Quotes About Art

It wasn't so much that I was TRYING to be a writer, it was more like doing something that felt good to do.

Poetry says too much in too short a time; prose says too little and takes too long.

I would say that Mickey Mouse has a greater influence on the American public than Shakespeare, Milton, Dante, Rabelais, Shostakovich, Lenin, and/or Van Gogh. Which says 'What?' about the American Public. Disneyland remains the central attraction of Southern California, but the graveyard remains our reality.

Van Gogh escrevendo ao irmão pedindo tintas [...] a impossibilidade de ser humano [...] Shakespeare um plagiador [...] demasiado humano [...]

things begin to lose their natural value as they near human endeavor. nothing against Beethoven: he did fine for what he was but I wouldn't want him on my rug with one leg over his head while he was licking his balls.

The best part of a writer is on paper. The other part was usually nonsense.

No sculpture, no carving or bas-relief, almost no painting or drawing—the interiors are completely bare. What we do see are these huge mounds—and textiles.

Through art alone, the Mexica said, can human beings approach the real. Cut short by Cortés, Mexica philosophy did not have the chance to reach as far as Greek or Chinese philosophy. But surviving testimony intimates that it was well on its way.

the Inka style was severe, abstract, stripped down to geometric forms—startlingly contemporary, in fact. (According to the Peruvian critic César Paternosto, such major twentieth-century painters as Josef Albers, Barnett Newman, and Mark Rothko were inspired by Inka art.)

Having grown separately for millennia, the [orginal] Americans were a boundless sea of novel ideas, drea,s, stories, philosophies, religions, ,oralities, discoveries, and all other products of the mind....Here and there we see clues of what might have been. Pacific Northwest Indian artists carved beautiful masks, boxes, bas-relief S, and totem poles within the dictates of an elaborate aesthetic syste, based on an ovoid shapes that has no name in European languages.

the forest islands of Bolivia are comparable to any place in South America. The same is true of the Beni savanna, it seems, with its different complement of species. Ecologically, the region is a treasure, but one designed and executed by human beings. Erickson regards the landscape of the Beni as one of humankind's greatest works of art, a masterpiece that until recently was almost completely unknown

More than a hundred sets of casta paintings are known. Many are beautifully crafted. Some were painted by mixed people themselves. Looking

It's hard enough to live...let alone 'create.

La véritable fonction de la littérature est de nous maintenir en vie dans un monde brutal. [Interview de Charles Dantzig par Josyane Savigneau à l'occasion de la publication de Pourquoi lire ?, 15 oct. 2010, journal Le Monde]

But Natural Selection, as we shall hereafter see, is a power incessantly ready for action, and is immeasurably superior to man's feeble efforts, as the works of Nature are to those of Art.

If I had my life to live over again, I would make it a rule to read some poetry, listen to some music, and see some painting or drawing at least once a week, for perhaps the part of my brain now atrophied would then have been kept alive through life. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness.

But Natural Selection, as we shall hereafter see, is a power incessantly ready for action, and is as immeasurably superior to man's feeble efforts, as the works of Nature are to those of Art. We

the works of Nature are to those of Art.

But Natural Selection, as we shall hereafter see, is a power incessantly ready for action, and is as immeasurably superior to man's feeble efforts, as the works of Nature are to those of Art.

In art and literature we require not only an expression of the facts in nature and in human life, but of feeling, thought, emotion. There must be an appeal to the universal in the race.

Whereas art critics are ready to accept-indeed are looking for-the new fabrication of a consistent visual language, architectural critics, like the general public, are much more conservative and unwilling to accept the introduction of new codes.

But if you like shallow lyrics and easy-to-hum-along-with ditties, then you're not going to enjoy the Psalms. The Psalms are for folks who have decided that music is an art that requires the discipline of keen thinking and a heart that is right before God. It is music for the mature. It is not a superficial statement. There are a few, of course, that are very popular: Psalms 1, 23, 91, 100, and parts of 119. But for the most part, only the

Non-euclidian sofa

I've learned that life is never what you expect it will be. Just as you come to the fringes of happiness, touching it, feeling it, tasting it—and desperately hoping for the rest of it—it's jerked away." "You have your art." "Yes, but that's a compulsion, not happiness. I paint because I must. I love because I want to be loved in return. Wanted to be.