Quotes by Art Historians - Page 3

[…] nobody grows up. Everyone carries around all the selves that they have ever been, intact, waiting to be reactivated in moments of pain, of fear, of danger. Everything is retrievable, every shock, every hurt. But perhaps it becomes a duty to abandon the stock of time that one carries within oneself, to discard it in favour of the present, so that one’s embrace may be turned outwards to the world in which one has made one’s home.
Anita Brookner
She had lost herself in this old work, her personality dissolving into it, so that she had been set free. The immortality of the soul lies in its dissolution; this was the cryptic comment that so frustrated Olivier and which Julien had only ever grasped as evidence for the history of a particular school of thought. He had known all about its history, but Julia knew what it meant. He found the realization strangely reassuring.
Iain Pears
Olivier took a deep breath, then turned and bowed in farewell. Gersonides nodded in return, then thought of something."The manuscript you brought me, by that bishop. It argues that understanding is more important than movement. That action is virtuous only if it reflects pure comprehension, and that virtue comes from the comprehension, not the action."Olivier frowned. "So?""Dear boy, I must tell you a secret.""What?""I do believe it is wrong.
Iain Pears
[Pope] Clement waved his hands in irritation as if to dismiss the very idea. "The world is crumbling into ruin. Armies are marching. Men and women are dying everywhere, in huge numbers. Fields are abandoned and towns deserted. The wrath of the Lord is upon us and He may be intending to destroy the whole of creation. People are without leaders and direction. They want to be given a reason for this, so they can be reassured, so they will return to their prayers and their obiediences. All this is going on, and you are concerned about the safety of two Jews?
Iain Pears
The true snob never rests there is always a higher goal to attain and there are by the same token always more and more people to look down upon.
Russell Lynes
It would be unfair to say that I prefer the back of a book to its contents, but it is true that the sight of a lot of books gives me the hope that I may some day read them, which sometimes develops into the belief that I have read them.
Kenneth Clark
When people will not weed their own minds, they are apt to be overrun by nettles.
Horace Walpole
I have heard of you- a kind of revolutionary. Hard to be a revolutionary in the deadly museum business.
Thomas Hoving
This world is a comedy to those who think a tragedy to those who feel.
Horace Walpole
As I got warmed up and felt perfectly at home in talk I heard myself boasting lying exaggerating. Oh not deliberately far from it. It would be unconvivial and dull to stop and arrest the flow of talk and speak only after carefully considering whether I was telling the truth.
Bernard Berenson
That Detroit ultimately concentrated on automobiles could be traced to one genius, Henry Ford.... But that the necessary human energy for this development existed in Detroit could be proven through its early history.... I told him what I knew of the settlement in Detroit and of the climate, certainly almost the worst in the United States. Only the very strong could survive.... To defeat the conditions imposed by earth and sky at Detroit required intensive labor by energetic men who were not tempted by pleasure and play.
William Valentiner
The world is a comedy to those who think a tragedy to those who feel.
Horace Walpole
Enemies could become the best companions. Companionship is based on a common interest and the greater the interest the closer the companionship. What makes enemies of people if not the eagerness the passion for the same thing?
Bernard Berenson
The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.
Horace Walpole
Mrs Hargreaves liked her job and she liked the Hoopers. As far as she was concerned there was far too much twaddle being talked about Glade Hall, by people with too much time on their hands.“Over fertile imaginations.” She’d told the new head gardener.Some of the locals had worked for the hotel and told stories of seeing shadows around the grounds, when the light was just right. As if shadows could hurt anyone ! It was all twaddle and nonsense.
Edward Cowling
Never try to walk across a river just because it has an average depth of four feet.
Martin Friedman
You cannot impose a culture from the top--it must come from under. It grows out of the soil, out of the people, out of their daily life and work. It is a spontaneous expression of their joy of life, of their joy in work, and if this does not exist, the culture will not exist. Joy is a spiritual quality, an impalpable quality: that too cannot be forced. It must be an inevitable state of mind, born of the elementary processes of life, a by-product of natural human growth.
