"Life is short, art endures..."
Hippocrates (c. 460 - 400 B.C.) Greek philosopher. Aphorisms, Section I, 1.
Plato (ancient Athenian philosopher (428-347 BC); pupil of Socrates; teacher
of Aristotle)
"Art completes what nature cannot bring to finish"
Aristotle (384 - 322 B.C.), Greek philosopher.
"You cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters are constantly
flowing on." Heraclitus (c. 535-c. 475 BC), Greek philosopher. Quoted in:
Hippocrates, On The Universe, aphorism 41.
"Those who educate children well are more to be honored than parents, for
these gave only life, those the art of living well." Aristotle (
384-322 B.C.), Greek philosopher.
"The soul never thinks without a mental picture." Aristotle (384-322 B.C.),
Greek philosopher. S.H. Butcher, Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art.
"The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor, it is the one
thing that cannot be learnt from others; and it is also a sign of genius,
since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity
in [the] dissimilar." Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), Greek philosopher.
S.H. Butcher, Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art, 1951
"A hidden connexion is stronger than an obvious one." Heraclitus,
Greek philosopher. Fragments, 54, c. 500 B.C.
"I live in a very small house but my windows look out on a very large
world." Confucius (550-478 B.C.), Chinese religious leader.
"You must train the children to their studies in a playful manner, and
without any air of constraint, with the further object of discerning more
readily the natural bent of their respective characters." Plato
(c. 427-347 B.C.), Greek philosopher. Socrates, in The Republic, book 7,
section 537.
"No pleasure endures unseasoned by variety." Publius Syrus
(1st century B.C.), Roman writer of mimes.
"Harmony consists of opposing tension, like that of the bow and the lyre."
Heraclitus (flourished 500 BC), Greek philosopher, On the Universe.
"The artist Protegenes, becoming frustrated with his efforts to paint a dog
foaming at the mouth, "finally fell into a rage with his art . . . and
dashed a sponge against the place in the picture that offended him . . .
and chance produced the effect of nature in the picture!" Pliny the Elder
(A.D. 23-79), Roman scholar and naturalist.
"Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call
it 'the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil
of the soul.' The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature,
entitles no man to the sacred name of 'Artist.'"
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1845), U.S. poet, critic, short-story writer.
"Marginalia, " in Southern Literary Messenger (Richmond, VA, June 1849;
reprinted in Essays and Reviews, 1984).
"It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance... and I know
of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process."
Henry James (1843-1916), U.S. author. Letter, July 10, 1915
"Art is an adventure into an unknown world, which can only be explored
by those willing to take the risks." Mark Rothko (1903-1970),
American Abstract Expressionist painter.
"Art is coming face to face with yourself. That's what's wrong
with Benton. He came face to face with Michelangelo-- and he lost."
Jackson Pollock (1912-1956), American Abstract Expressionist painter,
about Thomas Hart Benton (American, 1889-1975), painter. See American
Scene painting, social realism, and mural.
"Art establishes the basic human truths which must serve as the touchstone
of our judgment." John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) U.S. president.
An address at Amherst College, October 26, 1963.
"I am for an art that takes its forms from the lines of life itself,
that twists and extends and accumulates and spits and drips and is heavy
and coarse and blunt and sweet and stupid as life itself." Claes Oldenburg
(1929-), American Pop artist. In an exhibition catalogue, 1961.
"Art today is a new kind of instrument, an instrument for modifying
consciousness and organizing new modes of sensibility . . . . Artists
have had to become self-conscious aestheticians: continually challenging
their means, their materials and methods." Susan Sontag (1933-),
American writer. Against Interpretation.
"My dear Tristan, to be an artist at all is like living in Switzerland
during a world war." Tom Stoppard (1937-), American [?] playwright.
Travesties, 1974.
"Art is making something out of nothing and selling it."
Frank Zappa (1940-1993), American musical satirist.
"CRITIC, n: One who boasts of being 'hard to please' because nobody tries
to please him." Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914), American writer.
The Cynic's Word Book, also known as The Devil's Dictionary, 1906.
"PAINTING, n: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather and
exposing them to the critic." Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914), American writer.
The Cynic's Word Book, also known as The Devil's Dictionary, 1906.
"The arts are the field on which we place our own dreams, thoughts and
desires alongside those of others, so that solitudes can meet, to their
joy sometimes, or to their surprise, and sometimes to their disgust. When
you boil it all down, that is the social purpose of art: the creation of m
utuality, the passage from feeling into shared meaning." Robert Hughes
(Australian-American) art critic, in an address at Skowhegen School of Art
in 1996 (New Yorker).
"The light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off due to budget cuts."
Steve Wright, contemporary American commedian.
"Under ordinary circumstances, bad art naturally gets sorted out and
disappears. That is how history works when it is left alone to do its job.
The paradox of the culture wars is that they have made celebrities out of
some artists who would otherwise vanish. Censorship has become a growth
industry. This may be the best argument, in the end, for unfettered freedom
of expression."
Michael Kimmelman, American art critic, writing about a controversial
exhibition of works by young British artists owned by adman
Charles Saatchi, New York Times, October 1, 1999, B29.
"I find sometimes I may want to end up with subtlety, but I have to start
out boldly. I think you have to exaggerate to get it across. . . . All I
can say is that you have to lean over a little to the left, and overdo it
a bit, and then come back into balance, that ever-important balance."
Andrew Wyeth (1917-), American realist painter, The Two Worlds of Andrew
Wyeth: Kuerners and Olsons, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1976.
"The buckskin ceiling is that beyond which native people cannot rise in the
art world." Suzan Shown Harjo (American, a Cheyenne and Muskogee Indian,
and president of the Morningstar Institute, an American Indian legislative
group based in Washington, DC), quoted in the New York Times,
December 24, 2000, section 2, p. 37.
"Under ordinary circumstances, bad art naturally gets sorted out and
disappears. That is how history works when it is left alone to do its job.
The paradox of the culture wars is that they have made celebrities out of
some artists who would otherwise vanish. Censorship has become a growth
industry. This may be the best argument, in the end, for unfettered freedom
of expression." Michael Kimmelman, American art critic, writing about a
controversial exhibition of works by young British artists, owned by adman
Charles Saatchi, New York Times, October 1, 1999, B29.
"Chronological surveys typically misrepresent the history of art as a
seamlessly coherent narrative. . . . art historians have fetishized a
chronological, diachronic model based on causality and often teleology
that supports a linear model of history and an elitist, exclusive lineage
of art." Patricia Matthews, contemporary American art historian, Art
Journal, 1995.
"The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the
difference between lightning and the lightning bug." Samuel Clemens, aka
"Mark Twain" (1835-1910), American writer.
"I paint only for myself. I would like my work to communicate, but if it
doesn't, that's all right too. I never think of the public when I paint--
never." Edward Hopper (1882-1967), American painter. Quoted by Katherine
Kuh, The Artist's Voice, 1960.
"Painting a picture is not a form of self-expression. It is, like any other
art, a language by which you communicate something about the world."
Mark Rothko (1903-1970), American Abstract-Expressionist painter.
Lecture delivered at Pratt Institute, 1958.
"When you draw things very light and less distinct than darker objects in
your picture, they will appear to be farther away. Darker objects with more
detail look closer than lighter, hazy objects. Think of looking out a
window in a tall building. The buildings and trees across the street look
clear, and you can see lots of detail. The buildings and trees farther
away look a little hazy, with less recognizable detail. This is because
of the atmosphere between yourself and the object. Or if you're in a big
city, it's caused by pollution. Yucko!" Mark Kistler, American TV artist /
instructor. "The Twelve Renaissance Words of Drawing in 3-D, " 1997.
While he was working on the editing of a film, Jerry Lewis was talking to
Stanley Kubrick about how difficult it is to make something of quality out
of bad material: "I was in my cutting room around 1 in the morning, and he
strolls in smoking a cigarette and says, 'Can I watch?' I said:
'Yeah you can watch. You wanna see a Jew go down? Stand there.'
That was the night I coined the expression, 'You cannot polish a turd.'
And then Kubrick looked at me and said, 'You can if you freeze it.'"
Jerry Lewis (contemporary), American actor and director.
"What They Say About Stanley Kubrick, " New York Times Magazine,
July 4, 1999.
"A work of art in itself is a gesture and it may be warm or cold, inviting
or repellant." Robert Henri (1865-1929), American painter, and member of
The Eight and the Ashcan school, The Art Spirit, 1923.
"Gesture is the cement that holds the various elements of the pose
together." Kimon Nicoliades, The Natural Way to Draw, 1941.
"An assemblage of events performed or perceived in more than one time and
place. Its material environments may be constructed, taken over directly
from what is available, or altered slightly, just as its activities may be
invented or commonplace. A Happening, unlike a stage play, may occur at a
supermarket, driving along a highway, under a pile of rags, and in a
friend's kitchen, either at once or sequentially. If sequential, time may
extend to more than a year. The Happening is performed according to a plan
without rehearsal, audience, or repetition." Allan Kaprow. Assemblage,
Environments&Happenings, Abrams, NY, 1966.
"The term denotes a piece of art that does not focus on an object, but on
an event. The artist begins with plan of action in which the public is
brought into an active relationship with the art event. The action does
not take place in the closed environment of a gallery but rather in various
public places of a city, where the artist breaks in suddenly with his
performance. In fact, a Happening is an irruption into daily space,
organized at times and in places where no artistic production is expected.
The event thus develops by an improvisation that breaks the mental habits
of the spectator. It begins by a simple scenario made of series of simple
daily activities that, because of their simplicity, involve the public.
In this way, time enters art as real duration.In fact, the action takes
place in a space and at definite times in which the result is the collective
experience and the leftover traces, the photographs, are the documents of a
time that was lived." Michael Kirby. Happening, 1968.
"Mr. Rauschenberg, talking apropos of doing what other people have already
done, recalls an idea he once had for an exhibition of paintings imitating
different Abstract Expressionists. 'Imagine the luxury, the excessive
energy and the iridescent glory of doing a Rothko, ' he says. 'Of course,
it would have been blaspheming, but you think what it would be like to
throw yourself into that incredible mood? Then out of respect I decided I
wouldn't paint like Rothko or Franz Kline because I'd be in their way and
they in mine. That was also John Cage's attitude. John always said, there's
enough room in the world so that nobody has to be that close to another
person." Robert Rauschenburg (1925-), American artist, in an article by
Michael Kimmelman, New York Times, Arts&Leisure section 2, August 27,
2000, p. 26.
"Horror vacui -- fear of emptiness -- is the driving force in contemporary
American taste. Along with the commercial intereasts that exploit this
interest, it is the major factor now shaping attitudes toward public
spaces, urban spaces, and even suburban sprawl." Herbert Muschamp,
contemporary architecture critic, New York Times, August, 21, 2000.
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is
where they should be. Now put the foundations under them." Henry David
Thoreau (1817-62), U.S. philosopher, author, naturalist. Walden,
"Conclusion" (1854).
"Every artist knows that there is no such thing as "freedom" in art. The
first thing an artist does when he begins a new work is to lay down the
barriers and limitations; he decides upon a certain composition, a certain
key, a certain relation of creatures or objects to each other. He is never
free, and the more splendid his imagination, the more intense his feelings,
the farther he goes from general truth and general emotion." Willa Cather
(1873-1947), american author, Lights on Adobe Walls, an incomplete
manuscript, in Willa Cather on Writing, 1949.
"It's good to have limits." Duke Ellington (1899-1974), American composer,
pianist, and bandleader, Music Is My Mistress, 1973.
"Bring out the nature of the materials, let their nature intimately into
your scheme. . . . Reveal the nature of the wood, plaster, brick or stone
in your designs; they are all by nature friendly and beautiful."
Frank Lloyd Wright (American, 1867-1959). Quoted by Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer
and Gerald Nordland, ed. Frank Lloyd Wright: In the Realm of Ideas. p 48.
"Bring out the nature of the materials, let their nature intimately into
your scheme. . . . Reveal the nature of the wood, plaster, brick or stone
in your designs; they are all by nature friendly and beautiful."
Frank Lloyd Wright. Quoted by Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer and Gerald Nordland,
ed. Frank Lloyd Wright: In the Realm of Ideas. p 48.
"Those who talk on the razor-edge of double-meanings pluck the rarest
blooms from the precipice on either side." Logan Pearsall Smith
(1865-1946), American essayist, aphorist. Afterthoughts, "In the World",
1931.
"Don't everlastingly read messages into paintings -- there's the Daisy --
you Don't rave over or read messages into it -- you just look at that
bully little Flower -- isn't that enough?" John Marin (1872-1953),
American modernist painter.
"Human life itself may be almost pure chaos, but the work of the artist--
the only thing he's good for-- is to take these handfuls of confusion and
disparate things, things that seem to be irreconcilable, and put them
together in a frame to give them some kind of shape and meaning.
Even if it's only his view of a meaning. That's what he's for-- to give
his view of life." Katherine Anne Porter (1890-1980), American short-story
writer, novelist. Interview in Writers at Work, Second Series, edited by
George Plimpton, 1963.
"Life has to be given a meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no
meaning." Henry Miller (1891-1980), American author.The Wisdom of the Heart,
"Creative Death", 1947.
"Today, each artist must undertake to invent himself, a lifelong act of
creation that constitutes the essential content of the artist's work.
The meaning of art in our time flows from this function of self-creation.
Art is the laboratory for making new men." Harold Rosenberg (1906-1978),
American art critic, author. Discovering the Present, part 4, chapter 24,
1973.
"The meanings of things aren't stable. Anything can mean almost anything."
Jasper Johns (1930-) American Pop art painter. Interviewed by Peter Plagens,
Newsweek, "Rally Round the Flag Boys", October 28, 1996.
"By day, Structuralists constructed the structure of meaning and pondered
the meaning of structure. By night, Deconstructivists pulled the cortical
edifice down. And the next day the Structuralists started in again."
Tom Wolfe (1931-), American journalist, author. From Bauhaus to Our House,
chapter 5, 1981
"For me art shouldn't be a fixed idea that I have before I start making it.
I want it to include all the fragility and doubt that I go through the day
with. Sometimes I'll take a walk just to forget whatever good idea I had
that day because I like to go into the studio not having any ideas. I want
the insecurity of not knowing, like performers feel before a performance.
Everything I can remember, and everything I know, I have probably already
done, or somebody else has." Robert Rauschenburg (1925-), American artist,
quoted by Michael Kimmelman in an article about Rauschenburg, New York
Times, Arts&Leisure section 2, August27, 2000, p. 26.
"Perpetual modernness is the measure of merit in every work of art."
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82), U.S. essayist, poet, philosopher.
Representative Men, "Plato" (1850).
"I have lived enough among 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 (1885-1930),
American writer. Assorted Articles.
"For me art shouldn't be a fixed idea that I have before I start making it.
