Quotes: mai 2010

"Art is a state of encounter "

- Nicolas Bourriaud in Esthétique Relationelle, 1998.

Source: Bourriaud, Nicolas. 2002. Relational Aesthetics. Les presses du réel. p.18. translation by Simon Pleasance & Fronza Woods with the participation of Mathieu Copeland. ISBN2-84066-060-1

"This is a society where human relations are no longer 'directly experienced', but start to become blurred in their 'spectacular' representation. Herein lies the most burning issue to do with art today: is it still possible to generate relationships with the world, in a practical field art history traditionally earmarked for their 'representation' "

- Nicolas Bourriaud in Esthétique Relationelle, 1998.

Source: Bourriaud, Nicolas. 2002. Relational Aesthetics. Les presses du réel. p.9. translation by Simon Pleasance & Fronza Woods with the participation of Mathieu Copeland. ISBN2-84066-060-1

"Those who are living are responsible that the deeds and words of the dead - indeed, their freedom - will not pass into oblivion"

- Haim Gordon and Rivca Gordon, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Source: Gordon, Haim and Riva Gordon. 1998. Sartre On Our Responsibility For Dead Lives: Implications For Teaching History. Paper for the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy, in Boston, Massachusetts August 10-15, 1998. The Paidea Archive. Available online from URL: http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Hist/HistGord.htm [Downloaded 2010-05-26]

"Sartre's thoughts on history and his writings about the past are very often provoking. They frequently challenge deep rooted assumptions, prevailing superficial ways of thinking, and accepted norms. (...) Sartre's insights often demand a rethinking of my relationship to specific events in the past, and a reassessment of my attitude to the field of history, be it defined as a story, a science, or a collective memory"

"Many, if not most, historians rarely read books by philosophers"

"History is not only a field in which you gather facts, events, and processes, but it is a worthy challenge which includes a grave personal responsibility: my responsibility to the dead lives"

"Curiosity has become a fatal, irresistible passion!"

- Charles Baudelaire, writing in favour of "Monsieur C.G" (Constantin Guys, 1802-92)

Source: Baudelaire, Charles. 1859. Originally printed in essay "Le Peintre de la Vie Moderne". Le Figaro, Paris, 26 & 28 November and 3 December 1863. Translation by Jonathan Mayne (ed). 1964. The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays. In Chapter: III - The Artist, Man of the World, Man of the Crowd, and Child. London: Phaidon Press. p.7. Available online from http://www.columbia.edu/itc/architecture/ockman/pdfs/dossier_4/Baudelaire.pdf [Downloaded 2010-05-26].

"The mainspring of his genius is curiosity"

"It was not precisely as an artist, but rather with a man of the world with whom I had to do. I ask you to understand the word artist in a very restricted sense, a man of the world in a very broad one. By the second i mean a man of the whole world, a man who understands the world and the mysterious and lawful reasons for all its uses; by the first, a specialist, a man wedded to his palette like the serf to the soil. Monsieur G. does not like to be called an artist. Is he not perhaps a little right? His interests is the whole world; he wants to know, understand and appreciate everything that happens on the surface of our globe. The artist lives very little, if at all, in the world of morals and politics. If he lives in the Bréda district, he will be unaware of what is going on in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. (...) the majority of artists are no more than highly skilled animals, pure artisans, village intellects, cottage brains. Their conversation, which is necessarily limited to the narrowest of circles, becomes very quickly unbearable to the man of the world, to the spiritual citizen of the universe."

- Charles Baudelaire, writing in favour of "Monsieur C.G" (Constantin Guys, 1802-92)

Source: Baudelaire, Charles. 1859. Originally printed in essay "Le Peintre de la Vie Moderne". Le Figaro, Paris, 26 & 28 November and 3 December 1863. Translation by Jonathan Mayne (ed). 1964. The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays. In Chapter: III - The Artist, Man of the World, Man of the Crowd, and Child. London: Phaidon Press. p.6-7. Available online from http://www.columbia.edu/itc/architecture/ockman/pdfs/dossier_4/Baudelaire.pdf [Downloaded 2010-05-26].

"Today I want to discourse to the public about a strange man, a man of so powerful and so decided an originality that it is sufficient unto itself and does not seek approval. Not a single one of his drawings is signed, if by signature you mean that string of easily forgeable characters which spell a name and which so many other artists affix ostentatiously at the foot of their least important trifles. Yet all his works are signed - with his dazzling soul (...) A passionate lover of crowds and incognitos, Monsieur C.G. carries originality to the point of shyness. (...) He drew like a barbarian, or a child, impatient at the clumsiness of his fingers and the disobedience of his pen."

