To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them that they can never have.
Susan SontagRead
The artist who does not feel completely satisfied by elegant lines, by harmonious colors, and by a beautiful succession of chords does not understand the art of music.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the essential elements of music as an art form, emphasizing the importance of aesthetic appreciation.
Camille Saint-Saens suggests that true understanding of music goes beyond technical skills; it involves an emotional and aesthetic appreciation of beauty, whether in melodies, harmonies, or the interplay of colors and lines in musical expression. An artist must feel a profound satisfaction from these elements to grasp the essence of music as an art form.
In practice
During a lecture on art appreciation, I referenced this quote to emphasize the importance of emotional connection in music.
To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them that they can never have.
Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does.
I've written only two novels, but they're both long ones, and they each took a decade to write.
the whole purport of literature...is the notation of the heart. Style is but the faintly contemptible vessel in which the bitter liquid is recommended to the world.
The general public, formerly profoundly indifferent to everything to do with building, has been shaken out of its torpor; personal interest in architecture as something that concerns every one of us in our daily lives has been very widely aroused; and the broad line of its future development are already clearly discernible.
Speaking for myself, art differs from writing in that I never know what I'm going to paint until I paint it, so it's almost like automatic writing. A writer, on the other hand, can't help but know what he's going to write, because the activity demands a degree of premeditation.
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