I want it to include all the fragility and doubt that I go through the day
with. Sometimes I'll take a walk just to forget whatever good idea I had
that day because I like to go into the studio not having any ideas. I want
the insecurity of not knowing, like performers feel before a performance.
Everything I can remember, and everything I know, I have probably already
done, or somebody else has." Robert Rauschenburg (1925-), American artist,
quoted by Michael Kimmelman in an article about Rauschenburg, New York
Times, Arts&Leisure section 2, August27, 2000, p. 26.
"Nostalgia . . . is a powerful emotion, feel-good seductive but also
potentially dangerous, and something to be particularly wary of at a
conservative, self-satisfied moment in American art and culture."
Holland Carter (contemporary) American art critic. New York Times,
June 18, 1999, in a review of a survey of works by Maxfield Parrish
(American, 1870-1966).
"All profound original art looks ugly at first." Clement Greenberg
(1909-1994), American art critic.
"Mr. Rauschenberg, talking apropos of doing what other people have already
done, recalls an idea he once had for an exhibition of paintings imitating
different Abstract Expressionists. 'Imagine the luxury, the excessive
energy and the iridescent glory of doing a Rothko, ' he says. 'Of course,
it would have been blaspheming, but you think what it would be like to
throw yourself into that incredible mood? Then out of respect I decided
I wouldn't paint like Rothko or Franz Kline because I'd be in their way and
they in mine. That was also John Cage's attitude [American, 1912-1992].
John always said, there's enough room in the world so that nobody has to
be that close to another person." Robert Rauschenburg (1925-), American
artist, in an article by Michael Kimmelman, New York Times, Arts&Leisure
section 2, August 27, 2000
"The fact is popular art dates. It grows quaint. How many people feel
strongly about Gilbert and Sullivan today compared to those who felt
strongly in 1890?" Stephen Sondheim (1930-), contemporary American
composer, lyricist. International Herald Tribune (Paris, June 20, 1989).
"Popular culture is the new Babylon, into which so much art and intellect
now flow. It is our imperial sex theater, supreme temple of the western
eye. We live in the age of idols. The pagan past, never dead, flames again
in our mystic hierarchies of stardom." Camille Paglia (1947-), American
author, critic, educator. Sexual Personae, chapter 4 (1990).
While working on the editing of a film, Jerry Lewis was talking to
Stanley Kubrick about how difficult it is to make something of quality
out of bad material: "I was in my cutting room around 1 in the morning,
and he strolls in smoking a cigarette and says, 'Can I watch?'
I said: 'Yeah you can watch. You wanna see a Jew go down? Stand there.
' That was the night I coined the expression, 'You cannot polish a turd.'
And then Kubrick looked at me and said, 'You can if you freeze it.'
" Jerry Lewis (contemporary), American actor and director.
"What They Say About Stanley Kubrick, " New York Times Magazine,
July 4, 1999.
"I don't advise anyone to take it [painting] up as a business proposition,
unless they really have talent . . . . But I will say that I have did
remarkable for one of my years, and experience." Anna Mary Robertson,
called "Grandma Moses" (1860-1961), American primitive painter. The New
York Times, May 11, 1947.
"I like to go to art museums and name the untitled paintings... Boy With
Pail... Kitten On Fire." Steven Wright, contemporary American commedian.
"Form ever follows function."
Louis Henry Sullivan (1856-1924), U.S. architect. "The Tall Office Building
Artistically Considered, " in Lippincott's Magazine (March 1896).
"Architecture is the triumph of human imagination over materials, methods
and men, to put man into possession of his own earth."
Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959), U.S. architect. Quoted by Bruce Brooks
Pfeiffer and Gerald Nordland, ed. Frank Lloyd Wright: In the Realm of Ideas.
p 48.
"Art is a jealous mistress and if a man has a genius for painting, poetry,
music, architecture or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill
provider."
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1888), American essayist, critic, and philosopher.
"Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his nature into
his pictures." Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887), American clergyman.
"Architecture is the art of how to waste space."
Philip Johnson (1906-), U.S. architect, historian. New York Times
(Dec. 27, 1964).
"Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist." Ralph Waldo Emerson
(1803-82), U.S. essayist, poet, philosopher.
"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps he hears a
different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however
measured or far away." Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), U.S. philosopher,
author, naturalist.
"You don't find a heart surgeon in the Yellow Pages!" Jules Olitski
(contemporary) American abstract painter. Defending elitism, as quoted
by Matthew Collings, It Hurts: New York Art from Warhol to Now, 1999, 21
Publishing / Fitz&Co.
"The art world should begin by admitting that it is elitist. It is cut off
from the rest of the world to the extent thatthat it chooses to be.
Contemporary artists like those in 'Sensation' [NY exhibit of works by
young British artists, owned by adman Charles Saatchi] expect you to relate
to their work on their terms." Michael Kimmelman, American art critic,
New York Times, October 1, 1999, B29
"Popular culture is the new Babylon, into which so much art and intellect
now flow. It is our imperial sex theater, supreme temple of the western eye.
We live in the age of idols. The pagan past, never dead, flames again
in our mystic hierarchies of stardom." Camille Paglia (1947-), American
author, critic, educator. Sexual Personae, chapter 4 (1990).
"Artists can color the sky red because they know it's blue. Those of us who
aren't artists must color things the way they really are or people might
think we're stupid." Jules Feiffer, contemporary American cartoonist and
writer.
"Public art can express civic values, enhance the environment, transform a
landscape, heighten our awareness, or question our assumptions. Placed in a
public site, this art is therefore for everyone, a form of collective
community expression--from the once celebrated but now unrecognized general
on a horse to the abstract sculpture that may baffle the passer-by on first
glance." Penny Balkin Bach (contemporary American), art administrator.
"Art is an adventure into an unknown world, which can only be explored by
those willing to take the risks."
Mark Rothko (1903-1970), American Abstract Expressionist painter.
"Art is coming face to face with yourself. That's what's wrong with Benton.
He came face to face with Michelangelo-- and he lost."
Jackson Pollock (1912-1956), American Abstract Expressionist painter, about
Thomas Hart Benton (American, 1889-1975), painter. See American Scene
painting, social realism, and mural.
"Art establishes the basic human truths which must serve as the touchstone
of our judgment."
John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) U.S. president. An address at Amherst College,
October 26, 1963.
"I am for an art that takes its forms from the lines of life itself, that
twists and extends and accumulates and spits and drips and is heavy and
coarse and blunt and sweet and stupid as life itself."
Claes Oldenburg (1929-), American Pop artist. In an exhibition catalogue,
1961.
"My dear Tristan, to be an artist at all is like living in Switzerland
during a world war."
Tom Stoppard (1937-), American [?] playwright. Travesties, 1974.
"Art is making something out of nothing and selling it."
Frank Zappa (1940-1993), American musical satirist.
"All profound original art looks ugly at first." Clement Greenberg (
1909-1994), American art critic.
"TRUTH, n: An ingenious compound of desirability and appearance."
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914), American writer. The Cynic's Word Book, also
known as The Devil's Dictionary, 1906.
"The yuck factor is selling everything from snack foods to first-aid
products. The targets are consumers 5 to 15, a group who spend more than
$25 billion a year on toys, clothing, snacks, music and other items
according to studies by Find/SVP, a market research company in Manhattan."
Dana Canaday (contemporary), American journalist. "Pitching to Kids? Try
Grossing Them Out, " New York Times, Monday, February 16, 1998.
"What is the speed of dark?" Steve Wright, contemporary American commedian.
"When sign makers go on strike, what is written on their picket signs?"
Steve Wright, contemporary American commedian
"Size is important when you draw objects that you want to appear closer to
your eye larger than objects that you want to appear farther away from your
eye. Large objects look closer." Mark Kistler, American TV artist /
instructor. "The Twelve Renaissance Words of Drawing in 3-D, " 1997.
A slide showing the locations often recommended for labeling information on
them.
"Interestingly, according to modern astronomers, space is finite. This is a
very comforting thought-- particularly for people who can never remember
where they have left things." Woody Allen (1935-), American writer, actor,
filmmaker, and musician.
"My work is for dreamers, it's to stimulate people's dreams." Larry Bell
(), contemporary American sculptor, interviewed in Artlines Magazine,
January 1985.
"When companies ship Styrofoam, what do they pack it in?" Steve Wright,
contemporary American commedian.
"Success is relative: It is what we can make of the mess we have made of
things." T. S. Eliot (1888-1965), American-British writer. The Family
Reunion, 1939.
"The dimension that counts for the creative person is the space he creates
within himself. This inner space is much closer to the infinite than the
other, and it is the privilege of the balanced mind-- and the search for
an equilibrium is essential-- to be as aware of inner space as he is of
outer space."
Mark Tobey (1890-1976), American modernist painter.
"The creative process? . . . You must say to yourself I feel like doing so
and so, I think it's that simple."
Louise Nevelson (1899-1988), American sculptor.
"For me art shouldn't be a fixed idea that I have before I start making it.
I want it to include all the fragility and doubt that I go through the day
with. Sometimes I'll take a walk just to forget whatever good idea I had
that day because I like to go into the studio not having any ideas. I want
the insecurity of not knowing, like performers feel before a performance.
Everything I can remember, and everything I know, I have probably already
done, or somebody else has." Robert Rauschenburg (1925-), American artist,
quoted by Michael Kimmelman in an article about Rauschenburg, New York Times,
Arts&Leisure section 2, August27, 2000, p. 26.
"Genius is not a possession of the limited few, but exists in some degree
in everyone. Where there is natural growth, a full and free play of
faculties, genius will manifest itself." Robert Henri (1865-1929), American
painter, and member of The Eight and the Ashcan School, The Art Spirit, 1923.
"It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing really doing
nothing." Gertrude Stein (1874-1946), American writer. Everybody's
Autobiography, 1937.
"No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of
imagination." Edward Hopper (1882-1967), American painter.
"To me, a painter, if not the most useful, is the least harmful member of
our society." Man Ray (1890-1976), modern American photographer, artist.
Self Portrait, chapter 6 (1963). See Dada, photography, readymade, and
Surrealism.
"Yet in spite of the total disregard of the dictionary of manners, he shows
a politeness toward us which no other man here would have shown . . .
Cézanne is one of the most liberal artists I have ever seen. He prefaces
every remark with Pour moi it is so and so, but he grants that everyone may
be as honest and as true to nature from their convictions; he doesn't
believe that everyone should see alike." Mary Cassatt (1845-1926),
American Impressionist painter. In a letter to Mrs. Stillman, 1894.
"Nobody sees a flower, really-- it is so small-- we haven't time, and to
see takes time, like to have a friend takes time." Georgia O'Keeffe
(1887-1986), modernist American painter, whose Poppy, 1927, oil on canvas,
30 x 36 inches, is in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts,
St. Petersburg, Florida.
"What you see is what you see." Frank Stella (American, 1936-),
American Minimalist painter, in an interview, 1966.
"Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful." Ralph
Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), American writer.
"The question is not what you look at, but what you see."
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), American writer.
"The painting has a life of its own." Jackson Pollock (1912-1956), American
Abstract Expressionist painter.
"Painting is an attempt to come to terms with life. There are as many
solutions as there are human beings." George Tooker (1920-), contemporary
American painter.
"One thing I would never photograph is a dog lying in the mud." Diane Arbus
(1923-1971), American photographer.
"PAINTING, n: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather and
exposing them to the critic." Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914), American writer.
The Cynic's Word Book, also known as The Devil's Dictionary, 1906. Art
critic and art criticism.
"The light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off due to budget cuts."
Steve Wright, contemporary American commedian.
"I believe that if it were left to artists to choose their own labels, most
would choose none." Ben Shahn (1898-1969), American social realist painter.
"Keep the juices flowing by jangling around gently as you move."
Leroy Robert "Satchel" Paige (1906-1982), American baseball player, and
the first Black pitcher in the American League.
"When this girl at the art museum asked me whom I liked better, Monet or
Manet, I said, 'I like mayonnaise.' She just stared at me, so I said it
again, louder. Then she left. I guess she went to try to find some
mayonnaise for me." Jack Handey, contemporary American commedian.
[Is Jack Handey actually the pen name of someone else?] Deep Thoughts.
"The artist must say it without saying it." Duke Ellington (1899-1974),
American jazz compozer, pianist, and bandleader.
"I believe that if it were left to artists to choose their own labels, most
would choose none." Ben Shahn (1898-1969), American social realist painter.
"Keep the juices flowing by jangling around gently as you move."
Leroy Robert "Satchel" Paige (1906-1982), American baseball player, and the
first Black pitcher in the American League.
"One thing I would never photograph is a dog lying in the mud."
Diane Arbus (1923-1971), American photographer.
"Art today is a new kind of instrument, an instrument for modifying consciousness and organizing new modes of sensibility . . . . Artists have had to become self-conscious aestheticians: continually challenging their means, their materials and methods."
Susan Sontag (1933-), American writer. Against Interpretation.
"Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it
'the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of
the soul.' The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature,
entitles no man to the sacred name of 'Artist.'"
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1845), U.S. poet, critic, short-story writer.
"Marginalia, " in Southern Literary Messenger (Richmond, VA, June 1849;
reprinted in Essays and Reviews, 1984).
"It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance... and I know
of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process."
Henry James (1843-1916), U.S. author. Letter, July 10, 1915
"Interestingly, according to modern astronomers, space is finite. This is
a very comforting thought-- particularly for people who can never remember
where they have left things." Woody Allen (1935-), American writer, actor,
filmmaker, and musician.
"The fact is popular art dates. It grows quaint. How many people feel
strongly about Gilbert and Sullivan today compared to those who felt
strongly in 1890?" Stephen Sondheim (1930-), contemporary American
composer, lyricist. International Herald Tribune (Paris, June 20, 1989).
"If the man who paints only the tree, or flower, or other surface he sees
before him were an artist, the king of artists would be the photographer.
It is for the artist to do something beyond this: in portrait painting to
put on canvas something more than the face the model wears for that one day;
to paint the man, in short, as well as his features." James Mcneill Whistler
(1834-1903), American painter and etcher. The Gentle Art of Making Enemies,
"Propositions" (1890). Aestheticism and art for art's sake.
"A portrait is a painting with something a little wrong with the mouth."
John Singer Sargent (1856-1925), American painter of many portraits.
"The point on which we differ is one which a long experience of portrait
painting has made me perfectly familiar-I have very often been reproached
with giving a hard expression to ladies' portraits, especially when I have
retained some look of intelligence in a face." Quote of John Singer Sargent,
undated letter.
"The genuine artist is never 'true to life.' He sees what is real, but not
as we are normally aware of it. We do not go storming through life like
actors in a play. Art is never real life." Wallace Stevens (1879-1955),
American poet. Opus Posthumous, "On Poetic Truth" (1959).
