Miscellany #9: a bouquet of art quotes
Note: over the years I’ve accumulated a vast collection of quotes on all subjects from all kinds of books. I’m in the process of transferring them to a zettelkasten system for my own personal use; and it seemed a good idea to share a bunch of the art-related quotes in this space. So here you go! Some of these quotes are thought-provoking; others simply make me chuckle. Please enjoy, and feel free to share your own favorite quotes in the comments.
THE CREATIVE ACT
Nothing quite gleams like a future project, forever the unspoiled crush-object seen from across the room.
—Lisa Hsiao Chen, Activities of Daily Living
I love artists and creative people. They make me crazy, but they’re rarely boring. When they do get boring, it's because they are working on something they are so passionate about that they become obsessive. An artist caught up in an idea is like an eighteen-wheeler stuck in the sand, just grinding its wheels over and over. It can go on for months! But even when they are boring this way, it is fascinating because being passionate and obsessive is still an intense way of being alive and present to the beauty and complexity of life. When you’re around artists, you are around people who are definitely living life to the fullest. Even their despair is gritty and real and fully committed, and I always feel like I’m living that line from the transfiguration scene in the Gospel: “How good it is for us to be here!”
—Barbara Nicolosi, in W. David O. Taylor ed., For the Beauty of the Church
From being the agent who strives to give the natural laws of beauty visible, aural, or verbal form, the artist raises himself to become the prime point of reference. In other words, mimesis (art in relation to nature) was replaced by an expressive aesthetic (art in relation to the artist).
—T. C. W. Blanning, in The Oxford Illustrated History of Modern Europe
Art-making and parenthood act very efficiently as disincentives to one another, and people who say otherwise are deluded, or childless, or men.
—Claire Dederer, Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma
Poe was fond of quoting a saying of Bacon’s that “there is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.” This saying became known in France through Baudelaire’s rendering of Poe and was often ascribed to Poe himself. It was taken to mean that the stranger one became the nearer one was getting to perfect beauty. And if we grant this view of beauty we must admit that some of the decadents succeeded in becoming very beautiful indeed. But the more the element of proportion in beauty is sacrificed to strangeness the more the result will seem to the normal man to be, not beauty at all, but rather an esoteric cult of ugliness. The romantic genius therefore denounces the normal man as a philistine and at the same time, since he cannot please him, seeks at least to shock him and so capture his attention by the very violence of eccentricity.
—Irving Babbitt, Rousseau and Romanticism
Seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees.
—Paul Valéry, quoted in Edward Tufte, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
“But the problem of the visual arts, it seems to me,” he continued hesitantly, “is the abundance of subjects. For example, I could readily consider this radiator as a valid subject for a picture.” Houellenbecq turned round quickly to look suspiciously at the radiator, as if it were going to jump with joy at the idea of being painted.
—Michel Houellenbecq, The Map and the Territory
The artist should not only paint what he sees in front of him, but also what he sees inside himself. If, however, he sees nothing inside himself, then he should also stop painting what he sees in front of him. Otherwise his pictures will look like those folding screens behind which one expects to find only the sick or even the dead.
—Caspar David Friedrich, quoted in The Oxford Illustrated History of Modern Europe
In the mid-1950s, when Picasso embarked on a series of his own versions of Eugène Delacroix’s Femmes d'Alger, he would take [Françoise Gilot] on average once a month to the Louvre to study the original. “I asked how he felt about the Delacroix,” she relates. “His eyes narrowed and he said, ‘That bastard. He’s really good.’ ”
—Michael Findlay, The Value of Art
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
What are the most fruitful social conditions for the production of works of the first order, philosophical, literary or in the other arts, is perhaps one of those topics of controversy more suitable for conversation than for writing about. There may perhaps be no one set of conditions most suitable for the efflorescence of all these activities; it is equally possible that the necessary conditions may vary from one country and civilization to another. the régime of Louis XIV or of the Tudors and Stuarts could hardly be called libertarian; on the other hand, the rule of authoritarian governments in our time does not appear conducive to a renascence of the arts. Whether the arts flourish best in a period of growth and expansion, or of decay, is a question that I cannot answer.
—T. S. Eliot, The Idea of a Christian Society
When the idea behind communicating inner experience is disposed of altogether and the ideas behind the work of art become more important than the work’s content, the notion of art disappears and the artist easily escapes artistic value judgment. The result is then, as we can see with so-called “concept art,” that only the maker’s intention is left, and there is no work of art at all, only objects in front of the viewer that need extensive “explanation” because they cannot speak for themselves to express something.
—John Borstlap, The Classical Revolution: Thoughts on New Music in the 21st Century
Paintings are not made to decorate apartments. They are instruments of offensive and defensive war against the enemy.