- Charles Baudelaire, writing in favour of "Monsieur C.G" (Constantin Guys, 1802-92)

Source: Baudelaire, Charles. 1859. Originally printed in essay "Le Peintre de la Vie Moderne". Le Figaro, Paris, 26 & 28 November and 3 December 1863. Translation by Jonathan Mayne (ed). 1964. The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays. In Chapter: III - The Artist, Man of the World, Man of the Crowd, and Child. London: Phaidon Press. p.5-6. Available online from http://www.columbia.edu/itc/architecture/ockman/pdfs/dossier_4/Baudelaire.pdf [Downloaded 2010-05-26].

"Not a single one of his drawings is signed, if by signature you mean that string of easily forgeable characters which spell a name and which so many other artists affix ostentatiously at the foot of their least important trifles. Yet all his works are signed - with his dazzling soul"

- Charles Baudelaire, writing in favour of "Monsieur C.G" (Constantin Guys, 1802-92)

Source: Baudelaire, Charles. 1859. Originally printed in essay "Le Peintre de la Vie Moderne". Le Figaro, Paris, 26 & 28 November and 3 December 1863. Translation by Jonathan Mayne (ed). 1964. The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays. In Chapter: III - The Artist, Man of the World, Man of the Crowd, and Child. London: Phaidon Press. p.5. Available online from http://www.columbia.edu/itc/architecture/ockman/pdfs/dossier_4/Baudelaire.pdf [Downloaded 2010-05-26].

"Beauty is nothing but a promise of happiness."

- Stendhal

Source: Stendhal (Mari-Henri Beyle) quoted in Baudelaire, Charles. 1859. Originally printed in essay "La Peinture de la Vie Moderne". Le Figaro, Paris, 26 & 28 November and 3 December 1863. Translation by Jonathan Mayne (ed). 1964. The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays. In Chapter: Beauty, Fashion and Happiness. London: Phaidon Press. p.3. Available online from http://www.columbia.edu/itc/architecture/ockman/pdfs/dossier_4/Baudelaire.pdf [Downloaded 2010-05-26].

Original quote in French: "La beauté est l'expression d'une certaine manière habituelle de chercher le bonheur"

"This is in fact an excellent opportunity to establish a rational and historical theory of beauty, in contrast to the academic theory of an unique and absolute beauty; to show that beauty is always and inevitably of a double composition (...) Beauty is made up of an eternal, invariable element, whose quantity it is excessively difficult to determine, and of a relative, circumstantial element, which will be, if you like, whether severally or all at once, the age, its fashions, its morals, its emotions. (...) The duality of art is a fatal consequence of the duality of man. Consider, if you will, the eternally subsisting portion as the soul of art, and the variable element as its body."

- Charles Baudelaire

Source: Baudelaire, Charles. 1859. Originally printed in essay "Le Peintre de la Vie Moderne". Le Figaro, Paris, 26 & 28 November and 3 December 1863. Translation by Jonathan Mayne (ed). 1964. The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays. In Chapter: Beauty, Fashion and Happiness. London: Phaidon Press. p.3. Available online from http://www.columbia.edu/itc/architecture/ockman/pdfs/dossier_4/Baudelaire.pdf [Downloaded 2010-05-26].

"Even in those centuries which seem to us the most monstrous and the maddest, the immortal thirst for beauty has always found its satisfaction"

"Thoughtless people - people who are grave without true gravity"

- Charles Baudelaire

Source: Baudelaire, Charles. 1859. Originally printed in essay "Le Peintre de la Vie Moderne". Le Figaro, Paris, 26 & 28 November and 3 December 1863. Translation by Jonathan Mayne (ed). 1964. The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays. In Chapter: Beauty, Fashion and Happiness. London: Phaidon Press. p.2. Available online from http://www.columbia.edu/itc/architecture/ockman/pdfs/dossier_4/Baudelaire.pdf [Downloaded 2010-05-26].