"The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence.
He inspires self-distrust. He guides their eyes from himself to the spirit
that quickens him. He will have no disciple." A. Bronson Alcott (1799-1888),
U.S. educator, social reformer. Orphic Sayings, "The Teacher" (1840).
"A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops."
Henry Adams (1838-1918), American historian. The Education of Henry Adams,
chapter 20 (1907).
"Arrogance, pedantry, and dogmatism . . . the occupational diseases of
those who spend their lives directing the intellects of the young."
Henry S. Canby (1878-1961), American author, editor. Alma Mater,
chapter 5 (1936).
"Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition."
Jacques Barzun (1907-), American scholar. Newsweek (New York, December 5,
1955).
"In our world of big names, curiously, our true heroes tend to be anonymous.
In this life of illusion and quasi-illusion, the person of solid virtues
who can be admired for something more substantial than his well-knownness
often proves to be the unsung hero: the teacher, the nurse, the mother, the
honest cop, the hard worker at lonely, underpaid, unglamorous, unpublicized
jobs." Daniel J. Boorstin (1914-), American historian. The Image, chapter 2
(1961).
"Housework is a breeze. Cooking is a pleasant diversion. Putting up a
retaining wall is a lark. But teaching is like climbing a mountain."
Fawn M. Brodie (1915-1981), U.S. biographer. Quoted in: Los Angeles Times
Home Magazine (February 20, 1977).
"A teacher should have maximal authority, and minimal power."
Thomas Szasz (1920-), American psychiatrist. The Second Sin, "Education"
(1973).
"There is no real teacher who in practise does not believe in the existence
of the soul, or in a magic that acts on it through speech." Allan Bloom
(1930-1992), American educator, author. The Closing of the American Mind,
Preface (1987).
"Not 'Seeing is Believing, ' you ninny, but 'Believing is Seeing.'
For modern art has become completely literary: the paintings and other
works exist only to illustrate the text." Tom Wolfe (American, 1931-),
journalist, author. The Painted Word, chapter 1, 1975.
"Hooray for the difference!" (Vive la difference!) Anonymous,
French proverb.
"Only through art can we get outside of ourselves and know another's
view of the universe which is not the same as ours and see landscapes
which would otherwise have remained unknown to us like the landscapes
of the moon. Thanks to art, instead of seeing a single world, our own,
we see it multiply until we have before us as many worlds as there are
original artists.... And many centuries after their core, whether we
call it Rembrandt or Vermeer, is extinguished, they continue to send
us their special rays." Marcel Proust (1871-1922) French writer.
The Maxims of Marcel Proust, translated by Justin O'Brien, published 1948.
"For Arp, art is Arp." Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), French-American Cubist,
then Dadaist, writing about Jean [aka Hans] Arp (French, 1887-1966),
another Dadaist / Surrealist. From a catalogue, Arp, Galleria Schwarz,
Milan, 1965.
"Art is the unceasing effort to compete with the beauty of flowers
-- and never succeeding." Marc Chagall (1889-1985), French Surrealist
painter.
"I have the loftiest idea, and the most passionate one, of art. Much too
lofty to agree to subject it too anything. Much too passionate to want
to divorce it from anything." Albert Camus (1913-1961), French
existentialist writer. Notebooks, 1942-1951.
"Do not imagine that Art is something which is designed to give gentle
uplift and self-confidence. Art is not a brassiere. At least, not in the
English sense. But do not forget that brassiere is the French word for
life-jacket." Julian Barnes (1946-), English writer. Flaubert's Parrot.
"When it is dark, it seems to me as if I were dying, and I can't think any
more." Claude Monet (1840-1926), French Impressionist painter.
"Study nocturnal effects a great deal, lamps, candles, etc. This area of
art can become very important today." Edgar Degas (1880-1917), French
Impressionist. Quoted by Theodore Reff, The Notebooks of Edgar Degas,
Oxford, 1976, number 23, p. 45.
"Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep
going back and beginning all over again." André Gide (1869-1951), French
writer. Le traité du Narcisse, 1891.
"There are things that don't deserve to be said briefly." Jean Rostand
(18..-19..), French writer. De la vanité, 1925.
"A work of art has an author and yet, when it is perfect, it has something
which is anonymous about it." Simone Weil (1909-1943), French philosopher.
"Only that which is provisional endures." ("Il n'y a que le temporaire qui
dure longtemps.") Anonymous, French proverb.
"I am still a victim of chess. It has all the beauty of art, and much more.
It cannot be commercialized. Chess is much purer than art in its social
position." Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), French artist. Time (New York,
March 10, 1952). Duchamp had almost entirely given up painting in favor
of chess thirty years before.
"He who knows how to appreciate color relationships, the influence of one
color on another, their contrasts and dissonances, is promised an infinitely
diverse imagery." Sonia Delaunay (1885-1979), French painter. Quoted by
Jacques Damase in Sonia Delaunay: Rythms and Colors.
"The most universal quality is diversity." Montaigne (1533-1592), French
writer. "Of the resemblance of children to their fathers, "Essays, 1580-1588.
"Conversation in real life is full of half-finished sentences and
overlapping talk. Why shouldn't painting be too?" Edgar Degas (1834-1917),
French Impressionist.
"I am always at work, but not in order to arrive at that finish which
arouses the admiration of idiots." Paul Cézanne (1839-1906),
French Post-Impressionist painter. Letter to his mother in 1874.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right
to say it." Voltaire (1694-1778), French philosopher, author.
"Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on
itself, and dies of all others. But without freedom, no socialism either,
except the socialism of the gallows." Albert Camus (1913-60),
French-Algerian philosopher, author. "Socialism of the Gallows, "
interview in Demain (Paris, Feb. 21, 1957; reprinted in Resistance,
Rebellion, and Death, 1961).
"If I could make musicians of you all, it would be to your advantage as
painters. All is harmony in nature, a little too much, or a little less,
disturbs the scale and strikes a discordant note. One has to learn to sing
true with the pencil or brush, just as with the voice; correct form is
like correct sound." Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867),
French painter, advising his students in 1864. Walter Pach, Ingres, 1939.
"The secret of drawing and modeling resides in the contrasts and
relationships of tone." Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), French Post-Impressionist
painter, in a letter to Emile Bernard. Paul Cézanne, Letters, edited by
John Rewald, 1984.
"Art is harmony. Harmony is the analogy of contrary and similar elements
of tone, of color, and of line, considered according to their dominants,
and under the influence of a particular light, in gay, calm, or sad
combinations . . . . Gaiety of tone is given by the luminous dominant;
of color, by the warm dominant; of line, by lines above the horizontal."
Georges Seurat (1859-1891), French Neo-Impressionist painter, in a letter
to Maurice Beaubourg, August 28, 1890. Artists on Art: From the Fourteenth
to the Twentieth Century, edited by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves, 1945.
"In art progress consists not in extension but in the knowledge of its
limits." Georges Braque (1882-1963), French Cubist painter, Nord-Sud Revue,
December 12, 1917.
"Work lovingly done is the secret of all order and all happiness."
Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), French sculptor.
"Just as all thought, and primarily that of non-signification, signifies
something, so there is no art that has no signification." Albert Camus
(1913-1960), French-Algerian philosopher, author. The Rebel, part 4, 1951;
translated 1953.
"Everywhere one seeks to produce meaning, to make the world signify, to
render it visible. We are not, however, in danger of lacking meaning; quite
the contrary, we are gorged with meaning and it is killing us."
Jean Baudrillard (1929-), French semiologist.The Ecstasy of Communication,
"Seduction, or the Superficial Abyss", 1987.
"There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint
a rose, because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses
that were ever painted." Henri Matisse (1869-1954), French artist. Quoted
in obituaries reporting his death, Nov. 5, 1954.
"I have often thought that this simple medium is comparable to the violin
with its bow: a surface, a gouge - four taut strings and a swatch of hair.
The gouge, like the violin bow, is in direct rapport with the feelings of
the engraver. And it is so true that the slightest distraction in the
tracing of a line causes a slight involuntary pressure of the fingers on
the gouge and has an adverse effect on the line." Matisse, 1946.
"A painting requires a little mystery, some vagueness, some fantasy. When
you always make your meaning perfectly plain you end up boring people."
Edgar Degas (1834-1917), French Impressionist painter and sculptor.
Georges Jeanniot, Memories of Degas, 1933.
"Mystery is, moreover, like a kind of atmosphere which bathes the greatest
works of the masters." Ausust Rodin (1840-1917), French sculptor. Art,
translated by Paul Gsell, 1912.
"To explain away the mystery of a great painting-- if such a feat were
possible-- would be irreparable harm. . . . If there is no mystery then
there is no 'poetry'." Georges Braque (1882-1963), French Cubist painter.
To John Richardson, Observer, December, 1957.
"What moves men of genius, or rather what inspires their work, is not new
ideas, but their obsession with the idea that what has already been said is
still not enough." Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863), French Romantic painter.
"Nothing is repeated, and nothing is unparalleled." Edmond and Jules
Goncourt (1822-1896&1830-1870), French brothers who collaborated as
writers. Journal, 1867.
"Habitual orderliness of ideas is your sole road to happiness, and to reach
it, orderliness in all else, even the most casual things, is needed."
Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863), French Romantic painter, May 16, 1823.
The Journals of Eugène Delacroix, translated by Walter Pach, 1937.
"No one can be profoundly original who does not avoid eccentricity."
André Maurois (1885-1967), French author, critic. The Art of Writing,
"Turgenev" (1960).
"It seems to me that today, if the artist wishes to be serious to cut out a
little original niche for himself, or at least preserve his own innocence
of personality-- he must once more sink himself in solitude." Edgar Degas
(1834-1917), French Impressionist painter and sculptor.
"A picture is something which calls for as much cunning, trickery and vice
as the perpetration of a crime." Edgar Degas (1834-1917), French
Impressionist. Quoted by P.A.Lemoisne, Degas et Son Oeuvre, Paris,
1946-1949, volume 1.
"A picture is nothing but a bridge between the soul of the artist and that
of the spectator." Edgar Degas.
"During the years 1945-1965 (I am referring to Europe), there was a certain
way of thinking correctly, a certain style of political discourse,
a certain ethics of the intellectual. One had to be on familiar terms
with Marx, not let one's dreams stray too far from Freud.... These were
the... requirements that made the strange occupation of writing and
speaking a measure of truth about oneself and one's time acceptable."
Michel Foucault (1926-1984), French philosopher. Gilles Deleuze and
Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, Preface, 1972.
"Criticism is easy, art is difficult."
Detouches [Philippe Nericault] (1680-1754) French. Le Glorieux, 1732.
"Shall I tell you what I think are the two qualities of a work of art? First, it must be the indescribable, and second, it must be inimitable."
Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841-1914), French Impressionist. From an interview with Walter Pach in Scribner's Magazine, May, 1912.
"You come to nature with all her theories, and she knocks them all flat."
Pierre Auguste Renoir.
"Art requires philosophy, just as philosophy requires art. Otherwise, what
would become of beauty?" Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), French
Post-Impressionist. Intimate Journals (translated by Van Wyck Brooks,
1923; reprinted 1930, p. 193).
"Only through art can we get outside of ourselves and know another's view
of the universe which is not the same as ours and see landscapes which
would otherwise have remained unknown to us like the landscapes of the moon.
Thanks to art, instead of seeing a single world, our own, we see it
multiply until we have before us as many worlds as there are original
artists.... And many centuries after their core, whether we call it
Rembrandt or Vermeer, is extinguished, they continue to send us their
special rays." Marcel Proust (1871-1922) French writer. The Maxims of
Marcel Proust, translated by Justin O'Brien, published 1948.
"For Arp, art is Arp." Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), French-American Cubist,
then Dadaist, writing about Jean [aka Hans] Arp (French, 1887-1966),
another Dadaist / Surrealist. From a catalogue, Arp, Galleria Schwarz,
Milan, 1965.
"Art is the unceasing effort to compete with the beauty of flowers -- and
never succeeding." Marc Chagall (1889-1985), French Surrealist painter.
"I have the loftiest idea, and the most passionate one, of art. Much too
lofty to agree to subject it too anything. Much too passionate to want to
divorce it from anything." Albert Camus (1913-1961), French existentialist
writer. Notebooks, 1942-1951.
"Painting is an essentially concrete art and can only consist of the
representation of real and existing things . . . an object which is
abstract, not visible, non-existent, is not within the realm of painting."
Gustave Courbet (1819-1877), French Realist painter.
"Painting is an essentially concrete art and can only consist of the
representation of real and existing things . . . an object which is abstract,
not visible, non-existent, is not within the realm of painting."
Gustave Courbet.
"Painting is the representation of visible forms. . . The essence of
realism is its negation of the ideal." Gustave Courbet. [I suspect that
this and the preceding quote are two translations of the same text.
Please let me know if you have any info that would resolve this question. -
M. Delahunt]
"I have studied the art of the masters and the art of the moderns, avoiding
any preconceived system and without prejudice. I have no more wanted to
imitate the former than to copy the latter; nor have I thought of achieving
the idle aim of 'art for art's sake.' No! I have simply wanted to draw from
a thorough knowledge of tradition the reasoned and free sense of my own
individuality. To know in order to do: such has been my thought. To be able
to translate the customs, ideas, and appearance of my time as I see them--
in a word, to create a living art-- this has been my aim." Gustave Courbet,
preface to World's Fair catalogue, 1855.
"Just as all thought, and primarily that of non-signification, signifies
something, so there is no art that has no signification." Albert Camus
(1913-1960), French-Algerian philosopher, author. The Rebel, part 4 (1951;
translated in 1953).
"If a man throws himself out of the fourth floor window, and you can't make
a sketch of him before he gets to the ground, you will never do anything
big." Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863), French Romantic painter.
"If your work of art is good, if it is true, it will find its echo and make
its place-- in six months, in six years, or after you are gone. What is the
difference?" Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880), French writer.
"It would be a mistake to ascribe this creative power to an inborn talent.
In art, the genius creator is not just a gifted being, but a person who has
succeeded in arranging for their appointed end, a complex of activities,
of which the work is the outcome. The artist begins with a vision --
a creative operation requiring an effort. Creativity takes courage."
Henri Matisse (1869-1954), French modernist artist.
"Men of genius have a way utterly peculiar to themselves of seeing things."
Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863), French Romantic painter, The Journals of
Eugène Delacroix, translated by Walter Pach, 1937.
"What moves men of genius, or rather what inspires their work, is not new
ideas, but their obsession with the idea that what has already been said is
still not enough." Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863), French Romantic painter,
May 15, 1824, in Delacroix by Phoebe Pool, 1969.
"One is not born a genius, one becomes a genius." Simone de Beauvoir (
1908-1986), French writer, existentialist, and feminist, In the Woman's Eye,
1973.
