Aesthetic Criticism Quotes

Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. The power of invention has been conferred by nature upon few, and the labour of learning those sciences which may, by mere labour, be obtained, is too great to be willingly endured; but every man can exert some judgment as he has upon the works of others; and he whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of critic.

I believe if you come out of a movie and the first thing you say is, 'The cinematography was beautiful,' it's a bad movie.

There's always the danger that there are so damn many things that a playwright can examine in this society of ours - things that have less to do with his artistic work than have to do with the critical and aesthetic environment - that perhaps he does have to worry about whether or not he is writing too fast. But then also, perhaps he should worry about getting as many plays on as possible before the inevitable ax falls.

I am quite incapable of understanding how any work of art can be criticized from a moral standpoint. The sphere of art and the sphere of ethics are absolutely distinct and separate.

Rich men are resolved to be astonished at nothing. When they see a masterpiece, they must needs at one glance recognize some flaw to dispense them from admiration, a vulgar emotion.

My first buildings, when I was about 30, were rejected for aesthetic reasons.

What a horrible thing yellow is.

What strikes me about Toronto is that Toronto's great misfortune was to have too much money in the late 70s and early 80s, and consequently, it built in the style of those periods, which is hideous.

The course hitherto pursued in musical aesthetics has nearly always been hampered by the false assumption that the object was not so much to inquire into what is beautiful in music as to describe the feelings which music awakens.

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

The building is a national tragedy - a cross between a concrete candy box and a marble sarcophagus in which the art of architecture lies buried.

Religion is always a patron of the arts, but its taste is by no means impeccable.

One advantage of arguing that causality is aesthetic is that it allows us to consider what we call consciousness alongside what we call things.

I abhor mere prettiness.

I am attracted only to music which I consider to be better than it can be performed.

Beauty is merciless. You do not look at it, it looks at you and does not forgive.

Literature and the arts are also criticism in a more particular and practical sense. They embody an expository reflection on, a value judgement of, the inheritance and context to which they pertain.

Enough if every age produce two or three critics of this esoteric class, with here and there a reader to understand them.

Matters of taste are not, it turns out, moral issues.

Tomes of aesthetic criticism hang on a few moments of real delight and intuition.

Rule of criticism: only attend to the shape, and the purpose will manifest itself.