"These costumes, which seem laughable to many thoughtless people - people who are grave without true gravity - have a double-natured charm, one both artistic and historical (...) And then, if they are worn and given life by intelligent actors and actresses, we shall be astonished at ever having been able to mock them so stupidly. Without losing anything of its ghostly attraction, the past will recover the light and movement of life and will become present"

- Charles Baudelaire

Source: Baudelaire, Charles. 1859. Originally printed in essay "Le Peintre de la Vie Moderne". Le Figaro, Paris, 26 & 28 November and 3 December 1863. Translation by Jonathan Mayne (ed). 1964. The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays. In Chapter: Beauty, Fashion and Happiness. London: Phaidon Press. p.2. Available online from http://www.columbia.edu/itc/architecture/ockman/pdfs/dossier_4/Baudelaire.pdf [Downloaded 2010-05-26].

"The idea of beauty which man creates for himself imprints itself on his whole attire, crumples or stiffens his dress, rounds off or squares his gesture, and in the long run even ends by subtly penetrating the very features of his face. Man ends by looking like his ideal self. These engravings can be translated either into beauty or ugliness; in one direction, they become caricatures, in the other, antique statues."

- Charles Baudelaire

Source: Baudelaire, Charles. 1859. Originally printed in essay "Le Peintre de la Vie Moderne". Le Figaro, Paris, 26 & 28 November and 3 December 1863. Translation by Jonathan Mayne (ed). 1964. The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays. In Chapter: Beauty, Fashion and Happiness. London: Phaidon Press. p.2. Available online from http://www.columbia.edu/itc/architecture/ockman/pdfs/dossier_4/Baudelaire.pdf [Downloaded 2010-05-26].

"My concern today is with the painting of manners of the present. The past is interesting not only by reason of the beauty which could be distilled from it by those artists for whom it was the present, but also precisely because it is the past, for its historical value. It is the same with the present. The pleasure which we derive from the representation of the present is due not only to the beauty with which it can be invested, but also to its essential quality of being present"

- Charles Baudelaire

Source: Baudelaire, Charles. 1859. Originally printed in essay "Le Peintre de la Vie Moderne". Le Figaro, Paris, 26 & 28 November and 3 December 1863. Translation by Jonathan Mayne (ed). 1964. The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays. In Chapter: Beauty, Fashion and Happiness. London: Phaidon Press. p.1. Available online from http://www.columbia.edu/itc/architecture/ockman/pdfs/dossier_4/Baudelaire.pdf [Downloaded 2010-05-26].

"The world - and even the world of artists - is full of people who can go to the Louvre, walk rapidly, without so much as a glance, past rows of very interesting, though secondary, pictures, to come to a rapturous halt in front of a Titian or a Raphael - one of those that have been most popularized by the engraver's art; then they will go home happy, not a few saying to themselves, 'I know my Museum.' Just as there are people who, having once read Bossuet and Racine, fancy that they have mastered the history of literature.

Fortunately from time to time there comes forward righters of wrong, critics, amateurs, curious enquirers, to declare that Raphael, or Racine, does not contain the whole secret, and that the minor poets too have something good, solid and delightful to offer; and finally that however much we may love general beauty, as it is expressed by classical poets and artists, we are no less wrong to neglect particular beauty, the beauty of circumstance and the sketch of manners"

- Charles Baudelaire

Source: Baudelaire, Charles. 1859. Originally printed in essay "Le Peintre de la Vie Moderne". Le Figaro, Paris, 26 & 28 November and 3 December 1863. Translation by Jonathan Mayne (ed). 1964. The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays. In Chapter: Beauty, Fashion and Happiness. London: Phaidon Press. p.1. Available online from http://www.columbia.edu/itc/architecture/ockman/pdfs/dossier_4/Baudelaire.pdf [Downloaded 2010-05-26].

"The artist is the most important origin of a work, but the hands through which it passes are essential to the way in which it accrues value"

- Sarah Thornton

Source: Thornton, Sarah. Seven Days in the Art World. 2008. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-393-06722-4. pp. 10.

"Even the most businesslike dealers will tell you that making money should be a byoproduct of art, not an artist's main goal. Art needs motives that are more profound than profit if is is to maintain its difference from - and position above - other cultural forms"

- Sarah Thornton

Source: Thornton, Sarah. Seven Days in the Art World. 2008. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-393-06722-4. pp. xvi-xvii.

"Despite its self-regard, and much like a society of devout followers, the art world relies on consensus as heavily as it depends on individual analysis or critical thinking. Althought the art world reveres the unconventional, it is rife with conformity. Artists make works that "looks like art" and behave in ways that enhance stereotypes. (...) Originality is not always rewarded, but some people take real risks and innovate, which gives a raison d'être to the rest"

- Sarah Thornton

Source: Thornton, Sarah. Seven Days in the Art World. 2008. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-393-06722-4. pp. xiv-xv.