"A painting requires a little mystery, some vagueness, some fantasy.
When you always make your meaning perfectly plain you end up boring people."
Edgar Degas (1834-1917), French Impressionist painter and sculptor.
Georges Jeanniot, Memories of Degas, 1933.
"Mystery is, moreover, like a kind of atmosphere which bathes the greatest
works of the masters." Ausust Rodin (1840-1917), French sculptor. Art,
translated by Paul Gsell, 1912.
"To explain away the mystery of a great painting-- if such a feat were
possible-- would be irreparable harm. . . . If there is no mystery then
there is no 'poetry'." Georges Braque (1882-1963), French Cubist painter.
To John Richardson, Observer, December, 1957.
"It is the movement of people and things that distracts and even consoles,
if there is still consolation to be had for one so unhappy. If the leaves
of the trees did not move, how sad the trees would be and we too."
Edgar Degas (1834-1917), French Impressionist. In a letter to a friend,
1886.
"Nature yields herself to those who trouble to explore her. But she demands
an exclusive love. The works of art we love, we love only because they are
derived from her. The rest are merely works of empty pedantry."
Jean-Franois Millet (1814-1875), French Barbizon painter, precursor to
the Realist school.
"Boredom soon overcomes me when I am contemplating nature." Edgar Degas
(1834-1917), French Impressionist. Notebook, 1858.
"You come to nature with all her theories, and she knocks them all flat."
Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841-1914), French Impressionist painter.
"Art will never be able to exist without nature." Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947),
French painter.
"When I'm finishing a picture I hold some God-made object up to it-- a rock,
a flower, or a tree branch-- as a final test. If the painting stands up
beside a thing man cannot make, the painting is authentic. If there's a
clash, it's bad art." Marc Chagall (1887-1985), Russian-French painter,
graphic artist.
"Art is the unceasing effort to compete with the beauty of flowers-- and
never succeeding." Marc Chagall.
"To takke photographs is to hold one's breath when all faculties converge in
the face of fleeting reality. It is at that moment that mastering an image
becomes a great physical and intellectual joy." Henri Cartier-Bresson
(1908-), French photographer.
"We must . . . give the image of what we actually see." Paul Cézanne
(1839-1906), French Post-Impressionist painter.
"The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed, will set off a
revolution." Paul Cézanne.
"I shut my eyes in order to see." Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), French
Post-Impressionist artist.
"The painter should not paint what he sees, but what will be seen."
Paul Valéry (1871-1945), French poet, essayist.
"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is
invisible to the eye." Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900-1944), French writer
and aviator.
"What importance does nature have by herself? She is nothing more than an
excuse for the artist to express himself. . . . . Art is the never ending
search for expression of internal feelings by means of plastic form."
Gustave Moreau (1826-1898), French Symbolist painter. Quoted by Julius
Kaplan in The Art of Gustave Moreau: Theory, Style, and Content, 1972.
"Expression, to my way of thinking, does not consist of the passions
mirrored upon a human face or betrayed by a violent gesture. The whole
arrangement of my picture is expression. The place occupied by figures or
objects, the empty spaces around them, the proportions-- everything plays a
part. Composition is the art of arranging in a decorative manner the
various elements at the painter's disposal for the expression of his
feelings. In a picture every part will be visible and will play the role
conferred upon it, be it principal or secondary. All that is not useful in
the picture is detrimental." Henri Matisse (1869-1954), French painter.
"Notes of a Painter, " La Grande Revue Magazine, December 25, 1908.
"When it is dark, it seems to me as if I were dying, and I can't think any
more." Claude Monet (1840-1926), French Impressionist painter.
"Study nocturnal effects a great deal, lamps, candles, etc. This area of
art can become very important today." Edgar Degas (1880-1917), French
Impressionist. Quoted by Theodore Reff, The Notebooks of Edgar Degas,
Oxford, 1976, number 23, p. 45.
"It is the movement of people and things that distracts and even consoles,
if there is still consolation to be had for one so unhappy. If the leaves
of the trees did not move, how sad the trees would be and we too."
Edgar Degas (1834-1917), French Impressionist. In a letter to a friend, 1886.
"Nature yields herself to those who trouble to explore her. But she demands
an exclusive love. The works of art we love, we love only because they are
derived from her. The rest are merely works of empty pedantry."
Jean-Franois Millet (1814-1875), French Barbizon painter, precursor to the
Realist school.
"Boredom soon overcomes me when I am contemplating nature." Edgar Degas
(1834-1917), French Impressionist. Notebook, 1858.
"You come to nature with all her theories, and she knocks them all flat."
Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841-1914), French Impressionist painter.
"Art will never be able to exist without nature." Pierre Bonnard
(1867-1947), French painter.
"When I'm finishing a picture I hold some God-made object up to it--
a rock, a flower, or a tree branch-- as a final test. If the painting
stands up beside a thing man cannot make, the painting is authentic.
If there's a clash, it's bad art." Marc Chagall (1887-1985),
Russian-French painter, graphic artist.
"Art is the unceasing effort to compete with the beauty of flowers--
and never succeeding." Marc Chagall.
"Onlyy when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good
things." Edgar Degas (1834-1917), French Impressionist artist.
"Painting is very easy when you don't know how, but very difficult when you
do." Edgar Degas.
"Drawing and color are not separate at all; in so far as you paint, you
draw. The more color harmonizes, the more exact the drawing becomes. When
the color achieves richness, the form attains its fullness also." Paul
Cézanne (1839-1906), French Post-Impressionist painter. Quoted by émile
Bernard, L'Occident, July, 1904. See drawing.
"To take photographs is to hold one's breath when all faculties converge in
the face of fleeting reality. It is at that moment that mastering an image
becomes a great physical and intellectual joy." Henri Cartier-Bresson
(1908-), French photographer.
"The artist is the confidant of nature. Flowers carry on dialogues with
him through the graceful bending of their stems and the harmoniously
tinted nuances of their blossoms. Every flower has a cordial word which
nature directs towards him."
Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), French sculptor.
"Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment." Claude Monet
(1840-1926), French Impressionist painter.
"It would be a mistake to ascribe this creative power to an inborn talent.
In art, the genius creator is not just a gifted being, but a person who
has succeeded in arranging for their appointed end, a complex of activities,
of which the work is the outcome. The artist begins with a vision --
a creative operation requiring an effort. Creativity takes courage."
Henri Matisse (1869-1954), French modernist artist.
"Surrealism. Noun, masculine. Pure psychic automatism, by which one intends
to express verbally, in writing or by any other method, the real
functioning of the mind. Dictation by thought, in the absence of control
exercised by reason, and beyond any aesthetic or moral preoccupation."
André Breton (1896-1966), French surrealist writer defining Surrealism in
his Surrealist Manifesto, 1924.
"By means of a back, we want a temperament, an age, a social condition, to
be revealed; through a pair of hands, we should be able to express a
magistrate or a tradesman; by a gesture, a whole series of feelings. A
physiognomy will tell us that this fellow is certainly an orderly, dry,
meticulous man, whereas that one is carelessness and disorderliness itself.
An attitude will tell us that this person is going to a business meeting,
whereas that one is returning from a love tryst. 'A man opens a door; he
enters; that is enough: we see that he has lost his daughter.' Hands that
are kept in pockets can be eloquent. The pencil will be steeped in the
marrow of life." Edgar Degas (1834-1917), French Impressionist. Quoted by
Edmond Duranty, La Nouvelle Peinture: A Propos du Groupe d'Artistes Qui
Expose dans les Galleries Durand-Ruel, Paris, 1876, translated by Linda
Nochlin and included in the Sources and Documents series, Impressionism and
Post-Impressionism, 1874-1904, Englewood Cliffs, 1966.
After his model-- Ambroise Vollard-- had posed for a portrait by
Paul Cézanne for one hundred and fifteen sittings, Cézanne abandoned the
canvas with the remark: "I am not altogether displeased with the shirt."
Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), French Post-Impressionist painter.
"Criticism is easy, art is difficult."
Detouches [Philippe Nericault] (1680-1754) French. Le Glorieux, 1732.
"Shall I tell you what I think are the two qualities of a work of art?
First, it must be the indescribable, and second, it must be inimitable."
Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841-1914), French Impressionist. From an interview
with Walter Pach in Scribner's Magazine, May, 1912.
"You come to nature with all her theories, and she knocks them all flat."
Pierre Auguste Renoir.
"Art requires philosophy, just as philosophy requires art. Otherwise,
what would become of beauty?"
Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), French Post-Impressionist. Intimate Journals
(translated by Van Wyck Brooks, 1923; reprinted 1930, p. 193).
"A picture is something that requires as much knavery, trickery, and deceit
as the perpetration of a crime." Edgar Degas (1834-1917), French
Impressionist artist.
"The canvas upon which the artist paints is the spectator's mind." Kakuzo
Okakura (1862-1913), Japanese writer. The Book of Tea.
"I make black and white prints because I want to go back to the beginning,
and because in prints black and white are absolute: these two colors
express the most delicate vibration, the most profound tranquillity, and
unlimited profundity." Shiko Munakata (1903-1975), Japanese.
"The French have taste in all they do, / Which we are quite without; / For
Nature, which to them gave goût / To us gave only gout." Anonymous English
poet. [Goût is the French equivalent for taste.]
"But all categories of art, idealistic or realistic, surrealistic or
constructivist (a new form of idealism) must satisfy a simple test
(or they are in no sense works of art): they must persist as objects
of contemplation." Herbert Read (1893-1968), British art writer.
Modern Sculpture.
"Right now architecture and sculpture are
calling to each other, and calling for response that's intelligent, not for
more ghastly lumps of sculpture . . . which have no sense of scale and are
just plonked down in public places." Anthony Caro (1924-), English sculptor.
From an interview with Tim Marlowe for Tate: The Art Magazine, 1994.
"That which is static and repetitive is boring. That which is dynamic and
random is confusing. In between lies art."John A. Locke (1632-1704),
English philosopher.
"Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment
is recognition of the pattern."Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947),
British philosopher. Dialogues, June 10, 1943 (1954).
"Then we went to Matisse's studio. He's one of the neo, neo Impressionists,
quite interesting and lots of talent but very queer. He does things very
much like Pamela's [Fry's 7-year-old daughter]." Roger Fry (1866-1934),
British art critic. Letter to his wife, 1909.
"I am now completely Matissiste . . . after studying all of his paintings
I am quite convinced of his genius." Roger Fry. Letter to Simon Bussy, 1911.
"Be attentive to the minute particular." William Blake (1757-1827),
English artist and poet.
"It does not matter how badly you paint, so long as you don't paint badly
like other people." George Moore (1852-1933), British writer. Confessions
of a Young Man, 1888.
"In my experience, anyone can paint if he doesn't have to . . . . During
my apprentice days I felt encouraged by the advice of Winston Churchill
. . . . 'Don't be afraid of the canvas.' I have now reached the point where
the canvas is afraid of me." Beatrice Lillie (1898-1988),
British comedienne. Every Other Inch a Lady, 1927.
"Variety's the very spice of life." William Cowper (1731-1800),
English poet.
"Variety is the mother of enjoyment." Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881),
English statesman, author.
"I think the experiential test of whether this art is great or good, or
minor or abysmal is the effect it has on your own sense of the world and of
yourself. Great art changes you." Sister Wendy Beckett, contemporary
English art historian, on BBC Radio 2, 1994
"History warns us... that it is the customary fate of new truths to begin
as heresies and to end as superstitions." Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-95),
English biologist.
"It must be admitted that there is a degree of instability which is
inconsistent with civilization. But, on the whole, the great ages have been
unstable ones." Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947), British philosopher.
"Nothing is ever done until everyone is convinced that it ought to be
done, and has been convinced for so long that it is now time to do
something else." F. M. Cornford (1874-1943), British author, poet.
"Civilization is a movement and not a condition, a voyage and not a harbor."
Arnold J. Toynbee (1889-1975), British historian. The Reader's Digest
(Oct. 1958).
"Having found a surface sympathetic to his aims and to the effect it has
upon the image, [Francis Bacon] was content to look no further and he has
used ready-primed canvases stretched back to front from the same artists'
colourman for the last twenty or thirty years." Andrew Durham, "Note on
Technique", in the exhibition catalogue Francis Bacon, London, The Tate
Gallery/Thames&Hudson, 1985, p.231.
"Art among a religious race produces relics; among a military one, trophies;
among a commercial one, articles of trade." Henry Fuseli (1741-1825),
English Romantic painter.
"The works of art, by being publicly exhibited and offered for sale, are
becoming articles of trade, following as such the unreasoning laws of
markets and fashion; and public and even private patronage is swayed by
their tyrannical influence." Prince Albert (1819-1861), husband to English
Queen Victoria.
"In painting, you have to destroy in order to gain . . . you have got to
sacrifice something you are not quite pleased with in order to get something
better." Graham Sutherland (1903-1980), British painter. Daily Express,
November 30, 1954.
"Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go
together." John Ruskin (1819-1900), British art critic.
"Taste is the death of a painter." Walter Sickert (1860-1942), English
painter. A Free House!
"It is to be observed that straight lines vary only in length, and
therefore are least ornamental. That curv'd lines as they can be varied in
their degrees of curvature as well as in their length, begin on that
account to be ornamental. That straight and curv'd lines joined, being a
compound line, vary more than curves alone, and so become somewhat more
ornamental. That the waving line, or line of beauty, varying still more,
being composed of two curves contrasted, becomes still more ornamental and
pleasing . . . and that the serpentine line, or line of grace, by its
waving and winding at the same time different ways, leads the eye in a
pleasing manner along the continuity of its variety." William Hogarth
(1697-1764), English painter. The Analysis of Beauty.
"Speaking to a lawyer about pictures is something like talking to a butcher
about humanity." John Constable (1776-1837), English landscape painter.
Letter to John Fisher, Bishop of Salisbury, January 17, 1824.
"Art, like morality, consists in drawing a line somewhere." G.K. Chesterton
(1874-1936), English author.
"As in the fourteen lines of a sonnet, a few strokes of the pencil can hold
immensity." Dame Laura Knight (1877-1970), English. The Magic of a Line.
"All photographs are there to remind us of what we forget. In this-- as in
other ways-- they are the opposite of paintings. Paintings record what the
painter remembers. Because each one of us forgets different things, a photo
more than a painting may change its meaning according to who is looking at
it." John Berger (1926-), British novelist, critic. Keeping a Rendezvous,
"How Fast Does It Go?", 1992.
"They are good furniture pictures, unworthy of praise, and undeserving of
blame." John Ruskin (1819-1900), English art critic, author.
Modern Painters, volume 3, part 1, section 5, chapter 5 (1856).
"The true art of memory is the art of attention." Samuel Johnson (1709-84),
English author, lexicographer. The Idler, number 74, in Universal Chronicle
(London, Sept. 15, 1759; reprinted in Works of Samuel Johnson, volume 2,
edited by W. J. Bate, John M. Bullitt and L. F. Powell, 1963).
