Quotes About Art

Art, in its will to live and progress, puts on the mask of these dull-hearted personal traits in order to manifest, objectivize, and fulfill itself in them.

Even on a personal level art is a form of heightened living. It gives greater pleasures, it consumes faster. It stamps the features of its servants with the signs of imaginary and spiritual adventures, and it produces, even in the most cloister-like atmosphere, a certain fastidiousness, an over-refinement, an exhaustion and curiosity of the nerves, in a way even a life of the most outrageous passions and delights could scarcely effect it.

But fear of the overall damage that would be done—concern over the recently opened art exhibition in the Public Gardens and the tremendous losses with which the hotels, the shops, the entire, multifaceted tourist trade would be threatened in case of panic and loss of confidence—proved stronger in the city than the love of truth and respect for international covenants: it made the authorities stick stubbornly to their policy of secrecy and denial.

car ce que l'on savait et que l'on a pensé tout en peignant joue un rôle. Cela vous guide la main et cela produit son effet, ca y est et ça n'y est pas ; et c'est là ce qui rend le tout éloquent.

Auch persönlich genommen ist ja die Kunst ein erhöhtes Leben. Sie beglückt tiefer, sie verzehrt rascher.

that language could but extol, not reproduce, the beauties of the sense.

Glück des Schriftstellers ist der Gedanke, der ganz Gefühl, ist das Gefühl, das ganz Gedanke zu werden vermag.

Men do not know why they award fame to one work of art rather than another. Without being in the faintest connoisseurs, they think to justify the warmth of their commendations by discovering it in a hundred virtues, whereas the real ground of their applause is inexplicable-it is sympathy.

Een schrijver is een persoon voor wie schrijven moeilijker is dan voor andere mensen.

If I can contradict you at all, if I can defend your own profession a little against you, it is not by saying anything new, but simply by reminding you of some things you very well know yourself: of the purifying and healing influence of letters, the subduing of the passions by knowledge and eloquence; literature as the guide to understanding, forgiveness, and love, the redeeming power of the word, literary art as the noblest manifestation of the human mind...

Ve l'assicuro, spesso mi sento mortalmente stanco di rappresentare l'umano senza prendervi parte... C'è da chiedersi se l'artista, in fondo, sia un uomo.

La dicha del escritor es su posibilidad de transformar la idea enteramente en sentimiento; el sentimiento, totalmente en idea.

Mais ce qu'il éprouvait, ce qu'il comprenait, et ce dont il jouissait par-dessus tout, [...] c'était l'idéalité triomphante de la musique, de l'art, du cÅ"ur humain, la haute et irréfutable sublimation qu'ils faisaient subir à la vulgaire laideur de la réalité.

Seguramente conviene que el mundo conozca sólo la obra bella y no sus orígenes, las condiciones que determinaron su aparición, pues el conocimiento de las fuentes en que el poeta bebe su inspiración lo confundiría, lo asustaría a menudo, dañando así el efecto de las cosas excelentes.

On a personal level, too, art is life intensified: it delights more rapidly; it engraves the traces of imaginary and intellectual adventure on the countenance of its servant and in the long run, for all the monastic calm of his external existence, leads to self-indulgence, over refinement, lethargy, and a restless curiosity that a lifetime of wild passions and pleasures could scarcely engender.

Verità e ragione possono bensì essere oppresse esteriormente per un periodo nero, ma in noi rimangono eternamente libere e dalla serena altezza dell'arte lo spirito può ridersi dell'assurdo che vince, e non già in solitario abbandono, ma in sicura alleanza con tutti i migliori.

Art's vital need for revolutionary progress and achievement of the new depends on the vehicle of the strongest subjective sense for what is hackneyed, for what has nothing more to say, for those standard, normal means that have now become 'impossible'.

Denn du mußt wissen, daß wir Dichter den Weg der Schönheit nicht gehen können, ohne daß Eros sich zugesellt und sich zum Führer aufwirft; ja mögen wir auch Helden auf unsere Art und züchtige Kriegsleute sein, so sind wir wie Weiber, denn Leidenschaft ist unsere Erhebung, und unsere Sehnsucht muß Liebe bleiben, - das ist unsere Lust und Schande.

Richard Wagner once declared that civilization disappears before music like mist before the sun. he never dreamed that one day, for its part, music would disappear before civilization, before democracy, like mist before the sun.

Lo scrittore è un uomo che più di chiunque altro ha difficoltà a scrivere.

Los hombres no saben por qué les satisfacen las obras de arte. No son verdaderamente entendidos, y creen descubrir innumerables excelencias en una obra, para justificar su admiración por ella, cuando el fundamento íntimo de su aplauso es un sentimiento imponderable que se llama simpatía.

Aschenbach noticed with astonishment the lad's perfect beauty. His faced recalled the noblest moment of Greek sculpture—pale, with a sweet reserve, with clustering honey-coloured ringlets, the brow and nose descending in one line, the winning mouth, the expression of pure and godlike serenity. Yet with all this chaste perfection of form it was of such unique personal charm that the observer though he had never seen, either in nature or art, anything so utterly happy and consummate.

El arte es vida potenciada.

Es, sin duda, positivo que el mundo solo conozca la obra bella y no sus orígenes ni las circunstancias que acompañaron su génesis, pues el conocimiento de las fuentes que inspiraron al artista lo confundiría e intimidaría, anulando así los efectos de la excelsitud.