—Pablo Picasso, quoted in Sarah Whitfield, Fauvism
Inscribed above the stage of Symphony Hall in Boston, one of America’s great music palaces, is the name BEETHOVEN, occupying much the same position as a crucifix in a church. In several late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century concert halls, the names of the European masters appear all around the circumference of the auditorium, signifying unambiguously that the buildings are cathedrals for the worship of imported musical icons. Early in the century, any aspiring young composer who sat in one of these halls would likely have fallen prey to pessimistic thoughts. The very design of the place militated against the possibility of a native musical tradition. How could your name ever be carved alongside Beethoven’s or Grieg’s when all available spaces were filled?
—Alex Ross, The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century
One of Wyeth’s favorite memories of [Edward Hopper] was an evening with Hopper and several other notable painters at the New York apartment of Robert Beverly Hale, the associate curator of American art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. During cocktails on the terrace, the conversation turned to abstract art, with Jackson Pollock and Stuart Davis in hot disagreement over the definition of abstraction. “Finally,” Wyeth recalled, “Hopper had tapped Davis on the shoulder and pointed from the penthouse window to the incredible light of the setting sun on the buildings. ‘Can you ignore that?’ Hopper had asked. It stopped them, at least for a moment.”
—Anne Classen Knutson, Andrew Wyeth: Memory and Magic
Museums: cemeteries!
—Filippo Marinetti, The Futurist Manifesto, quoted in Lapham’s Quarterly, volume III, number 2
The development of a new expressive aesthetic, which placed the artist at the center of the creative process, greatly enhanced his self-esteem and—eventually—his status. It also opened the way for him to become the high priest of the sacralized culture which increasingly became a supplement to, or even a substitute for, organized religion, as the construction of museums, theatres, opera-houses, and concert-halls in the style of classical temples demonstrated.
—T. C. W. Blanning, in The Oxford Illustrated History of Modern Europe
Knowing which materials an artist used and the artwork’s precise dimensions is like reading a sign pointed at a complicated person that says brain.
—Lisa Hsiao Chen, Activities of Daily Living
In truth, the patronage of art is an insoluble problem. There are no reasonable rules for it. How to distinguish among talents? How far should the artist comply with requests? What measures can be taken to prevent intrigues for the fame and money at stake? And if reliance is placed on the market as in recent times, the artist must woo the buying public and keep it eager for his goods, a constraint that may be as galling as the arbitrariness of a prince.
—Jaques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence
Fascism aestheticizes politics and communism answers with the politicization of art.
—Walter Benjamin, quoted in Claire Dederer, Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma
In 1952, [John Cage] scandalized a crowd at Black Mountain College by saying that Beethoven had misled generations of composers by structuring music in goal-oriented harmonic narratives instead of letting it unfold moment by moment. At a New York gathering, he was heard to say, “Beethoven was wrong!” The poet John Ashberry overheard the remark, and for years afterward wondered what Cage had meant. Eventually, Ashberry approached Cage again. “I once heard you say something about Beethoven,” the poet began, “and I've always wondered—” Cage's eyes lit up. “Beethoven was wrong!” he exclaimed. “Beethoven was wrong!” And he walked away.
—Alex Ross, The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century
Art is just very expensive stuff.
—James B. Twitchell, Branded Nation: The Marketing of Megachurch, College Inc., and Museumworld
ART AND CHRISTIANITY
I remember a debate in which I had praised militant music in ritual, and someone asked if I could imagine Christ walking down the street before a brass band. I said I could imagine it with the greatest ease; for Christ definitely approved a natural noisiness at a great moment. When the street children shouted too loud, certain priggish disciples did begin to rebuke them in the name of good taste. He said: “If these were silent the very stones would cry out.” With these words he called up all the wealth of artistic creation that has been founded on this creed. With those words he founded Gothic architecture. For in a town like this, which seems to have grown Gothic as a wood grows leaves, anywhere and anyhow, any odd brick or moulding may be carved off into a shouting face. The front of vast buildings is thronged with open mouths, angels praising God, or devils defying him. Rock itself is racked and twisted, until it seems to scream. The miracle is accomplished; the very stones cry out.
—G. K. Chesterton, The Tower
Contemporary art and the church are not synonymous. They are different spheres with different tasks. While they certainly overlap, they are categorically different. They are not different in the way that Presbyterians and Baptists are different, or in the way that abstraction and realism are different. Presbyterians and Baptists grow from the same soil of religion; abstraction and realism grow from the same soil of aesthetics. But art and church are different spheres with different roles, even though they intersect profoundly. I want my church to be a community of faith, worship, and service. I want it to respect and value art, but I do not want it to be an art community. Its constituencies and jobs are too diverse. In turn, I want my art community to respect and value the spiritual and theological, but I do not want it to be a surrogate church or a worship of aesthetics. It is not helpful to expect these different realms to fulfill each other’s purposes.