"Do not imagine that Art is something which is designed to give gentle
uplift and self-confidence. Art is not a brassiere. At least, not in the
English sense. But do not forget that brassiere is the French word for
life-jacket." Julian Barnes (1946-), English writer. Flaubert's Parrot.
"Art among a religious race produces relics; among a military one, trophies;
among a commercial one, articles of trade." Henry Fuseli (1741-1825),
English Romantic painter.
"To write simply is as difficult as to be good." W. Somerset Maugham
(1874-1965), English author and playwrite.
"That which is static and repetitive is boring. That which is dynamic and
random is confusing. In between lies art." John A. Locke (1632-1704),
English philosopher.
"There is a right physical size for every idea." Henry Moore (1898-1987),
The Sculptor's Aims, 1966.
"Energy is eternal delight; and from the earliest times human beings have
tried to imprison it in some durable hieroglyphic. It is perhaps the first
of all the subjects of art." Kenneth Clark (1903-1983), English art writer.
The Nude: A Study of Ideal Art.
"Whatever else we are intended to do, we are not intended to succeed:
failure is the fate allotted." Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894),
British writer.
"The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery." Francis Bacon
(1909-), British painter.
"There is nothing harder to learn than painting and nothing which most
people take less trouble about learning. An art school is a place where
about three people work with feverish energy and everybody else idles to a
degree that I should have conceived unattainable by human nature."
G.K.Chesterton (1874-1936), British writer. Autobiography.
"He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the
greatest numbers of the greatest ideas."
John Ruskin (1819-1900) English critic. Modern Painters, Vol. I, part I,
chapter 2, 1843.
"History has remembered the kings and warriors, because they destroyed; Art
has remembered the people, because they created."
William Morris (1834-1896), English artist, poet, and social reformer;
leader of the Arts and Crafts Movement.
"There really is no such thing as Art. There are only artists."
E. H. Gombrich, English art historian, writing in 1950.
"The purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love color the most."
John Ruskin (1819-1900), English art critic.
"Political correctness is the natural continuum from the party line. What
we are seeing once again is a self-appointed group of vigilantes imposing
their views on others. It is a heritage of communism, but they don't seem
to see this." Doris Lessing (1919-), British novelist. Sunday Times: Books,
London, May 10, 1992.
"The thing has been blown up out of all proportion. PC language is not
enjoined on one and all-- there are a lot more places where you can say
"spic" and "bitch" with impunity than places where you can smoke a c
igarette." Katharine Whitehorn (1926-), British journalist. Observer,
London, Aug. 25, 1991.
"That which is static and repetitive is boring. That which is dynamic and
random is confusing. In between lies art."
John A. Locke (1632-1704), English philosopher.
"I would rather see the portrait of a dog that I know, than all the
allegorical paintings they can shew me in the world." Samuel Johnson
(1709-1784), English writer and lexicographer. Johnson Miscellanies,
edited by G.B. Hill, 1987.
"Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an
intelligence and make it a soul?" John Keats (1795-1821),
English Romantic poet.
"Detail is the heart of realism, and the fatty degeneration of art."
Clive Bell (1881-1964), English art writer. Art.
"What office is there which involves more responsibility, which requires
more qualifications, and which ought, therefore, to be more honourable,
than that of teaching?" Harriet Martineau (1802-76), English writer,
social critic. Society in America, volume 3, "Occupation" (1837).
"A schoolmaster should have an atmosphere of awe, and walk wonderingly, as
if he was amazed at being himself." Walter Bagehot (1826-1877),
English economist, critic. "Hartley Coleridge" (1852; reprinted in Literary
Studies, volume 1, 1878).
"Life is amazing: and the teacher had better prepare himself to be a medium
for that amazement." Edward Blishen (1920-), British author. Donkey Work,
part 2, chapter 5 (1983).
"The temple of art is built of words. Painting and sculpture and music
are but the blazon of its windows, borrowing all of their significance from
the light, and suggestive only of the temple's uses." J.G. Holland
(1819-1881), British. Plain Talks on Familiar Subjects.
"Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment
is recognition of the pattern."
Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947), British philosopher. Dialogues, June 10,
1943 (1954).
"But all categories of art, idealistic or realistic, surrealistic or
constructivist (a new form of idealism) must satisfy a simple test (or they
are in no sense works of art): they must persist as objects of
contemplation."
Herbert Read (1893-1968), British art writer. Modern Sculpture.
"Invention is one of the great marks of genius, but if we consult experience,
we shall find, that it is by being conversant with the inventions of others,
that we learn to invent: as by reading the thoughts of others we learn to
think." Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792), English painter, art writer, and
the first president of the Royal Academy, Discourses on Art, 1769-1790.
"One cannot explain the existence of genius. It is better to enjoy it."
Ernst Gombrich (1909-), British art historian. The Story of Art.
"Once you had to be a genius to make works of art. Now you have to be a
genius to understand them." Roy Emmins (1939-), British [?].
"Only in men's imagination does every truth find an effective and
undeniable existence. Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master
of art as of life." Joseph Conrad (1857-1924), Polish-born English novelist.
A Personal Record, chapter 1 (1912).
"Man consists of body, mind and imagination. His body is faulty, his mind
untrustworthy, but his imagination has made him remarkable." John Masefield
(1874-1967), English writer.
"The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery." Francis Bacon
(1909-), British painter.
"You do not see with the lens of the eye. You see through that, and by
means of that, but you see with the soul of the eye." John Ruskin
(1819-1900), English art critic.
"If man has one good memory to go by, that may be enough to save him."
Feodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881), Russian novelist.
"Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the harmonies, the soul is the piano
with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or
another, to cause vibrations in the soul." Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944),
modern Russian painter, one of the first creators of pure abstraction in
modern painting and founder of Der Blaue Reiter.
"The artist expresses only what he has within himself, not what he sees
with his eyes."Alexej von Jawlensky (1864-1941), Russian painter of Der
Blaue Reiter. Das Kunstwerk II, 1948.
"If today's arts love the machine, technology and organization, if they
aspire to precision and reject anything vague and dreamy, this implies an
instinctive repudiation of Chaos and a longing to find the form appropriate
to our times." Oskar Schlemmer (1888-1943), German artist. His diary, April
1926.
"Surely all art is the result of one's having been in danger, of having
gone through an experience all the way to the end, where no one can go any
further." Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), German poet. Letter, June 24,
1907, to his wife (published in Rilke's Letters on Cézanne, 1952;
translated 1985).
"For the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates
the work of art from its parasitical dependance upon ritual. To an ever
greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed
for reproducibility. But the instant the criterion of authenticity ceases
to be applicable to artistic production, the total function of art is
reversed. Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on
another practise-- politics." Walter Benjamin (1892-1940), German critic.
"The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, " 1936, in
Illuminations, reprinted in 1969.
"However indifferent men are to universal truths, they are keen on those
that are individual and particular." Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860),
German philosopher. "Psychological Remarks, " Parerga and Paralipomena, 1851.
"Surely all art is the result of one's having been in danger, of having
gone through an experience all the way to the end, where no one can go
any further." Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), German poet. Letter, June 24,
1907, to his wife (published in Rilke's Letters on Cézanne, 1952;
translated 1985).
"Analogies decide nothing, that is true; but they can make one feel more at
home." Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), German founder of psychoanalysis. In New
Lectures on Psychoanalysis.
"An aphorism ought to be entirely isolated from the surrounding world like
a little work of art and complete in itself like a hedgehog."
Friedrich Schlegel (1772-1829), German philosopher, critic, writer.
Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, "Selected Aphorisms from
The Athenaeum, " aphorism 206 (1968; first published 1798).
"Art is there to be seen, not talked about, except perhaps in its presence."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (174901832), German writer and scientist, who
did important work on the nature of color, and spent 50 years on his
two-part dramatic poem Faust.
"Artists who have won fame are embarrassed by it; thus their first works
are often their best." Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), German Romantic
composer.
"With everything that we do, we desire more or less the end; we are
impatient to be done with it and glad when it is finished. It is only the
end in general, the end of all ends, that we wish, as a rule, to put off as
long as possible." Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), German philosopher.
"Psychological Remarks, " Parerga and Paralipomena, 1851.
"The artist alone sees spirits. But after he has told of their appearing
to him, everybody sees them." Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832),
German author.
"Close your bodily eye, that you may see your picture first with the eye of
the spirit. Then bring to light what you have seen in the darkness, that
its effect may work back, from without to within." Caspar David Friedrich
(1774-1840), German Romantic painter. Quoted by Carius, Friedrich der
Landschaftmaler, 1841.
"I call architecture frozen music."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), German author. Letter to Eckerman
(1829)
"As an artist I am . . . attracted by decadence, by those who exhaust their
lives in the shallow pursuits of pleasure . . . . Occasionally, I feel that
spiritually I participate in all these kinds of lives." Emil Nolde
(1867-1956), German Expressionist painter. Years of Struggle, 1934.
"Blue is the male principle, stern and spiritual. Yellow the female
principle, gentle, cheerful and sensual. Red is matter, brutal and heavy,
and always the color which must be fought and vanquished by the other two."
Franz Marc (1880-1916), German painter of Der Blaue Reiter. In a letter to
Auguste Macke.
"The Conditions for Creativity: 1, the ability to be puzzled; 2, the ability
to concentrate; 3, the ability to accept conflict and tension; 4, the
willingness to be born every day (courage and faith); 5, to feel a sense
of self."
Erich Fromm, Creativity and Its Cultivation, 1959.
"Education for creativity is nothing short of education for living."
Erich Fromm, Creativity and Its Cultivation, 1959.
"Creative minds have been known to survive any sort of bad training."
Anna Freud, The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense, 1946.
"Anybody who paints and sees a sky green and pastures blue ought to be
sterilized." Adolph Hitler (1889-1945), German dictator and perpetrator
of genocide, who painted as a very young man.
"Popular art is the dream of society; it does not examine itself." Margaret
Atwood (1939-), Canadian novelist, poet, critic. "A Question Of
Metamorphosis, " interview in Malahat Review, no. 41 (1977; reprinted in
Conversations, edited by Earl G. Ingersoll, 1990).
"No bubble is so iridescent or floats longer than that blown by the
successful teacher." Sir William Osler (1849-1919), Canadian physician.
Address, October 4, 1911, Glasgow (quoted in: Harvey Cushing, Life of Sir
William Osler, volume 2, chapter 31, 1925).
"The artist is not a special kind of man, but every man is a special kind
of artist."
Ananda Coomraswamy (1877-1947), Indian writer. Transformation of Nature
in Art.
"To begin to fall into habit is to begin to cease to be" Miguel de
Unamuno (1864-1936), Spanish philosopher. The Tragic Sense of Life,
chapter 9 (1913).
"The dream of reason produces monsters." Francisco de Goya y Lucientes
(1746-1828), Spanish painter and printmaker.
"Mistakes are almost always of a sacred nature. Never try to correct them.
On the contrary: rationalize them, understand them thoroughly. After that,
it will be possible for you to sublimate them." Salvador Dali (1904-1989)
Spanish surrealism painter, printmaker.
"I try to apply colors like words that shape poems, like notes that shape
music." Joan Mir (1893-1983), Spanish Surrealist artist.
"First I saw the mountains in the painting; then I saw the painting in the
mountains." Chinese Proverb. Chinese art.
"Painting cannot equal nature for the marvels of mountains and water, but
nature cannot equal painting for the marvels of brush and ink."
Tung-Ch'i-chang (1555-1636), Chinese painter.
"Do not seek fame. Do not make plans. Do not be absorbed by activities.
Do not think that you know. Be aware of all that is and dwell in the
infinite. Wander where there is no path. Be all that heaven gave you, but
act as though you have received nothing. Be empty, that is all." Chuang Tsu
(c. 350-275 BC), Chinese Taoist philosopher-poet.
"Painting cannot equal nature for the marvels of mountains and water, but
nature cannot equal painting for the marvels of brush and ink."
Tung-Ch'i-chang (1555-1636), Chinese painter, as quoted by Sylvan Barnet,
A Short Guide to Writing about Art, 2000, p. xx.
"Art is both creation and recreation. Of the two ideas, I think art as
recreation or as sheer play of the human spirit is more important."
Lin Yutang (1895-1976), Chinese. The Importance of Living.
"[The artist Wang Mo] excelled in splattering ink to paint landscapes
. . . . There was a good deal of wildness in him, and he loved wine.
Whenever he wished to paint a hanging scroll, he would first drink, then
after he was drunk he would splatter ink. Laughing or singing, he would
kick at it with his feet or rub it with his hands. . . . According to the
forms and appearances, he would make mountains and rocks, clouds and water."
Anonymous Chinese writer in a ninth century treatise on painting.
"Painting cannot equal nature for the marvels of mountains and water, but
nature cannot equal painting for the marvels of brush and ink."
Tung-Ch'i-chang (1555-1636), Chinese painter.
"First I saw the mountains in the painting; then I saw the painting in the
mountains." Chinese Proverb.
"Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible."
Paul Klee (1879-1940), Swiss artist. Bauhaus.
"For the artist communication with nature remains the most essential
condition. The artist is human; himself nature; part of nature within
natural space." Paul Klee (1879-1940), Swiss painter, taught at the Bauhaus.
"Paths of the Study of Nature" (in the Yearbook of the Staatliche Bauhaus,
Weimar, 1919-1923; reprinted in The Pedagogical Sketchbook, 1953).
"Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible." Paul Klee
(1879-1940), Swiss artist, teacher at the Bauhaus.
"I make a head to see how to see, to know how to see, not to make a work of
art." Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966), Swiss sculptor and painter.
Peter Selz, Alberto Giacometti, 1965.
"For the artist communication with nature remains the most essential
condition. The artist is human; himself nature; part of nature within
natural space." Paul Klee (1879-1940), Swiss painter, taught at the
Bauhaus. "Paths of the Study of Nature" (in the Yearbook of the Staatliche
Bauhaus, Weimar, 1919-1923; reprinted in The Pedagogical Sketchbook, 1953).
"Color has taken hold of me; no longer do I have to chase after it. I know
that it has hold of me forever. That is the significance of this blessed
moment. Color and I are one. I am a painter." Paul Klee (1879-1940), Swiss
painter.
"To know how to suggest is the great art of teaching. To attain it we must
be able to guess what will interest; we must learn to read the childish
soul as we might a piece of music. Then, by simply changing the key, we
keep up the attraction and vary the song." Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1821-81),
Swiss philosopher, poet. Journal Intime (1882; translated by Mrs. Humphry
Ward, 1892), entry for November 16, 1864.
"One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with
gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so
much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the
growing plant and for the soul of the child." Carl Jung (1875-1961),
Swiss psychiatrist. The Gifted Child (1943; reproduced in Collected Works,
volume 17, paragraph 249, edited by William McGuire, 1954).
