Quotes for All
Ancient art has a specific inner content. At one time, art possessed the same purpose that books do in our day, namely: to preserve and transmit knowledge. In olden days, people did not write books, they incorporated their knowledge into works of art. We would find a great many ideas in the works of ancient … Read more
The artist is always beginning. Any work of art which is not a beginning, an invention, a discovery is of little worth. Ezra Pound
If every museum in the New World were emptied, if every famous building in the Old World were destroyed and only Venice saved, there would be enough there to fill a full lifetime with delight. Venice, with all its complexity and variety, is in itself the greatest surviving work of art in the world. Evelyn … Read more
Properly understood, style is not a seductive decoration added to a functional structure; it is of the essence of a work of art. The necessary elements of style are lucidity, elegance, and individuality; these three qualities combine to form a preservative which ensures the nearest approximation to permanence in the fugitive art of letters. Evelyn … Read more
A work of art is not a matter of thinking beautiful thoughts or experiencing tender emotions , but of intelligence, skill, taste, proportion, knowledge, discipline and industry; especially discipline. Evelyn Waugh
There is some music that’s truly dark, in that it’s dark in terms of hopeless. But then again, the act of hope is just making the work of art. Eyvind Kang
In a way, composing on the melodic level is an expression of a melodic truth, almost like a geometric truth. If it has clarity, other people will recognize it. There’s no way of isolating it in a gallery on a white wall and saying, This is a work of art. This is a mathematical proof. … Read more
There’s this shop in New York I go to; it has bones and fossils and insects that are like works of art. I have a few on my wall. Eva Green
In France, we have laïcité, which means that atheism is almost our state religion. But I think a very important part of Western culture is in the centuries when Christianism was dominant and was present in almost all works of art – not only liturgical works, but also literature and music. Yes, it’s important to … Read more
Every work of art (unless it is a psuedo-intellectualist work, a work already comprised in some ideology that it merely illustrates, as with Brecht) is outside ideology, is not reducible to ideology. Ideology circumscribes without penetrating it. The absence of ideology in a work does not mean an absence of ideas; on the contrary it … Read more