Artistic Tradition Quotes

The element of heroic maleness had always been present in the concept of the artist as one who rides the winged horse above the clouds beyond the sight of lesser men, a concept seldom applied to those who worked with colours until the nineteenth century. When the inevitable question is asked, "Why are there no great women artists?" it is this dimension of art that is implied. The askers know little of art, but they know the seven wonders of the painting world.

The art of nations is to be accumulative, just as science and history are; the work of living men not superseding, but building itself upon the work of the past.

Unfortunately, I haven't thought sufficiently about art. What I never realized - and it's really stupid - is the art world is the art world because all these thousands of famous and not-famous artists do things, over centuries. This hadn't occurred to me.

Art was a way of life in my family. My grandfather, N.C. Wyeth, who died a year before I was born, had been a prominent painter. So was my father, Andrew. My two aunts and two of my uncles also earned a living as painters.

Art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead.

I have lived in Cornwall from the age of 4, so I have always been aware of the artistic heritage that the county has. I feel very proud to be able to connect to this.

Koons's work has always stood apart for its one-at-a-time perfection, epic theatricality, a corrupted, almost sick drive for purification, and an obsession with traditional artistic values.

The novel tradition is the closest thing I have to a religion, and being a part of that tradition means a lot to me. I don't really see - I never have seen - why I should have to forfeit that feeling, or hope, of belonging, just because the stories I want to tell are close to my own experience.

There's a Chinese proverb that says it all: Painting is an old man's art.

My father came from a Quaker family. His father was a professional artist who did portraits - very traditional, a lot of religious subjects.

We will never get great art from women if their education exposes them only to the second-rate and if the idea of greatness itself is denied. Greatness is not a white male trick. Every important world civilization has defined its artistic tradition in elitist terms of distinction and excellence.

Jews like to write and sing. In America, a lot of us have been eager to show that we're part of American culture. But it all goes back to King David writing Psalms.

The noblest art is the nude. This truth is recognized by all, and followed by painters, sculptors and poets. Only the dancer has forgotten it, who should remember it, as the instrument of [the dance] art is the human body itself.

Painting is my profession, because it has always been the thing that interested me most. I'm of a certain age, I come from a different tradition and, in any case, I can't do anything else. I'm still very sure that painting is one of the most basic human capacities, like dancing and singing, that make sense, that stay with us, as something human.

Growing up in a traditional environment, I was taught the importance of art, how it's connected to the soul, how it makes a human being. This made me understand and cherish American art forms.

Traditionally art is to create and not to revive. To revive: leave that to the historians, who are looking backward.

At the point when continuity was interrupted by the first nuclear explosion, it would have been too easy to recover the formal sediment which linked us with an age of poetic decorum, of a preoccupation with poetic sounds.

Poetry speaks most effectively and inclusively (whether in free or formal verse) when it recognizes its connection - without apology - to its musical and ritualistic origins.

I think each artist lives with purpose. A strong sense of purpose. We know who's come before us.

There's something very fine and lucid and rich in this tradition of the English actor.

The Ohio State University has a rich - if quiet - heritage of the arts.

Whenever serious art loses track of its roots in the vernacular, then it begins to atrophy.

No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead.

Both my parents were painters.

I don't see why people want new plays all the time. What would happen to concerts if people wanted new music all the time?