"Without the meditative background that is criticism, works become isolated
gestures, ahistorical accidents, soon forgotten." Milan Kundera (1929-),
Czech author, critic. "On Criticism, Aesthetics, and Europe, " in Review of
Contemporary Fiction (Summer 1989; originally from Kundera's introduction
to Franois Ricard, La Littérature Contre Elle-Mme).
"What distinguishes modern art from the art of other ages is criticism."
Octavio Paz (1914-), Mexican poet.
"To be an artist, one must . . . never shirk from the truth as he
understands it, never withdraw from life." Diego Rivera (1886-1957),
Mexican painter. See artist and mural.
"In any painting, as in any other work of art, there is always an idea,
never a story. The idea is the point of depararture, the first cause of the
plastic construction, and it is present all the time as energy creating
matter. The stories and other literary associations exist only in the mind
of the spectator, the painting acting on the stimulus." José Clemente Orozco
(1883-1949), Mexican painter, "New World, New Races, and New Art, "
Creative Art Magazine, January 1929.
"To be an artist, one must . . . never shirk from the truth as he
understands it, never withdraw from life."
Diego Rivera (1886-1957), Mexican painter.
"It's really absurd to make an image, like a human image, with paint, today,
when you think about it . . . But then all of a sudden, it was even more
absurd not to do it." Willem de Kooning (1904-1997), Dutch-American
Abstract Expressionist painter. Quoted by David Sylvester.
"Allow me to say that Father Bach has been a strong inspiration to me, and
that many a print reached definite form in my mind while I was listening
to the lucid, logical language he speaks." Maurits Cornelius Escher
(1898-1972), Dutch graphic artist.
"I try in my prints to testify that we live in a beautiful and orderly
world, and not in a formless chaos, as it sometimes seems."
Maurits Cornelius Escher (1898-1972), Dutch graphic artist.
"The urge toward simplification and order keeps us going and inspires us in
the midst of chaos. Chaos is the beginning; simplicity is the end."
Maurits Cornelius Escher (1898-1972), Dutch graphic artist.
"Talent and all that are really for the most part just baloney. Any
schoolboy with a little aptitude can perhaps draw better than I; but what
he lacks in most cases is that tenacious desire to make it reality, that
obstinate gnashing of teeth and saying, "Although I know it can't be done,
I want to do it anyway." Maurits Cornelius Escher (1898-1972), Dutch
graphic artist. Optical illusion and tesselation.
"It was Richepin who said somewhere: 'The love of art means loss of real
love.' . . . True, but on the other hand, real love makes you disgusted
with art." Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), Dutch Post-Impressionist painter.
Letter to his brother, Theo, March, 1896.
"Paintings have a life of their own that derives entirely from the
painter's soul." Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), Dutch Post-Impressionist
painter. Jan Hulsker, The Complete van Gogh, 1977.
"The position of the artist is humble. He is essentially a channel."
Piet Mondrian (1872-1944), modern Dutch painter, leader of De Stijl.
"The principle task of civilization, its actual raison d'etre, is to defend
us against nature." Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), Austrian physician and
founder of psychoanalysis. The Future of an Illusion, 1927.
"You need not leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. You
need not even listen, simply wait, just learn to become quiet, and still,
and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked.
It has no choice; it will roll in ecstasy at your feet." Franz Kafka
(1883-1924), Austrian writer of stories and novels. See Existentialism.
"The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest
of things without it." Carl Jung (1875-1961), Austrian psychiatrist. Modern
Man in Search of a Soul, 1933.
"What a strange machine man is! You fill him with bread, wine, fish, and
radishes, and out comes sighs, laughter, and dreams."
Nikos Kazantzakis (1885-1957), Greek novelist.
"A man can only attain knowledge with the help of those who possess it.
This must be understood from the very beginning. One must learn from him
who knows." George Gurdjieff (c. 1877-1949), Greek-Armenian religious
teacher, mystic. Quoted in: P. D. Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous,
chapter 2 (1949).
"Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist,
not of the sitter." Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), Anglo-Irish playwright, author.
Said by the character Basil Hallward, in The Picture of Dorian Gray, chapter
1 (1891).
"A thing in Nature becomes much lovelier if it reminds us of a thing in Art,
but a thing in Art gains no real beauty through reminding us of a thing in
Nature. The primary aesthetic impression of a work of art borrows nothing
from recognition or resemblance." Oscar Wilde (1854-1900),
Irish born writer, responding to a critic.
"It is through art, and through art only, that we can realize our
perfection; through art and art only that we can shield ourselves from
the sordid perils of actual existence."
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), English poet and playwright. The Critic as Artist,
part II, 1891.
"Art is the most intense mode of invidualism that the world has known."
Oscar Wilde.
"Paradoxically though it may seem, it is none the less true that life
imitates art far more than art imitates life." Oscar Wilde.
"Bad art is a great deal worse than no art at all."
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), English author, playwright. "House Decoration, "
lecture, 1882 (published in Aristotle at Afternoon Tea:
The Rare Oscar Wilde, 1991).
"OSCAR WILDE: 'You know how well known you are in England- ' EDGAR DEGAS:
'Fortunately less so than you.'" Daniel Halévy. His diary, January 2, 1896.
"Absolute catholicity of taste is not without its dangers. It is only an
auctioneer who should admire all schools of art." Oscar Wilde (1854-1900),
Anglo-Irish playwright, author. Pall Mall Gazette (London, February 8, 1886).
"A man of great common sense and good taste, meaning thereby a man without
originality or moral courage." George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950),
Anglo-Irish playwright, critic.
"Popularity is the crown of laurel which the world puts on bad art. Whatever
is popular is wrong." Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), Anglo-Irish playwright,
author. Lecture, June 30, 1883, to students of the Royal Academy, London
(published in Aristotle at Afternoon Tea: The Rare Oscar Wilde, 1991).
"All Artists are Anarchists."
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Irish playwright. Quoted by painter
Augustus John, c. 1945, Chiaroscuro.
"Popularity is the crown of laurel which the world puts on bad art.
Whatever is popular is wrong." Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), Anglo-Irish
playwright, author. Lecture, June 30, 1883, to students of the Royal
Academy, London (published in Aristotle at Afternoon Tea: The Rare Oscar
Wilde, 1991).
"It is through art, and through art only, that we can realize our perfection;
through art and art only that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils
of actual existence."
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), English poet and playwright. The Critic as Artist,
part II, 1891.
"Art is the most intense mode of invidualism that the world has known."
Oscar Wilde.
"Paradoxically though it may seem, it is none the less true that life
imitates art far more than art imitates life."
Oscar Wilde.
"After painting comes Sculpture, a very noble art, but one that does not
in the execution require the same supreme ingenuity as the art of painting,
since in two most important and difficult particulars, in foreshortening
and in light and shade, for which the painter has to invent a process,
sculpture is helped by nature. Moreover, Sculpture does not imitate color
which the painter takes pains to attune so that the shadows accompany
the lights." Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), Italian Renaissance painter,
sculptor, etc. Literary Works.
"Let the poses of the people and the parts of their bodies be so disposed
that they display the intent of their minds." Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519),
Italian Renaissance artist, etc., Treatise on Painting, 1651.
"The air as soon as it is light, is filled with innumerable images to which
the eye serves as a magnet." Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), Florentine
Renaissance painter, designer, engineer, inventor, etc., Treatise on
Painting, 1651
"We must smash, demolish, and destroy our traditional harmony, which makes
us fall into a gracefulness created by timid and sentimental cubs. We
disown the past because we want to forget, and in art to forget means to
be renewed." Umberto Boccioni (18821916), Italian Futurist painter and
sculptor. Pittura, scultura futuriste, 1914.
"A man paints with his brains and not with his hands."
Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564), Italian Renaissance artist.
"If you wish to acquire good style for mountains, and to have them look
natural, get some large stones, rugged, and not cleaned up; and copy them
from nature, applying the lights and the darks as your system requires."
Cennino Cennini, an early 15th century follower of Giotto, in his treatise
on painting.
"Look at walls spotted with varrious stains or with a mixture of different
kinds of stones. If you are about to invent some scenes, you will be able
to see in it a resemblance to various different landscapes adorned with
mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, plains, with valleys and various groups of
hills." Leonardo da Vinci (Italian, 1452-1519), Italian Renaissance artist.
Treatise on Painting.
"A man paints with his brains and not with his hands."
Michelangelo (1475-1564), Italian Renaissance artist.
"He who wishes to paint Christ's story must live with Christ." Fra Angelico
(-1455), Florentine painter of the early Renaissance. Argan, Fra Angelico
and His Times, 1955.
"Men of genius sometimes accomplish most when they work the least, for they
are thinking out inventions and forming in their minds the perfect idea
that htey subsequently express with their hands." Attributed to Leonardo da
Vinci (1452-1519), Italian Renaissance artist, etc. Giorgio Vasari.
"A portrait, to be a work of art, neither must nor may resemble the sitter. .
. the painter has within himself the landscapes he wishes to produce. To
depict a figure one must not paint that figure; one must paint its
atmosphere." Umberto Boccioni (1882-1916), Italian Futurist painter and
sculptor. Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting, April 11, 1910.
"After painting comes Sculpture, a very noble art, but one that does not in
the execution require the same supreme ingenuity as the art of painting,
since in two most important and difficult particulars, in foreshortening
and in light and shade, for which the painter has to invent a process,
sculpture is helped by nature. Moreover, Sculpture does not imitate color
which the painter takes pains to attune so that the shadows accompany the
lights." Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), Italian Renaissance painter,
sculptor, etc. Literary Works.
"To become truly immortal, a work of art must escape all human limits:
logic and common sense will only interfere. But once these barriers are
broken, it will enter the realms of childhood visions and dreams."
Giorgio DeChirico (1888-1978), Italian surrealist painter.
"You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within
himself." Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), Italian astronomer.
"We teachers can only help the work going on, as servants wait upon a
master." Maria Montessori (1870-1952), Italian educationist. The Absorbent
Mind, chapter 1 (1949).
"No longer will I paint interiors, and people reading, and women knitting.
I shall paint living people who breathe and feel and suffer and love."
Edvard Munch (1863-1944), Norwegian painter and printmaker.
"My art has allowed me to bare my soul." Edvard Munch. Quoted by Ragna
Stang in Edvard Munch: The Man and His Art, 1977.
"Art is a half-effaced recollection of a higher state from which we have
fallen since the time of Eden."Saint Hildegarde (1098-1179).
"Art is the objectification of feeling, and the subjectification of nature."
Susanne Langer (1895-1985). Mind, An Essay on Human Feeling.
"I am now completely Matissiste . . . after studying all of his paintings
I am quite convinced of his genius." Roger Fry. Letter to Simon Bussy, 1911.
I don't know anything about art, but I know what I like."
Gelett Burgess (1866-1951).
"The arts humanize the curriculum while affirming the interconnectedness
of all forms of knowing. They are a powerful means to improve general
education." Charles Fowler
"With a subject matter as broad as life itself, the arts easily relate
to aspects of almost everything else that is taught." Charles Fowler
"The arts provide a more comprehensive and insightful education because
they invite students to explore the emotional, intuitive, and irrational
aspects of life that science is hard pressed to explain." Charles Fowler
"Bad artists always admire each others work."
Unknown.
"A picture is worth a thousand words." Proverb.
"For sheer excitement you can keep movie premieres and roller-coasters.
An empty white canvas waiting to be filled. That's the thing." Pam Brown
(1928-), contemporary painter.
"Discovery of truth is the sole purpose of philosophy, which is the most
ancient occupation of the human mind and has a fair prospect of existing
with increasing activity to the end of time."
Unknown
"Every art changes inevitably in its manifestations as its creators
develop, but less than one might think: it always keeps its simple,
noble function, indispensible to man, which is to communicate." Karel
Kupka. Dawn of Art, 1965.
"I find that while age, experience, and personal taste determine an
individual's answers to questions about art, discussion with others brings
depth, new insights, and the pleasure of shared experiences." Gladys S.
Blizzard
"A painting is never finished. It simply stops in interesting places."
Paul Gardner
"For make no mistake about it, work for an artist is a highly conscious,
rational process at the end of which the work of art emerges as mastered
reality-- not at all a state of intoxicated inspiration." Ernst Fischer
(contemporary), British [?]. The Necessity of Art: A Marxist Approach.
"Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost its savor,
wherewith shall it be salted?" Jesus Christ. Matthew 5:13.
"Whatever thy hand findest to do, do it with all thy heart." Jesus Christ.
"Ars Artium, Ars Amoris." (The art of all arts: the art of love.) Saint
. . . . , a medieval monk, quoted by Thomas Merton.
"Creativity arises out of the tension between spontaneity and limitations,
the latter (like the river banks) forcing the spontaneity into the various
forms which are essential to the work of art or poem." Rollo May, The
Courage to Create, 1975.
"There is no disputing about taste." ("De gustibus non est disputandum.")
Anonymous, Latin proverb.
"There is no new thing under the sun." The Bible: Ecclesiastes, 1:9.
"I don't have a lot of respect for talent. Talent is genetic. It's what
you do with it that counts." Martin Ritt.
"Trying to understand modern art is like trying to follow the plot in a
bowl of alphabet soup." Anonymous
"Now Mr. Mutt's fountain is not immoral, that is absurd, no more than a
bathtub is immoral. It is a fixture that you see every day in plumbers'
show windows. Whether Mr. Mutt with his own hands made the fountain or not
has no importance. He CHOSE it. He took an ordinary article of life, placed
it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and
point of view-- created a new thought for that object."
From an anonymous article published by Duchamp, Beatrice Wood, and
H.-P. Roche in Blind Man, May 1917.
"Daumier paints with an enormous capacity for absolute empathy; a complete
identification of himself with the figures he paints. He sets forth what it
feels like to do something; not what somebody looks like doing it."
David Sylvester, The New Statesman, 1963.
"We've reached a point where we are not a very empathetic people, and art
without empathy is art without an audience. My basic viewpoint is that
without art we're alone." Jamake Highwater, interviewed in Art News Magazine,
August 1984.
"Creativity arises out of the tension between spontaneity and limitations,
the latter (like the river banks) forcing the spontaneity into the various
forms which are essential to the work of art or poem." Rollo May,
The Courage to Create, 1975.
"Art is a half-effaced recollection of a higher state from which we have
fallen since the time of Eden."
Saint Hildegarde (1098-1179).
"Art is the objectification of feeling, and the subjectification of nature."
Susanne Langer (1895-1985). Mind, An Essay on Human Feeling.
"Creativity arises out of the tension between spontaneity and limitations,
the latter (like the river banks) forcing the spontaneity into the various
forms which are essential to the work of art or poem." Rollo May, The
Courage to Create, 1975.