—Wayne Roosa, in Contemporary Art and The Church: a Conversation Between Two Worlds, ed. W. David O. Taylor and Taylor Worley
Within Christendom both the verbal and the visual have been employed to communicate the Christian story; in this regard, word and image have often been positioned as competitors, and the resulting standoff between the pair has generated a false dichotomy in both the art world and the church.
—Cameron Anderson, The Faithful Artist
Many of the sixteenth-century Protestant churches that cleansed their sanctuaries of religious paintings and sculptures were among the first both to sponsor composers such as Johann Sebastian Bach to write stunning hymns for the church and to install impressive pipe organs in their sanctuaries to perform them.
—Cameron Anderson, The Faithful Artist
Early-21st-century Christian defenses of art often turn on enthusiasm for art’s uselessness: to defend art is to defend utterly supernumerary beauty. Planet Earth, with all its seemingly purposeless aesthetic whimsy—glow-in-the-dark fish, majestic mountains, peacock’s plumage—is adduced as evidence that our creator God is interested in extravagant, useless beauty, that God made beautiful things just for kicks. Many since Kant have argued for purposeless beauty, and certainly the argument has force, especially for Christians who grew up in communities where beauty was suspect, where anything other than kneel-and-pray-the-sinner’s-prayer-right-now evangelism was considered a waste of time. Apologia for senseless beauty are compelling insofar as they dissent from our society’s tendency to instrumentalize and to reductively, perniciously measure everything (and everyone) in utilitarian terms.
—Lauren F. Winner, in W. David O. Taylor ed., For the Beauty of the Church
RECEPTION
The first demand any work of art makes upon us is surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get yourself out of the way.
—C. S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism
What’s more, [Kraftwerk founding member Ralf] Hütter suspects that aesthetic luddites aren’t always motivated by a proper Huxleyan suspicion of technological development at the expense of man and his soul but by hidebound prejudice, fear and loathing, even hypocrisy. “Yes, we were attacked, strangely enough by people who expected the latest and most up-to-date equipment when they went to the dentist,” he told me. “They would not have liked to have had their bad teeth pulled out with pliers but they attacked us for being too mechanical. When it comes to music, they wanted old guitars from the fifties.”
—David Stubbs, Future Days: Krautrock and the Birth of a Revolutionary new Music
The blurred and imperfect image may still make a very respectable appearance in the eyes of those who have not seen the original.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Marble Faun
Collecting is not anything you should ever be ashamed of. It is a calling as much as being an artist is a calling.
—Sandra Bowden, quoted in Contemporary Art and The Church: a Conversation Between Two Worlds, ed. W. David O. Taylor and Taylor Worley
But moderns set themselves a different task. They wanted artworks that would not be about things in the world but would themselves be things in the world.
—Michael Kammen, Visual Shock: A History of Art Controversies in American Culture
Music exists only in the moment of its performance, for however skillful one may be at reading notes and however lively one’s imagination, it cannot be denied that it is only in an unreal sense that music exists when read. It exists really only when it is performed.
—Søren Keirkegaard, Either / Or
If I look at a work of art and it leaves me cold, what can I hear or read about it that will profoundly change my attitude? If I look at a work of art and I am profoundly moved, what can I hear or read about it that matters more?
—Michael Findlay, The Value of Art
I FIND THIS FUNNY
Sculpture is what you bump into when you back up to see a painting.
—Barnett Newman, quoted in Arthur C. Danto, Embodied Meanings: Critical Essays and Aesthetic Meditations
The collector Tony Ganz, whose parents owned a legendary collection of twentieth-century art, tells of having a playdate with a school friend at the age of six. On entering the house he said innocently, “Where are your Picassos?”
—Michael Findlay, The Value of Art
When the concert was over, Lipinski introduced me to a player who, he said, was desirous of congratulating me but did not know a word of French. As I cannot speak German, Lipinski was offering to interpret for us, when the man, interrupting him, sprang forward, seized my hand, stammered out a few words, and burst into uncontrollable sobs; whereupon Lipinski, turning to me and indicating his friend’s tears, said, “You get the point.”
—Hector Berlioz, Memoirs
Some interesting stuff. Thanks for the compilation.
"Whether the arts flourish best in a period of growth and expansion, or of decay, is a question that I cannot answer." I definitely agree with this because I've never figured that out, either. We certainly gotten some great art from periods of decay but not always and of course, is it worth it for society to decay just so we get good art? Ha. It's a strange subject. Awesome post. I enjoyed many of the quotes.