne] interested me more than the art exhibited. From then on, painting as I had known it was finished for me.

  Ellsworth Kelly

  Art, Painting, Window

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• Postmodernism is silly and joyless at the same time.

  Walter Darby Bannard

  Silly, Postmodernism

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• That is why my pictures don't look like modern art. It's some sort of timidity on my part I'm sure.

  Paula Rego

  Art, Looks, Modern

  John McEwen, Paula Rego (1992). “Paula Rego”

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• The newer people of this modern age are more eager to amass than to realize.

  Rabindranath Tagore

  People, Age, Realizing

  Rabindranath Tagore (2016). “The Cycle of Spring”, p.16, Sai ePublications

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• I have lived among enough painters and around studios to have had all the theories - and how contradictory they are - rammed down my throat. A man has to have a gizzard like an ostrich to digest all the brass-tacks and wire nails of modern art theories.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Art, Men, Ostriches

  D. H. Lawrence, James T. Boulton (2004). “D. H. Lawrence: Late Essays and Articles”, p.228, Cambridge University Press

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• Postmodernism is, almost by definition, a transitional cusp of social, cultural, economic and ideological history when modernism's high-minded principles and preoccupations have ceased to function, but before they have been replaced with a totally new system of values. It represents a moment of suspension before the batteries are recharged for the new millennium, an acknowledgment that preceding the future is a strange and hybrid interregnum that might be called the last gasp of the past.

  Gilbert Adair

  Past, Principles, Batteries

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• I shall never forget what I saw at the Museum of Modern Art: in a spotless schoolroom, fifty little girls painting away at tables covered with brushes, pots, tubes, bowls, staring into space and sticking out their tongues like the clever animals that ring a bell, tongues lolling and eyes vague. Teachers supervise these young creators of abstract art and slap their wrists if what they paint represents something and dangerously inclines toward realism. The mothers - still at the Picasso stage - are not admitted.

  Jean Cocteau

  Girl, Mother, Teacher

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