"Whenever I see a Frans Hals I feel like painting, but when I see a
Rembrandt I feel like giving up!" Max Liebermann (1847-1935).
"What makes photography a strange invention-- with unforeseeable
consequences-- is that its primary raw materials are light and time."
John Berger, contemporary art critic.
"Learning to draw is really a matter of learning to see -- to see correctly
-- and that means a good deal more than merely looking with the eye."
Kimon Nicolaides.
"True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist."
Albert Einstein (1879-1955), German mathematician and physicist.
"It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression
and knowledge." Albert Einstein (1879-1955), German-born U.S. physicist.
"E=mc squared" (Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared.)
Albert Einstein (1879-1955), German mathematician. 1905.
"When I examine myself and my method of thought, I come to the conclusion
that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing
knowledge." Albert Einstein (1879-1955) German scientist
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the
source of all true art and science." Albert Einstein (1879-1955), German
scientist.
"True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist."
Albert Einstein (1879-1955), German mathematician and physicist.
space-time - A concise way of referring to the understanding of the
universe as an entity composed of inextricably interwoven space and time;
a conception based especially on the theories of Albert Einstein (
German-American physicist, 1879-1955). In this view of the universe,
anything that happens to alter the condition of space also affects the
conditions of time, and vice versa.
"The supreme misfortune is when theory outstrips performance."
Albert Einstein (1879-1955), German-born American theoretical physicist,
The World as I See It, 1979.
"I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination
is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination
encircles the world." Albert Einstein (1879-1955), German mathematician
and physicist.
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the
source of all true art and science." Albert Einstein (1879-1955), German
scientist.
"E=mc squared" (Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared.)
Albert Einstein (1879-1955), German mathematician. 1905.
"It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression
and knowledge." Albert Einstein (1879-1955), German-born U.S. physicist.
"To finish a work? To finish a picture? What nonsense! To finish it means
to be through with it, to kill it, to rid it of its soul, to give it its
final blow. . . the coup de grce for the painter as well as for the
picture." Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Spanish artist. Quoted in: Jaime
Sabartés, Picasso: portraits et souvenirs, chapter 7 (1946).
"The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place:
from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape,
from a spider's web." Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Spanish artist.
"Conversation avec Picasso", in Cahiers d'Art, volume 10, number 10
(1935; translated in Alfred H. Barr Jr., Picasso: Fifty Years of His Art,
1946).
"Disciples be damned. It's not interesting. It's only the masters that
matter. Those who create." Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Spanish artist.
Quoted in: Michel George-Michel, De Renoir Picasso, (1954, pp. . 94-95).
"Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life."
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Spanish artist.
"Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life."
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Spanish artist.
"Ah, good taste! What a dreadful thing! Taste is the enemy of creativeness."
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Spanish artist. Quote (Anderson, S.C., March 24,
1957).
"The more technique you have, the less you have to worry about it.
The more technique there is, the less there is." Pablo Picasso (1881-1973),
Spanish artist. Quoted in: Hélène Parmelin, Picasso Plain, chapter 4
(published in France, 1959; reprinted in 1963).
"There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot, but there
are others who, thanks to their art and intelligence, transform a yellow
spot into the sun." Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Spanish artist.
"An idea is a point of departure and no more. As soon as you elaborate it,
it becomes transformed by thought." Pablo Picasso (1881-1973),
Spanish artist. Quoted in: Jaime Sabartés, Picasso: portraits et
souvenirs, chapter 7 (1946).
"We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize
truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must
know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies."
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Spanish artist. "Picasso Speaks, " in The Arts
(New York, May 1923; reprinted in Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Picasso: Fifty Years
of His Art, 1946).
"If there were only one truth, you couldn't paint a hundred canvases on the
same theme." Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Spanish artist. Quoted in:
Hélène Parmelin, Picasso Says..., "Truth" (1966; translated 1969).
"You mustn't always believe what I say. Questions tempt you to tell lies,
particularly when there is no answer."
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Spanish artist. Quoted in: Roland Penrose,
Picasso: His Life and Work, chapter 13 (1958).
"Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life."
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Spanish artist.
"Sculpture is the best comment that a painter can make on painting."
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Spanish artist. Remark, Feb. 2, 1964, quoted by
artist Renato Guttuso in his journals (reprinted in Mario De Micheli,
Scritti di Picasso, 1964).
"Accidents, try to change them-- it's impossible. The accidental reveals
man." Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Spanish artist. Quoted in: Vogue
(New York, Nov. 1, 1956).
"I who have been involved with all styles of painting can assure you that
the only things that fluctuate are the waves of fashion which carry the
snobs and speculators; the number of true connoisseurs remains more or
less the same." Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Spanish artist. Mirador
(Barcelona, Aug. 9, 1934).
"Why do two colors, put one next to the other, sing? Can one really explain
this? No. Just as one can never learn how to paint." Pablo Picasso
(1881-1973), Spanish artist. Arts de France, no. 6 (Paris; 1946;
translated in Dore Ashton, Picasso on Art, 1972).
"Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is
more dangerous than to copy others. It leads to sterility." Pablo Picasso
(1881-1973), Spanish artist. Vogue (New York, Nov. 1, 1956).
"Artists should be judged by results, not by intentions." Pablo Picasso
(1881-1973), Spanish artist.
"Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions." Pablo Picasso
(1881-1973), Spanish artist. "Conversation avec Picasso", in Cahiers d'Art,
vol. 10, no. 10 (Paris, 1935; translated in Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Picasso:
Fifty Years of His Art, 1946).
"It [genius] is personality with a penny's worth of talent. Error which
chances to rise above the commonplace." Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Spanish
artist. Quoted in: Jaime Sabartés, Picasso: portraits et souvenirs, ch. 9
(1946).
"Through art we express our conception of what nature is not."
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Spanish artist. "Picasso Speaks, " in The Arts
(New York, May 1923; reprinted in Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Picasso: Fifty Years
of His Art, 1946).
"I would like to prevent people from ever seeing how a painting of mine has
been done. What can it possibly matter? What I want is that the only thing
emanating from my picture should be emotion." Pablo Picasso (1881-1973),
Spanish artist. "Conversation avec Christian Zervos, " Cahiers d'Art Magazine,
numbers 7-10, 1935.
"Museums are just a lot of lies, and the people who make art their business
are mostly imposters . . . . We have infected the pictures in museums with
all our stupidities, all our mistakes, all our poverty of spirit. We have
turned them into petty and ridiculous things." Pablo Picasso (1881-1973),
Spanish artist. "Conversation avec Picasso, " in Cahiers d'Art, vol. 10, no.
10 (Paris, 1935; translated in Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Picasso: Fifty Years of
His Art, 1946).
"Through art we express our conception of what nature is not." Pablo
Picasso (1881-1973), Spanish artist. "Picasso Speaks, " in The Arts
(New York, May 1923; reprinted in Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Picasso: Fifty
Years of His Art, 1946).
"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he
grows up." Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), modern Spanish artist.
"Painting is stronger than I am. It can make me do whatever it wants."
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), modern Spanish artist. A note written on the
back of one of his sketchbooks. Cubism.
"Painting is just another way of keeping a diary." Pablo Picasso
(1881-1973), modern Spanish artist.
"Painting is a blind man's profession. He paints not what he sees, but what
he feels, what he tells himself about what he has seen." Pablo Picasso
(1881-1973), Spanish artist. Quoted in: Jean Cocteau, Journals, part 1,
"War and Peace" (1956).
"When you start with a portrait and search for a pure form, a clear volume,
through successive eliminations, you arrive inevitably at the egg. Likewise,
starting with the egg and following the same process in reverse, one
finishes with the portrait." Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Spanish artist.
Intransigeant (Paris, June 15, 1932).
"What is a face, really? Its own photo? Its make-up? Or is it a face as
painted by such or such painter? That which is in front? Inside? Behind?
And the rest? Doesn't everyone look at himself in his own particular way?
Deformations simply do not exist." Pablo Picasso (1881-1973),
Spanish artist. Arts de France, no. 6 (Paris, 1946). Quoted in: Picasso on
Art (edited by Dore Ashton, 1972).
"Sculpture is the best comment that a painter can make on painting."
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Spanish artist. Remark, Feb. 2, 1964, quoted by
artist Renato Guttuso in his journals (reprinted in Mario De Micheli,
Scritti di Picasso, 1964).
"When you start with a portrait and search for a pure form, a clear volume,
through successive eliminations, you arrive inevitably at the egg. Likewise,
starting with the egg and following the same process in reverse, one
finishes with the portrait." Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Spanish artist.
Intransigeant (Paris, June 15, 1932).
"What is a face, really? Its own photo? Its make-up? Or is it a face as
painted by such or such painter? That which is in front? Inside? Behind?
And the rest? Doesn't everyone look at himself in his own particular way?
Deformations simply do not exist." Pablo Picasso (1881-1973),
Spanish artist. Arts de France, no. 6 (Paris, 1946). Quoted in: Picasso on
Art (edited by Dore Ashton, 1972).
"Sculpture is the best comment that a painter can make on painting."
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Spanish artist. Remark, Feb. 2, 1964, quoted by
artist Renato Guttuso in his journals (reprinted in Mario De Micheli,
Scritti di Picasso, 1964).
The graduate with a Science degree asks, "Why does it work?"
The graduate with an Engineering degree asks, "How does it work?"
The graduate with an Accounting degree asks, "How much will it cost?"
The graduate with a Fine Arts degree asks, "Do you want mustard with that?"
An artist asked the gallery owner if there had been any interest in his
paintings on display at that time.
"I have good news and bad news, " the owner replied.
"The good news is that a gentleman inquired about your work and wondered
if it would appreciate in value after your death. When I told him it would,
he bought all 15 of your paintings."
"That's wonderful, " the artist exclaimed. "What's the bad news?"
"The guy was your doctor."
"What do you get when you cross a postmodernist with a used car
salesman? Answer: You get an offer you can't understand." Written by
"vance" to a listserve, in turn quoted by "MaloneyMK" on the ArtsEdNet
listserve, Jan. 27, 1998.
Q. How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb?
A. Fish!
A painter in the prime of her career started losing her eyesight. Fearful
that she might lose her life as a painter, she went to see the best eye
surgeon in the world. After several weeks of delicate surgery and therapy,
her eyesight was restored.
The painter was so grateful that she decided to show her gratitude by
repainting the walls of her doctor's office. Part of her work included
painting an image of a gigantic eye on one wall. When she had completed
her work, she held an opening to unveil her latest work of art: the doctor's
office.
During the opening, a reporter remarked on the eye on the wall, and asking
the doctor, "What was your first reaction upon seeing your newly painted
office, especially that large eye on the wall?" To this, the eye doctor
responded, "I said to myself, 'Thank heavens, I'm not a gynecologist.'"
"A riddle:
What does man love more than life,
Hate more than death or mortal strife;
That which contented men desire,
The poor have, the rich require,
The miser spends, the spendthrift saves,
And all men carry to their graves?
The answer: [You guessed it!]"
Origin unknown.
"The development of creativity appears to be enhanced by certain components
in the life of a child. These variables are: 1, an open environment; 2, the
active use of creative skills; 3, the result of previous knowledge; 4, a
disciplined use of technique; 5, an association with artists."
Alicia L. Pagano, Day Care and Early Education, 1975.
"Creative people: 1, have their energy field accessible; 2, have the ability
to tap and release unconscious and preconscious thought; 3, are able to
withstand being thought of as abnormal or eccentric; 4, are more sensitive;
5, have a richer fantasy life and greater involvement in daydreaming;
6, are enthusiastic and impulsive; 7, show signs of synaesthesia
(e.g., tasting color, seeing sound, hearing smells, etc.); 8, show different
brain wave patterns than the less creative, especially during creative
activity; 9, when confronted with novelty of design, music, or ideas,
they get excitied and involved (less creative people get suspicious and
hostile); 10, when given a new solution to a problem, they get enthused,
suggest other ideas, overlook details and problems (less creative students
analyze the defects rather than explore potentials."
E. Paul Torrence and Laura K. Hall, Journal of Creative Behavior, 1980.
There are four types of creativity. Creative people fall into these four
catagories: 1. Aesthetic Organizers. 2. Boundary Pushers-- those who take
an existing idea and push it a little further. 3. Inventors-- those who
take existing knowledge and create new ideas-- the Edisons of this world.
4. The rarest group: Boundary Breakers-- the Leonardos and the Copernicuses.
A paraphrasing of Eisner.
"Recently a guy in Paris nearly got away with stealing several paintings
from the Louvre. But, after taking them off the walls and eluding the
guards, he was captured only two blocks away when his van ran out of gas.
When asked how he could mastermind such a theft and then make such a blunder,
he replied: 'I had no Monet to buy Degas to make the Van Gogh.'" A joke
shared by Nancy Sojka, of Decorah, IA, by email to ArtsEdNet's listserve,
November, 1997.
Artist - One who makes art.
It is very interesting to consider that some find this standard far too
liberal-- that one might be a great painter, for instance, but an "artist"
is something significantly above and beyond that in achievement.
Nevertheless, a distinction is generally drawn between an artist and an
artisan, just as there can be merit to making distinctions between the
making of art and craft.
As every definition of art must be controversial, so any definition of
artist must be. Wherever the boundaries of a definition of artist are
placed, the more interesting question becomes: What makes one artist more
significant than another? Or better: What is it that improves an artist?
And too, What diminishes an artist?
art - For numerous reasons, the most difficult word to define without
starting endless argument! Many definitions have been proposed. At least
art involves a degree of human involvement-- through manual skills or
thought-- as with the word "artificial, " meaning made by humans instead
of by nature. Definitions vary in how they divide all that is artificial
into what is and isn't art. The most common means is to rely upon the
estimations of art experts and institutions. More useful may be to see
definitions of aesthetics, the arts, beaux-arts, craft, high art, and
low art.
art degree - An academic title given by a college or university to
a student who has successfully completed a course of study. Sometimes
such a degree is conferred as an honorary distinction. Examples of art
degrees: Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), Bachelor of Fine Arts (B.F.A.),
Master of Arts (M.A.), and Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.).
art for art's sake - Any of several points of view related to the
possibility of art being independent of concerns that order other
disciplines.
Abstract Expressionism or abstract expressionism -
A painting movement in which artists typically applied paint rapidly,
and with force to their huge canvases in an effort to show feelings and
emotions, painting gesturally, non-geometrically, sometimes applying paint
with large brushes, sometimes dripping or even throwing it onto canvas.
Their work is characterized by a strong dependence on what appears to be
accident and chance, but which is actually highly planned. Some Abstract
Expressionist artists were concerned with adopting a peaceful and mystical
approach to a purely abstract image. Usually there was no effort to
represent subject matter. Not all work was abstract, nor was all work
expressive, but it was generally believed that the spontaneity of the
artists' approach to their work would draw from and release the creativity
of their unconscious minds. The expressive method of painting was often
considered as important as the painting itself.
