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Selected
Aphorisms
"Art
is a kind of religion whose aim is the elevation of thought."
-Paul Cezanne
"To
achieve progress nature alone counts, and the eye is trained
through contact with her."
-Cezanne
"I
must always work, but not to achieve a final polish, which is
for the admiration of imbeciles. And this thing which is so commonly
appreciated is only the accomplishment of artisan's skill and
makes every work resulting from it inartistic and vulgar."
-Paul Cezanne
"One
is neither too scrupulous, nor too sincere, nor too submissive
before nature, but one is more or less master of one's model
and above all the means of expression."
-Paul Cezanne
"What
interests me most is expressing what's in nature, in the visible
world, that is."
-Giorgio Morandi
"A
work of art is one of mystery, the one extreme magic..."
-Truman Capote
"The
opposite of every great idea is another great idea."
-Niels
Bohr
"People
today treat the past with a contempt it does not deserve and
the present with a respect it deserves even less."
-Bertrand
Russell
"Confusion
of goals and perfection of means seems, in my opinion, to characterize
our age."
-Albert Einstein
"I
believe that the great painters, with their intellect as master,
have attempted to force the unwilling medium of paint and canvas
into a record of their emotions. I find any digression from this
large aim leads me to boredom. "
-Edward Hopper
"If
you could say it in words there would be no reason to paint."
-Edward Hopper
"Let
us speak of perfection, we shall get ourselves rather disliked."
-Ezra Pound
"Art
is news that stays news."
-Ezra Pound
"Look,
and look and look until you are blind with looking. And then
you will see."
-Bernard Berenson
"God
the greatest artist was clumsy."
-Renior
"One of poshlost's (poshlost is a Russian word which means "...corny
trash, vulgar cliches, Philistinism in all its phases, imitations
of imitations, bogus profundities, crude, moronic...") favorite
breeding places has always been the Art Exhibition: there it is
produced by so-called sculptors working with the tools of wreckers,
building crankshaft cretins of stainless steel, Zen stereos, polystyrene
stinkbirds, objects trouves in latrines, cannonballs, canned balls.
There we admire the gabinetti wall patterns of so-called abstract
artists, Freudian surrealism, roric smudges, and Rorschach blots
-- all of it as corny in its own right as the academic "September
Morns" and "Florentine Flowergirls" of half a century
ago."
-Vladimir Nabokov
"Your
work is both good and original, but, unfortunately, the good
parts aren't original and the original parts aren't good!"
Samuel Johnson (in response to a young writer who had asked Johnson
to judge his writing)
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