Philosophy Of Art Quotes

The real sustains the same relation to the ideal that a stone does to a statue - or that paint does to a painting. Realism degrades and impoverishes.

I feel like art imitates life and life imitates art.

Composition is a way of living out your philosophy and calling it art.

All art is concerned with coming into being; for it is concerned neither with things that are, or come into being by necessity, nor with things that do so in accordance with nature.

Art is not a thing; it is a way.

I would simply ask why so many critics, so many writers, so many philosophers take such satisfaction in professing that the experience of a work of art is ineffable, that it escapes by definition all rational understanding; why are they so eager to concede without a struggle the defeat of knowledge; and where does their irrepressible need to belittle rational understanding come from, this rage to affirm the irreducibility of the work of art, or, to use a more suitable word, its transcendence.

The word 'abstract' comes from the light tower of the philosophers. One of their spotlights that they have particularly focused on 'Art'. [Abstraction was] not so much what you could paint but rather what you could not paint. You could not paint a house or a tree or a mountain. It was then that subject matter came into existence as something you ought not have.

One of two things is usually lacking in the so-called Philosophy of Art: either philosophy or art.

What is the use of aesthetics if they can neither teach how to produce beauty nor how to appreciate it in good taste? It exists because it behooves rational human beings to provide reasons for their actions and assessments. Even if aesthetics are not the mathematics of beauty, they are the proof of the calculation.

Rationalism is the enemy of art, though necessary as a basis for architecture.

Art is an invention of aesthetics, which in turn is an invention of philosophers... What we call art is a game.

Art isn't meaningless... It is in itself. It isn't in that it tries to make life less so.

All art is the expression of one and the same thing- the relation of the spirit of man to the spirit of other men and to the world.

I only want to give a metaphysic for my music.

I like nature but not its substitutes... Mondrian opposed art to nature saying that art is artificial and nature is natural. I do not share this opinion... Art's origins are natural.

Sophocles said he drew men as they ought to be, and Euripides as they were.

Music is the expression of the will of nature while all other arts are expressions of the idea of nature.

I slowly dismantled the act of painting, to consider the possibility that no-thing ever really transcends its immediate environment.

All good performance pieces have some philosophical validity. That's the difference between mere theater and performance art.

Artistic truth is for me literally the highest truth: art may seize the essence of persons and movements no less truly, and certainly far more vitally, than a scientific generalization unifies a chaos of phenomena. Time and Space are only the conditions through which spiritual facts struggle. Hence I have here and there permitted myself liberties with these categories.