Art Deco or art deco - An art movement involving a mix of modern decorative
art styles, largely of the 1920s and 1930s, whose main characteristics were
derived from various avant-garde painting styles of the early twentieth
century. Art deco works exhibit aspects of Cubism, Russian Constructivism
and Italian Futurism-- with abstraction, distortion, and simplification,
particularly geometric shapes and highly intense colors--celebrating the
rise of commerce, technology, and speed.
Allegory - When the literal content of a work stands for abstract ideas,
suggesting a parallel, deeper, symbolic sense.
The adjectival form of this term can be either allegorical or allegoric.
Animation - Giving movement to a thing. Also, making animated cartoons--
films that are also called animations. Types of animation include cel
animation, clay animation (also called claymation), and computer animation.
Architecture - The art of designing and constructing buildings
(structures), and other environmental features.
Afterimage, art, artist, gestalt, Op Art, optical, optical illusion,
optical mixing, subliminal message or subliminal advertising, and visual
qualities.
Collage - A picture or design created by adhering such basically flat
elements as newspaper, wallpaper, printed text and illustrations,
photographs, cloth, string, etc., to a flat surface, when the result
becomes three-dimensional. Introduced by the Cubist artists, it was widely
used by artists who followed, and is a familiar technique in contemporary
art.
Expression and expressionism - (with a small e-- the more general sense)
A quality of inner experience, the emotions of the artist (expressive
qualities) communicated through emphasis and distortion, which can be found
in artworks of any period.
Earth art and earthworks.
Earth art's emergence in the 1960s was simultaneous with that of the
ecological movement, Arte Povera and process art, with each of which it had
a kinship. Earthworks can be considered part of the category of works known
as environment art.
emphasis - Any forcefulness that gives importance or dominance to some
feature or features of an artwork; something singled out, stressed, or
drawn attention to for aesthetic impact. A way of combining elements to
stress the differences between those elements and to create one or more
centers of interest in a work. Often, contrasting elements are used to
direct and focus attention on the most important parts of a composition.
A principles of design.
Engraving- A method of cutting or incising a design into a material,
usually metal, with a sharp tool called a graver. One of the intaglio
methods of making prints, in engraving, a print can be made by inking such
an incised (engraved) surface. It may also refer to a print produced in
this way. Most contemporary engraving is done in the production of currency,
certificates, etc.
Burin, drypoint, edition, gravure, impression, ox gall, paper, photogravure,
and plaque.
Iron - A silvery-white, lustrous, malleable, ductile, magnetic or
magnetizable, metallic element used alloyed in a wide range of important
structural materials, like steel. Iron is forged and cast, and used for
many tools, such as: chisels, drills, files, hammers, and saws. It is also
used in armatures. Its reddish-brown oxide, or rust, is a permanent,
inexpensive, and commonly used pigment. Atomic number 26;
atomic weight 55.847; melting point 1, 535°C; specific gravity 7.874
(at 20°C); valence 2, 3, 4, 6.
Icon - Loosely, a picture; a sculpture, or even a building, when regarded
as an object of veneration.
yard - A unit of distance measurement equal to three feet, or 36 inches. To
convert yards into centimeters, multiply them by 91.44; into meters, x
0.9144. Abbreviated yd.
unconscious - Not having awareness or sensory perception. Occurring in the
absence of conscious awareness or thought. Without conscious control;
involuntary or unintended. In psychoanalytic theory, the portion of the
mind which holds such things as memories and repressed desires, that are
not subject to conscious perception or control but that often affect
conscious thoughts and behavior. The unconscious is an important issue to
artists influenced by Surrealism.
Light-light
Light - Electromagnetic radiation that has a wavelength in the range from
about 4, 000 (violet) to about 7, 000 (red) angstroms and may be seen by the
normal unaided human eye. It may refer to other wavelengths somewhat longer
and shorter, such as those of ultraviolet and infrared. Also, either the
sensation of light, a source of light, its illumination, the representation
of it in a work of art, or an awareness as if there were light on a subject.
"Machinery, materials and men-- yes-- these are the stuffs by means of
which the so-called American architect will get his architecture. . . .
Only by the strength of his spirit's grasp upon all three-machinery,
materials and men-will the architect be able so to build that his work
may be worthy the great name architecture."
muse and muses - Generally, a guiding spirit or source of inspiration. In Greek mythology, the nine patron goddesses of the arts; daughters of Zeus (principal god of the Greek pantheon, ruler of the heavens) and Mnemosyne (a titan who personified memory.) They were: Calliope (muse of epic poetry and eloquence), Euterpe (muse of music and lyric poetry), Erato (muse of love poetry), Polyhymnia (muse of oratory or sacred poetry), Clio (muse of history), Melpomene (muse of tragedy), Thalia (muse of comedy), Terpsichore (muse of choral song and dance), and Urania (muse of astronomy). They are led by Apollo as god of music and poetry. Images of muses.
Nude - An unclothed live model, or a work of art representing a person
without clothing.
S.A.S.E. - S.A.S.E. is an abbreviation for "self-addressed stamped
envelope." Arts organizations often ask artists submitting work for
exhibitions, etc. to include S.A.S.E. In this way such organizations
save themselves time and expense meeting their responsibilities in
replying to submissions, and perhaps in returning materials as well.
Information from arts organizations sometimes includes disclaimers of
responsibility to return materials. Although artists should expect to
receive replies and the return of their materials in a timely manner,
whenever assurances of such practices are not received, it's wise to
inquire.
Seeing
- To perceive with the eye, to visually apprehend. Or, to visualize;
to create a mental image of. Also, to detect by any means similar to the
use of the eye, as in the use of photography.
It is often used to emphasize the quality which differentiates seeing from
mere looking, comprehending or understanding a sight's meaning rather than
merely apprehending its pattern of light.
Other synonyms: view, behold, note, notice, espy, descry, observe,
contemplate, examine, survey, and discern.
Sculpture - A three-dimensional work of art, or the art of making it. Such
works may be carved, modeled, constructed, or cast. Sculptures can also be
described as assemblage, in the round, and relief, and made in a huge
variety of media.
Silver - A lustrous nearly white, ductile, malleable metallic element.
Silver reacts with hydrogen sulfide in air to form silver sulfide--
tarnish. It is used for sculpture, jewelry, tableware, and other
ornamentations, and is widely used in coinage, photography, dental and
soldering alloys, electrical contacts, and printed circuits. Silver may be
cast, embossed, inlaid, or worked as wire, sheet, foil, or leaf.
Photographic emulsion contain silver halides, because of their sensitivity
to light.
Steel - An alloy of iron and carbon capable of being tempered to many
degrees of hardness.
Some of the types available include mild, stainless, and Cor-Ten. It can be
purchased in several forms, including sheets and plates, wires and rods,
tubes or pipes, extrusions and castings. Pieces of steel are typically
joined by welding, or with nuts and bolts, or with rivets.
Studio - A place where an artist or craftsman works, or where art is taught
or studied. In French called an atelier, in Italian a bottega.
Atelier, bottega, and smock.
tang - A projection cast with a metal figure or tool with which the cast
can be attached either to a base or to a handle. The tang may have been
cast as a runner.
Teacher - Someone who imparts knowledge, skills, or wisdom to others.
Synonyms: instructor, educator, tutor, preceptor, mentor, guide, guru, sage,
coach, educationist, educationalist, pedagogue, fellow, lecturer, expositor,
exponent, interpreter, prelector, professor, initiator, mystagogue, model,
confidant, consultant, adviser. One of the most recent synonyms is
[educational] practitioner-- typically used instead of the term teacher in
order to include principals and other educators who might otherwise feel
left out.
pi = 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937511.
zeitgeist or Zeitgeist - The spirit of the times. A German word (especially
when capitalized) for the taste, outlook, or general trend of thought which
is characteristic of the cultural productions of a period or generation.
For example, the zeitgeist of the Neoclassical period is considered to be
rationalism, whereas that of the Romantic period is sentiment. The zeitgeist
of the early modern period may have been faith in salvation through
technological advancement, whereas that of the postmodern period would be
disdain for such expressions of certainty. Because the identification of a
zeitgeist tends to obliterate differences and imply a degree of essentialism,
it is safe to say that postmodern thought in general distrusts it. The
New York Times Manual of Style and Usage calls use of the word zeitgeist
"pretentious." (pr. tsyt'gyst).
millennium - A period of a thousand years. Because the first millennium A.D.
began with the year A.D. 1, the year 2000 represents the final year of the
second millennium, December 31, 2000 being the last day of the millenium.
For generations, the year 2000 has always held a certain fascination.
It has represented a future where all things were seemingly possible.
A time when much of the world has overcome the struggles of the twentieth
century, and stands poised to move into a bright new world. While all of
these perceptions have not been translated into reality, the year 2000
still holds a certain mixture of mystery and accomplishment. As a result,
popular culture has insisted that we celebrate this unique moment in time.
Unfortunately, in our haste to celebrate and in our insistence that all
things be marketed in a single package, many have superimposed the year
2000 onto the beginning of the new millennium, when in fact they are two
distinctly separate years. The year 2000 has tremendous caché. And let's
face it, we got too far along in preparing for the year 2000, not to make
it a mega-celebration when it finally arrived. The forces of popular
culture had been moving this mindset forward inexorably. Now that we've
enjoyed that spectacle, let's recall that the true beginning of the new
millennium will only be a few months away. In other words, we had a
terrific time on New Years Eve 1999, but let's have an even greater one
on New Year's Eve 2000 and New Year's Day 2001!
About millennium:
"Because the Western calendar starts with Year 1, and not Year 0, the 21st
Century and the Third Millennium do not begin until January 1, 2001.
Though some people have great difficulty in grasping this, there's a very
simple analogy which should appeal to everyone. If the scale on your
grocer's weighing machine began at 1 instead of 0, would you be happy
when he claimed he'd sold you 10 kg of tea? And it's exactly the same with
time. We'll have had only 99 years of this century by January 1, 2000.
We'll have to wait until December 31 for the full hundred."
Arthur C. Clarke, author of 2001: A Space Odyssey, among other novels.
Arts about attention, Arc welding, Art form.
American art or art of the United States of America - Pre-Columbian art,
American Indian art, American Colonial art, Hudson River school,
Realism and realism, Luminism, American Impressionism, Ten American Painters,
The Eight, Ashcan school, Art Deco, Harlem Renaissance,
American Scene painting, Abstract Expressionism, Pop art, Op art,
Minimalism, Earth art, Conceptual art, Neo-Expressionism, Neo-Geo,
Post-Minimalism, architecture, arms&armor, ceramics, cinema, design,
folk art, furniture, glass, illustration, photography, portrait, poster,
sculpture, self-portrait, still life, tattoo, trompe l'oeil, vessel, and
video, among many others.
Apollo, censorship, fig leaf, figurative, figure, obscene, odalisque, and
pornography.
Aniconic, font, glyph, hieroglyphics, iconoclast, iconography, ideogram,
lettering, logo, petroglyph, pictograph, plaque, text, typography, and
votive.
Attribute, body art, cosmetic, costume, mehndi, pectoral, pendant, and
plaque.
Automata, automatism, blotto painting, collage, exquisite corpse, montage,
Rorschach test.
Architect, design, environment art, and furniture; and articles
about building materials and elements, such as adobe, arch, buttress,
column, fenestration, frieze, glass, lintel, masonry, steel, stone,
structure, tile, etc.
Appropriation, coulage, femmage, fumage, montage, parsemage, and
photomontage.
Aboriginal art, naive, outsider art, primitive, and rustic.
Acetate color, glaze, glazier, mosaic, pontil, punty, smalto, and vitrify.
Animation, automata, cinema, direction, four-dimensional, Futurism,
kinesiologist, kinetic, measure, mobile, periodicity, space-time, time,
video, and zoopraxiscope.
Accession, advocacy, architecture, catalogue, collection, deaccession,
docent, donation, and gallery.
Aleatory and aleatoric, automatism, coulage, expressionism,
fanciful, fumage, grotesque, oneiric, Metaphysical Painting, parsemage,
Symbolism, and ugly. Balance, bas-relief, mold, sculptor, sculpture garden, site-specific, and
installation; as well as articles about various cultures, styles, movements,
memorials, monuments, public art, etc.
bas-relief, frieze, grisaille, high relief, intaglio, medal,
numismatics, plaque, and repoussé. Brindled, fractal, paradigm, piebald, tesselation, and
variegated. Censorship - coined words. Cinema, four-dimensional, kinetic, measure, mobile, periodicity,
space-time, time, and video. Color: the types of media used in painting, such as acrylic, casein,
enamel, encaustic, fresco, gouache, lacquer, oil, pastel, tempera,
watercolor, etc., as well as the names of painting tools, techniques,
schools, periods, movement, styles, miniature, mosaic, mural, digital
imaging, stretcher, and so on.
Color wheel, cool and warm colors, diffraction grating, local color,
palette, palette knife, saturation, and spectrum.
Also a name for a color representative of caucasion skin color (
sometimes called flesh or peach)
Chromolithography, ox gall, and zincography
Cairn, commemorate, cromlech, equestrian statue or equestrian art.
Cuneiform, font, glyph, icon, ideogram, lettering, logo, petroglyph,
pictograph, text, and typography.
Counterfeit, die, exonumia, medal, metal, philately, relief, scripophily,
and trussel.
Charcoal, conté crayon, oil pastel, and stump. Degenerate art.
Electroplate, gilding, gilt or gilded, gold leaf, Golden Mean, and ormolu.
Ethnocentrism. Every human is an artist, but not every artist is a human.
Fine Arts.
Gift of the gab.
Hypotheses.
I mportant words.
JKLiving rock, memorial, memory, obelisk, plaque, and public art.
Memory, Metaphysical Painting.
Naive art.
Outside analysts. Other change - Other. Other resources concerned with Moderni.
Optical illusion. Optical illusion, optical illusion, metamorphosis, origami, and sphere.
Popular culture. Perspective, bird's-eye view, di sotto in s, fan, fish-eye lens, horizontal,
landscape, panning shot, perspective, point of view, screen, scroll,
tracking shot, vertical, wide-angle, and worm's-eye view. Buckeye, landscape architecture, pastoral, picturesque, rustic,
sacral-idyllic scene, and seascape.
Patina, charts of steel sheet gauges and steel wire gauges, and
wrought iron.
Quotes, quote, quotation.
RSee.
Tesselation. The artistic world.
UVWXYZ
Anthology. Quotes and quotations sampelt by studio community Steel & Color. Sylvia Aevermann and Henning Block.
Atelier for contemporary Art. Omnipotismus. webmaster@stahlundfarbe.de Date of the last change: 06.02.2019