Herbert Read
I reflected how easy it is for a man to reduce women of a certain age to imbecility. All he has to do is give an impersonation of desire, or better still, of secret knowledge, for a woman to feel herself a source of power.
Anita Brookner
He was persuaded he could know no happiness but in the society of one with whom he could for ever indulge the melancholy that had taken possession of his soul.
Horace Walpole
Philosophy cannot be extinguished, though men will try ... The spirit seeks the light, that is its nature. It wishes to return to its origin, and must forever try to reach enlightenment.
Iain Pears
Always let them think of you as singing and dancing.
Anita Brookner
Anything that is not necessary to the painting damages it." Henri Matisse
Volkmar Essers
Those who like to interpret historical facts symbolically may recognize in this the spirit of a specifically "modern" conception of the world which permits the subject to assert itself against the object as something independent and equal; whereas classical antiquity did not as yet permit the explicit formulation of this contrast; and whereas the Middle Ages believed the subject as well as the object to be submerged in a higher unity.
Erwin Panofsky
They had waited for too long, and the result was this hiatus, and the reflection that time and patience may bring poor rewards, that time itself, if not confronted at the appropriate juncture, can play sly tricks, and more significantly, that those who do not act are not infrequently acted upon.
Anita Brookner
Accountability in friendship is the equivalent of love without strategy.
Anita Brookner
I think that those few words were my greatest mistake.
Anita Brookner
Women share their sadness, thought Edith. Their joy they like to show off to one another. Victory, triumph over the odds, calls for an audience. And that air of bustle and exigence sometimes affected by the sexually loquacious - that is for the benefit of other women. No solidarity then.
Anita Brookner
I’ve been watching you drink,” he says. “Think it’s a good idea to put your liver through this?”“What are you the public service message fairy?”“Just being polite.”“Well I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that you, sir, have taken the being polite thing too far. Why don’t you just ask me out already so I can refuse and you can leave me the fuck alone?
Sam Hunter
Dr Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature
Anita Brookner
We define genius as the capacity for productive reaction against one's training.
Bernard Berenson
Civilization depends on continually making the effort, of never giving in. It needs to be cared for by men of goodwill, protected from the dark.
Iain Pears
I suppose what one wants really is ideal company and books are ideal company.
Anita Brookner
This assumption of the intrinsically repressive nature of collective experience and redemptive power of individuation is a staple of contemporary art theory and criticism. I would argue that a closer analysis of collaborative and collective art practices can reveal a more complex model of social change and identity, one in which the binary oppositions of divided vs. coherent subjectivity, desiring singularity vs. totalizing collective, liberating distanciation vs. stultifying interdependence, are challenged and complicated.
Grant H. Kester
the only graceful way to accept an insult is to ignore it; if you cant ignore it, top it; if you cant top it, laugh at it; if you cant laugh at it, its probably deserved
Russell Lynes
This is a perfectly good picture. And if I didn't know you, I would be impressed and charmed. But I do know you."He thought some more, wondering whether he dared say precisely what he felt, for he knew he could never explain exactly why the idea came to him. "It's the painting of a dutiful daughter," he said eventually, looking at her cautiously to see her reaction. "You want to please. You are always aware of what the person looking at this picture will think of it. Because of that you've missed something important. Does that make sense?"She thought, then nodded. "All right," she said grudgingly and with just a touch of despair in her voice. "You win."Julien grunted. "Have another go, then. I shall come back and come back until you figure it out.""And you'll know?""You'll know. I will merely get the benefit of it.
Iain Pears
In the early twelfth century century the Virgin had been the supreme protectress of civilisation. She had taught a race of tough and ruthless barbarians the virtues of tenderness and compassion. The great cathedrals of the Middle Ages were her dwelling places upon earth. In the Renaissance, while remaining the Queen of Heaven, she became also the human mother in whom everyone could recognise qualities of warmth and love and approachability...The stabilising, comprehensive religions of the world, the religions which penetrate to every part of a man's being--in Egypt, India or China--gave the female principle of creation at least as much importance as the male, and wouldn't have taken seriously a philosophy that failed to include them both...It's a curious fact that theall-male religions have produced no religious imagery--in most cases have positively forbidden it. The great religious art of the world is deeply involved with the female principle.
