Accentuated plainness and accentuated vice ought to bring about harmony. Beauty lies in harmony, in style, whether it be the harmony of ugliness or beauty, vice or virtue.
Interpretation
Beauty is found in the balance of contrasting elements, such as good and bad.
This quote by Yevgeny Zamyatin suggests that true beauty comes from harmony, which can exist between opposites. The interplay of plainness and vice, as well as virtue and beauty, creates a harmonious whole, emphasizing that artistic expression involves embracing both sides of the spectrum to reveal a deeper aesthetic appeal.
In practice
In a gallery opening, this quote can be showcased to emphasize the dual nature of art in representing both beauty and flaws.
The knife is the most durable, immortal, the most genius thing that man created. The knife was the guillotine; the knife is the universal means of solving all knots; and along the blade of a knife lies the path of paradox - the single most worthy path of the fearless mind.
The world is kept alive only by heretics: the heretic Christ, the heretic Copernicus, the heretic Tolstoy. Our symbol of faith is heresy...
The lilac branches are bowed under the weight of the flowers: blooming is hard, and the most important thing is - to bloom. (βA Story About The Most Important Thingβ)
A man is like a novel: until the very last page you don't know how it will end. Otherwise it wouldn't be worth reading.
Knowledge, absolutely sure of its infallibility, is faith.
You're in a bad way! Apparently, you have developed a soul.
I'm a songwriter first...In my career I have never felt that my being a woman was an obstacle or an advantage. I guess I've been oblivious...Sensitive, humbug. Everybody thinks I'm sensitive...There is a downside to having one of the biggest-selling albums ever.
Style ain't nothing but keeping the same idea from beginning to end. Everybody got it.
I knew I could only play Cyrano if he were Americanized. I had no intention of writing the script myself. I was afraid of it. You're playing with fire when you tamper with a classic. So I went looking for a writer. But it was such a personal idea, and anyone I would give it to would make it his own. It's hard to ask Neil Simon to write your idea.
Photography is more than a medium for factual communication of ideas. It is a creative art.
For years, I've been painting black men as a way to respond to the reality of the streets. I've asked black men to show up in my studio in the clothes that they want to be wearing. And often times, those clothes would be the same trappings people would see on television and find menacing.
Purer colors... have in themselves, independently of the objects they serve to express, a significant action on the feelings of those who look at them.
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