Works Of Art Quotes - Page 8

• In our day the conventional element in literature is elaborately disguised by a law of copyright pretending that every work of art is an invention distinctive enough to be patented.

  Northrop Frye

  Art, Law, Elements

  Northrop Frye, Germaine Warkentin (2006). “Educated Imagination and Other Writings on Critical Theory, 1933-1962”, p.215, University of Toronto Press

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• Less disappointing than life, great works of art do not begin by giving us all their best.

  Marcel Proust

  Life, Art, Disappointment

  Marcel Proust (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Marcel Proust (Illustrated)”, p.863, Delphi Classics

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• We're all just a bundle of habits shaped by our memories. And to the extent that we control our lives, we do so by gradually altering those habits, which is to say the networks of our memory. No lasting joke, or invention, or insight, or work of art was ever produced by an external memory. Not yet, at least.

  Joshua Foer

  Art, Memories, Habit

  Joshua Foer (2011). “Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything”, p.188, Penguin

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• Don't underestimate the therapeutic value of gardening. It's the one area where we can all use our nascent creative talents to make a truly satisfying work of art. Every individual, with thought, patience and a large portion of help from nature, has it in them to create their own private paradise: truly a thing of beauty and a joy for ever.

  Geoff Hamilton

  Beauty, Art, Creativity

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• No work of art ever puts forward views. Views belong to people who are not artists.

  Oscar Wilde

  Art, Views, People

  Oscar Wilde (1969). “The Artist as Critic: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde”, p.438, University of Chicago Press

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• Of all man's works of art, a cathedral is greatest. A vast and majestic tree is greater than that.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Art, Greatness, Men

  Henry Ward Beecher, William Drysdale (1887). “Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit”

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• Wonder at the first sight of works of art may be the effect of ignorance and novelty; but real admiration and permanent delight in them are the growth of taste and knowledge.

  William Hazlitt

  Art, Real, Ignorance

  William Hazlitt (1821). “Table-talk: Or Original Essays”, p.37

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• The form of a work of art, which gives speech to their thoughts and is, therefore, their mode of talking, is always somewhat uncertain, like all kinds of speech.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Art, Talking, Giving

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2012). “Human, All-Too-Human: Parts One and Two”, p.103, Courier Corporation

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• Now the images and temples constructed by mechanics are made of inert matter, so that they too are inert, material, and profane. Even if you perfect the art, it partakes of mechanical coarseness. Works of art cannot then be sacred and divine.

  Clement of Alexandria

  Religious, Art, Perfect

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• It is one of the primary motives of modern art that it wants to abolish the distance which the viewer, the consumer, the audience maintain vis-a-vis a work of art. There is no doubt that the leaders of the creative artists of the last 50 years concentrated their efforts mainly on eliminating that distance.

  Hans-Georg Gadamer

  Art, Fun, Distance

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• The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good.

  Stanley Kubrick

  Art, Fun, Tests

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• In a sense, as we are creative beings, our lives become our work of art.

  Julia Cameron

  Art, Creativity, Creative

  Julia Cameron (2012). “The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity”, p.15, Souvenir Press

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• People who alter or destroy works of art and our cultural heritage for profit or as an exercise of power are barbarians.

  George Lucas

  Art, Real, Inspiration

  "George Lucas offers a compelling argument against George Lucas" by Sean O'Neal, news.avclub.com. September 1, 2011.

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• Perpetual modernism is the measure of merit in every work of art.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Work, Merit

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• The slightest living thing answers a deeper need than all the works of man because it is transitory. It has an evanescence of life, or growth, or change: it passes, as we do, from one stage to another, from darkness to darkness, into a distance where we, too, vanish out of sight. A work of art is static; and its value and its weakness lie in being so: but the tuft of grass and the clouds above it belong to our own traveling brotherhood.

  Freya Stark

  Life, Change, Art

  Freya Stark (2013). “Perseus In The Wind: A Life of Travel”, p.110, Tauris Parke Paperbacks

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• A work of art is finished, from the point of view of the artist, when feeling and perception have resulted in a spiritual synthesis.

  Hans Hofmann

  Spiritual, Art, Views

  Hans Hofmann, Sara T. Weeks, Bartlett H. Hayes (1967). “Search for the Real: And Other Essays”, p.63, MIT Press

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• Individuality realized is the supreme attainment of the human soul, the master-master's work of art. Individuality is sacred.

  Frank Lloyd Wright

  Art, Soul, Individuality

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• A work of art comes only from inside a human being.

  Edvard Munch

  Art, Humans, Human Beings

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• It is sometimes asserted that a surgical operation is or should be a work of art ... fit to rank with those of the painter or sculptor. ... That proposition does not admit of discussion. It is a product of the intellectual innocence which I think we surgeons may fairly claim to possess, and which is happily not inconsistent with a quite adequate worldly wisdom.

  Wilfred Trotter

  Art, Science, Thinking

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• If Watson and I had not discovered the [DNA] structure, instead of being revealed with a flourish it would have trickled out and that its impact would have been far less. For this sort of reason Stent had argued that a scientific discovery is more akin to a work of art than is generally admitted. Style, he argues, is as important as content. I am not completely convinced by this argument, at least in this case.

  Francis Crick

  Art, Science, Impact

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• There is no work of art that is without short cuts.

  Andre Gide

  Art, Cutting, Short Cuts

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• Theory has nothing to do with a work of art. Pictures which are interpretable, and which contain a meaning, are bad pictures. A picture presents itself as the Unmanageable, the Illogical, the Meaningless. It demonstrates the endless multiplicity of aspects; it takes away our certainty, because it deprives a thing of its meaning and its name. It shows us the thing in all the manifold significance and infinite variety that preclude the emergence of any single meaning and view.

  Gerhard Richter

  Art, Views, Names

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• Almost every work of art is an analogy. When I make a representation of something, this too is an analogy to what exists; I make an effort to get a grip on the thing by depicting it. I prefer to steer clear of anything aesthetic, so as not to set obstacles in my own way and not to have the problem of people saying: 'Ah, yes, that's how he sees the world, that's his interpretation.'

  Gerhard Richter

  Art, People, Effort

  Gerhard Richter, Dietmar Elger, Hans-Ulrich Obrist (2009). “Gerhard Richter: writings 1961-2007”, Distributed Art Pub Inc

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• I am an artist at living - my work of art is my life.

  D.T. Suzuki

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

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• More important than a work of art itself is what it will sow. Art can die, a painting can disappear. What counts is the seed.

  Joan Miro

  Art, Important, Painting

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