Clive Bell Quotes

I think it was Roger Fry who first coined what he took to be a final definition of a work of art, whether it was a painting, building, poem or Hepplewhite chair. He said that the best works of art are finished products that preserve 'a valuable state of mind'.

Works of art must persist as objects of contemplation.

I have no evangelical feelings about art at all. I despise art education. Art doesn't lend itself to education. There is no knowledge there. It's a set of propositions about how things should look.

Art about art and backstory has taken over visual pleasure.

There's no connection between consumption of art and moral stamina at all.

Only the work of art itself can raise the standard of taste.

A work of art, so far as it is a work of art, cannot - whatever the artist's personal intention - advocate anything at all.

The whole point of art, as far as I’m concerned, is that art doesn’t make any difference. And that’s why it’s important. Take film: you can have quite extreme emotional experiences watching a movie, but they stop as soon as you walk out of the cinema. You can see people being hurt, but even though you feel those things strongly, you know they’re not real.

Those who are not very concerned with art want poems or pictures to record for them something they already know - as one might want a picture of a place he loves.

I realize that every picture isn't a work of art.

I know that the arts are important. I'm not denying that, but I can't associate myself with all the claptrap that goes on around it.

We all agree now - by 'we' I mean intelligent people under sixty - that a work of art is like a rose. A rose is not beautiful because it is like something else. Neither is a work of art. Roses and works of art are beautiful in themselves.

The philistine provides the best definition of art. Anything that makes him rage is first class.

Treat a work of art like a prince. Let it speak to you first.

Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe to possess internal order, and that is why, though I don't believe that only art matters, I do believe in Art for Art's sake.

Great art - or good art - is when you look at it, experience it and it stays in your mind. I don't think conceptual art and traditional art are all that different.

The beauty of art is that it allows you to slow down, and for a moment, things that once seemed unfamiliar become precious to you.

I don't think the audience goes and thinks of the movie as a piece of art - there are some independent people who may go and have a higher appreciation for filmmaking. It is a great art form, but I don't think you look at a painting and a movie with the same eye.

Painting and sculpture help other people to see what a wonderful world we live in.

The ultimate justification of the work of art is to help the spectator to become a work of art himself.

The proper response to a great work of art is to enter it as though there were nothing else in the world.

Art, if it is successful, needs no explanation.

It used to happen, and still happens, to me to take no pleasure in a work of art at the first sight of it, because it is too much for me; but if I suspect any merit in it, I try to get at it; and then I never fail to make the most gratifying discoveries--to find new qualities in the work itself and new faculties in myself.

Nobody is fully alive who cannot apply to art as much discrimination and appreciation as he applies to the work by which he earns his living.

Nothing touches a work of art so little as criticism.