Kenneth Clark
I fear no bad angel, and have offended no good one.
Horace Walpole
To act with common sense according to the moment is the best wisdom and the best philosophy is to do one's duties to take the world as it comes submit respectfully to one's lot and bless the goodness that has given us so much happiness with it whatever it is.
Horace Walpole
A complete life may be one ending in so full identification with the non-self that there is no self to die.
Bernard Berenson
[T]he concern of man is not his future but his present, not the world but his soul. We must be just, we must strive, we must engage ourselves with the business of the world for our own sake, because through that, and through contemplation in equal measure, our soul is purified and brought closer to the divine. ... Thought and deed conjoined are crucial. ... The attempt must be made; the outcome is irrelevant. Right action is a pale material reflection of the divine, but reflection it is, nonetheless. Define your goal and exert reason to accomplish it by virtuous action; successs or failure is secondary.
Iain Pears
No blame should attach to telling the truth.
Anita Brookner
Was not Hypatia the greatest philosopher of Alexandria, and a true martyr to the old values of learning? She was torn to pieces by a mob of incensed Christians not because she was a woman, but because her learning was so profound, her skills at dialectic so extensive that she reduced all who queried her to embarrassed silence. They could not argue with her, so they murdered her.
Iain Pears
Actuality is when the lighthouse is dark between flashes: it is the instant between the ticks of the watch: it is a void interval slipping forever through time: the rupture between past and future: the gap at the poles of the revolving magnetic field, infinitesimally small but ultimately real. It is the interchronic pause when nothing is happening. It is the void between events.
George Kubler
These two developments throw light on what is perhaps the most fundamental difference between the Renaissance and all previous periods of art. We have repeatedly seen that there were these circumstances which could compel the artist to make a distinction between the "technical" proportions and the "objective;" the influence of organic movement, the influence of perspective foreshortening, and the regard for the visual impression of the beholder. These three factors of variation have one thing in common: they all presuppose the artistic recognition of subjectivity. Organic movement introduces into the calculus of artistic composition the subjective will and the subjective emotions of the thing represented; foreshortening the subjective visual experience of the artist; and those "eurhythmic" adjustments which alter that which is right in favor of what seems right, the subjective visual experience of a potential beholder. And it is the Renaissance which, for the first time, not only affirms but formally legitimizes and rationalizes these three forms of subjectivity.
Erwin Panofsky
Odd, don't you think? I have seen war, and invasions and riots. I have heard of massacres and brutalities beyond imagining, and I have kept my faith in the power of civilization to bring men back from the brink. And yet one women writes a letter, and my whole world falls to pieces.You see, she is an ordinary woman. A good one, even. That's the point ... Nothing [a recognizably bad person does] can surprise or shock me, or worry me. But she denounced Julia and sent her to her death because she resented her, and because Julia is a Jew.I thought in this simple contrast between the civilized and the barbaric, but I was wrong. It is the civilized who are the truly barbaric, and the [Nazi] Germans are merely the supreme expression of it.
Iain Pears
and the castle in which she dwelt was a prison to her; and sometimes sudden fits of gusty passion would overtake her, for weariness grew to hate, and hate to wrath,"The Serpent's Head
Lady Dilke
Manlius ... took care in his invitations, actively sought to exclude from his circle crude and vulgar men like Caius Valerius. But they were all around; it was Manlius who lived in a dream world, and his bubble of civility was becoming smaller and smaller. Caius Valerius, powerful member of a powerful family, had never even heard of Plato. A hundred, even fifty years before, such an absurdity would have been inconceivable. Now it was surprising if such a man did know anything of philosophy, and even if it was explained, he would not wish to understand.
Iain Pears