Quotes on Art

In Red Flags, Juris Jurjevics has brilliantly accomplished a feat that is becoming a major characteristic of 21st century literature: the seamless combining of a genre form with the deep resonance of literary art. This book is thrilling to read for both its narrative drive and its insight into the human heart.

We sit down before the picture in order to have something done to us, not that we may do things with it. The first demand any work of art makes upon us is surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get yourself out of the way (there is no good asking first whether the work before you deserves such a surrender, for until you have surrendered you cannot possibly find out.

It has been the office of art to educate the perception of beauty. We are immersed in beauty but our eyes have no clear vision.

Thou wouldst be loved? - then let thy heart_x000D_ _x000D_ From its present pathway part not!_x000D_ _x000D_ Being everything which now thou art,_x000D_ _x000D_ Be nothing which thou art not._x000D_ _x000D_ So with the world thy gentle ways,_x000D_ _x000D_ Thy grace, thy more than beauty,_x000D_ _x000D_ Shall be an endless theme of praise,_x000D_ _x000D_ And love - a simple duty.

If you want to be an actor, you must have total, ruthless commitment to your art. Don't be ambitious for fame or TV or movies. Art is a jealous mistress and will brook no competitors. Study all the time. Never stop reading. Never stop learning speeches. It will fill you up - define and refine you.

Art is always about overcoming obstacles between the inner condition and the skill for expression.

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.

All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions.

Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.

Art would be useless if the world were perfect.

[T]he visibility of styles is itself a product of historical consciousness. ... The very notion of "style" needs to be approached historically. Awareness of style as a problematic and isolable element in a work of art has emerged in the audience for art only at certain historical moments - as a front behind which other issues, ultimately ethical and political, are being debated.

'Untitled' is a time machine that can transport you to 1992, an edgy moment when the art world was crumbling, money was scarce, and artists like Tiravanija were in the nascent stages of combining Happenings, performance art, John Cage, Joseph Beuys, and the do-it-yourself ethos of punk. Meanwhile, a new art world was coming into being.

History repeats itself, but the special call of an art which has passed away is never reproduced. It is as utterly gone out of the world as the song of a destroyed wild bird.

No. I cannot expect you to believe it. Take it as a lie--or a prophecy. Say I dreamed it in the workshop. Consider I have been speculating upon the destinies of our race until I have hatched this fiction. Treat my assertion of its truth as a mere stroke of art to enhance its interest. And taking it as a story, what do you think of it?

As for the usefulness of poetry, its uses are many. It is the deification of reality.

Good art theory must smell of the studio, although its language should differ from the household talk of painters and sculptors.

From the point of view of art, the butcher and the victim are equal as people. You need to see the people.

Pain s the truth of art. Art is not a hobby or a pastime. It is the result of an internal battle royal, one between the quest for safety and the desire to matter.

To practice Zen or the Martial Arts, you must live intensely, wholeheartedly, without reserve - as if you might die in the next instant

I have heard it said that a complicated childhood can lead to a life in the arts. I tell you this story of my father and me to let you know I am qualified to be a comedian.

Chaplin and Keaton are still the best. They know that there is nothing more serious than laughter, an art demanding infinite work, and that as long as the world revolves, making others laugh is the most splendid of activities.