"(...) contemporary art has become a kind of alternative religion for atheists. (...) For many art world insiders and art aficionados of other kinds, concept-driven art is a kind of existencial channel through which they bring meaning to their lives. It demands leaps of faith, but it rewards the believer with a sense of consequence. Moreover, just as churches and other ritualistic meeting places serve a social function, so art events generate a sense of community around shared interests"

- Sarah Thornton

Source: Thornton, Sarah. Seven Days in the Art World. 2008. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-393-06722-4. pp. xiv.

"The function of museums is to make art worthless again. They take the work out of the market and put it in a place where it becomes part of the common wealth"

- Robert Storr, curator.

Source: Robert Storr quoed in Thornton, Sarah. Seven Days in the Art World. 2008. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-393-06722-4. pp. xiv.

"If the art world shared one principle, it would probably be that nothing is more important than the art itself. Some people really believe this; others know it's de rigueur. Either way, the social world surrounding art is often disdained as an irrelevant, dirty contaminant"

- Sarah Thornton

Source: Thornton, Sarah. Seven Days in the Art World. 2008. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-393-06722-4. pp. xiii.

"Artists have huge egos, but how that manifests itself changes with times. I find it tedious when I bump into people who insists on giving me their CV highlights. I've always thought that wearing badges or ribbons would solve it. if you're showing in the Whitney Biennial or at the Tate, you could announce it on your jacket. Artists could wear stripes like generals, so everyone would know their rank"

- John Baldessari, artist.

Source: John Baldessari, quoted in Thornton, Sarah. Seven Days in the Art World. 2008. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-393-06722-4. pp. xiii.

"Although the art world is frequently characterized as a classless scene (...) you'd be mistaken if you thought this world was egalitarian or democratic. Art is about experimentation and ideas, but it is also about excellence and exclusion"

- Sarah Thornton

Source: Thornton, Sarah. Seven Days in the Art World. 2008. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-393-06722-4. pp. xii.

"The art world isn't about power but control. Power can be vulgar. Control is smarter, more pinpointed. It starts with the artists, because their work determines how things get played out, but they need an honest dialogue with a conspirator. Quiet control - mediated by trust - is what the art world is really about"

- Jeff Poe

Source: Jef Poe, quoted in Thornton, Sarah. Seven Days in the Art World. 2008. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-393-06722-4. pp. xii.

"Music videos have become a central and vital component of the music entertainment and media industries (...) they have spread out to the entire culture and across musical genres (...) moved from the margins of the culture in relative innocence to its very centre, into a conundruum of controversy around the nature of the sexual imagery that quickly came to define it as a genre. In fact, from its very origins, music videos, like other forms of advertising, have relied very heavily on stories concerning female sexuality to fulfill their function to selling CDs and albums for record companies (...) In the most obvious failure of creativity, women are shown (...) their only function being to draw in male viewers into the fantasies created by the producers and directors of these videos (...) But even beyond a single video, there is a consitent story about masculinity and femininity being told by the system of music videos as a whole"

- From Dreamworlds II - Desire, Power, Sex in Music Video by Sut Jhally

Source: Jhally, Sut. 1997. Dreamworlds II - Desire, Power, Sex in Music Video. Available from URL http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6LHg_OFFRY&feature=PlayList&p=A399EA02C4F7C366&playnext_from=PL&index=0&playnext=1 [Downloaded 2010-05-15]. IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0308188/

"The September 11 attacks were the greatest work of art in the cosmos...compared to that, we composers are nothing"

- Karlheinz Stockhausen

"If I hit that tree with this stone, Rousseau says to himself, then all will go well with my life from now on. He throws the stone and misses. That one didn't count, he says, and so he picks up another stone and moves several yards closer to the tree. He misses again. . . . That was just the final warm-up toss, he says, it's the next one that really counts. But just to make sure, he walks right up to the tree this time, positioning himself directly in front of the target. He is no more than a foot away from it by now, close enough to touch it with his hand. Then he lobs the stone squarely against the trunk. Success, he says to himself, I've done it. From this moment on, life will be better for me than ever before."

- Paul Auster "The Music of Chance"

Source: Paul Auster. The Music of Chance. Quoted in: Maddison Smartt Bell. 1990. Poker and Nothingness. New York: The New York Times. Available from URL http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/06/20/specials/auster-music.html

Quotes

ABOUT ME

Søk i denne bloggen

Etiketter

Bloggarkiv