Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting that speaks.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the deep connection between visual art and poetry, suggesting that both forms express profound emotions and ideas.
Plutarch's quote highlights the interrelationship between painting and poetry, implying that while painting conveys emotion through visuals, poetry transmits feelings through language. The comparison suggests that both art forms share the ability to express complex thoughts and evoke feelings, with painting being a form of poetry that communicates without words and poetry being a visual representation of thought through the art of language.
In practice
In a lecture about the significance of art in culture, you could use this quote to introduce the conversation.
Sometimes small incidents, rather than glorious exploits, give us the best evidence of character. So, as portrait painters are more exact in doing the face, where the character is revealed, than the rest of the body, I must be allowed to give my more particular attention to the marks of the souls of men.
It were better to have no opinion of God at all than such a one as is unworthy of him; for the one is only belief - the other contempt.
Come back with your shield - or on it
The richest soil, if uncultivated, produces the rankest weeds.
For the correct analogy for the mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting.
Our senses through ignorance of Reality, falsely tell us that what appears to be, is. FEAR = False Evidence Appearing Real
[...] I've come to the conclusion that the artist can not justify life or come up with a cogent reason as to why life is meaningful, but the artist can provide you with a cold glass of water on a hot day.
Music from my fourth year began to be the first of my youthful occupations. Thus early acquainted with the gracious muse who tuned my soul to pure harmonies, I became fond of her, and, as it often seemed to me, she of me.
Music, I think, is best when it honestly explores personal demons, and it stirs around in the silt of the psyche to find out what's really there.
I'd started going to acting classes at 14, played 'Medea' at 15 and really wanted to be a classical actress.
people see so many movies that when they finally see one not so bad as the others, they think it's great. an Academy Award means that you don't stink quite as much as your cousin.
A work can have in it a pent-up energy, an intense life of its own, independent of the subject it may represent.
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