Quotes

2011-09-04T05:45:00.000-07:00

"Someone who does not see a pane of glass is not aware of not seeing it."

- Simone Weil

Source: Simone Weil quoted in: Kosuth, Joseph. The Mind's Image of Itself. 2011. Frieze , issue 141, september 2011. pp. 149-157.

2011-09-04T05:40:00.000-07:00

"What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphism: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical and binding. Tuths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions, they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer as coins"

- Friederich Nietzsche

Source: Friedrich Nietzsche quoted in: Kosuth, Joseph. The Mind's Image of Itself. 2011. Frieze , issue 141, september 2011. pp. 149-157.

2011-09-04T05:34:00.000-07:00

"Things never pass where you think, nor along the paths you think"

- Gilles Deleuze

Source: Gilles Deleuze quoted in: Kosuth, Joseph. The Mind's Image of Itself. 2011. Frieze , issue 141, september 2011. pp. 149-157.

2011-09-04T05:31:00.000-07:00

"You can't have art without resistance in the material."

- William Morris

Source: William Morris quoted in: Kosuth, Joseph. The Mind's Image of Itself. 2011. Frieze , issue 141, september 2011. pp. 149-157.

2011-09-04T05:27:00.000-07:00

"I need say nothing. Only Show. I won't filch anything of value or approximate any ingenious turns of phrase. Only the trivia, the trah - which I don't want to inventory, but simply allow it to come into its own in the ony way possible, by putting it to use."

- Walter Benjamin

Source: Walter Benjamin quoted in: Kosuth, Joseph. The Mind's Image of Itself. 2011. Frieze , issue 141, september 2011. pp. 149-157.

2011-09-04T05:20:00.000-07:00

"This is due to particularly to the local limitations of the eye. The eye can not be in the whole field of the pictorial work at the same time, but rather always only in a part. It stands itself before a relatively small picture board, before the task has been posed, like a grazing animal. It must enter into movement because it can't see everything at once""

- Paul Klee

Source: Paul Klee quoted in: Kosuth, Joseph. The Mind's Image of Itself. 2011. Frieze , issue 141, september 2011. pp. 149-157.

2011-09-04T05:16:00.000-07:00

"In order of the mental things, here seems to be certain mysterious relations between the desire and the event. That is because the mind when reduced to its own sole substance does not have the power to finish, and absolutely cannot bind itself by itself."

- Paul Valéry

Source: Paul Valéry quoted in Kosuth, Joseph. The Mind's Image of Itself. 2011. Frieze , issue 141, september 2011. pp. 149-157.

2011-05-29T14:20:00.000-07:00

"Dimensions, ladies and gentlemen, do matter. Everything can be described in numbers, metres and microns. Too many numbers, or too few, and we must purge or add more. Far more often than you'd think, perhaps we chose our own numbers. Little Brother grew big, the sarcoma grew big. People are legion, and when they gaze up at the stars they may be tempted to call themselves "small". In reality we'd be far closer to the truth if we said that none of it actually existed. Compared to the universe the sarcoma, Little Brother, and the Kingdom are neither great nor small. Their aspirations, their stories and their pain are insignificant. If three people die in an aeroplane or a thousand of our worlds vanish in a flash of light it won't make the man in the moon across the galaxy bat an eyelid. That's how it is, and a good thing too. My name is Lars Von Trier and I wish you all a really good evening."

- From Lars Von Trier's The Kingdom (1997)

Source: Lars Von Trier. 1977. Riget II (English: The Kingdom). Day 7: Gargantua.

2011-01-25T17:49:00.000-08:00

"Gentlemen talk of the Age of Chivalry but remember the ploughmen, poachers and pickpockets they lead. It is with these sad instruments great warriors and kings have been doing their murderous work in the world"

- From Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon.

Source: Barry Lyndon Transcript. Available from URL http://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/b/barry-lyndon-script-transcript-kubrick.html [Downloaded 26.01.2011].

2011-01-25T17:41:00.000-08:00

"It is well to dream of glorious war in a snug armchair. It is a different thing to see it first hand"

- From Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon.

Source: Barry Lyndon Transcript. Available from URL http://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/b/barry-lyndon-script-transcript-kubrick.html [Downloaded 26.01.2011].

2011-01-25T09:34:00.001-08:00

"Dry bones can harm no one"

- T.S. Eliot. Waste Land (1922)

Source: Eliot, T.S. Waste Land. 1922. Available from URL http://eliotswasteland.tripod.com/ [Downloaded 25.01.2011].

2011-01-25T09:32:00.000-08:00

"He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience"

- T.S. Eliot. Waste Land (1922)

Source: Eliot, T.S. Waste Land. 1922. Available from URL http://eliotswasteland.tripod.com/ [Downloaded 25.01.2011].

2011-01-11T08:08:00.000-08:00

"So long, Marcel. Well, that's over. It has been a truism of the past 100 years, since marcel Duchamp re-presented an everyday object as a work of art, that the most interesting, the most relevant, the most advanced art grappled with its place in the world and as a part of that world, whether on the level of intention or consumption. 2010 was the year when the most visible, talked about, written of, bought and sold contemporary art took flight from the viscissitudes of the everyday, and definitely separated itself from the urgencies of life on this planet."

- Laura Hoptman, curator in the Department of Painting and Drawings, MoMa, New York, U.S.A, quoted in Frieze Art Magazine.

Source: Laura Hoptman in Looking Back/Looking Forward. Frieze. Issue 136, january-February 2011. p. 89.

2011-01-11T05:08:00.000-08:00

"I think one of the things that showed the people of the world was that even if there is a great catastrophe, good leadership and teamwork, initiative and perseverance - these things make for getting an almost certain catastrophe into a successful recovery."

- Jim Lovell, NASA-astronaut and commander of Apollo 13

Source: Rincon, Paul. Apollo 1: From Disaster to triumph. BBC online. Available from URL: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8613766.stm [Downloaded 11.01.10].

2011-01-06T04:17:00.000-08:00

"And the more I thought about it, the more I dug out my memory things I had overlooked or forgotten. I realized then that a man who had lived only one day could easily live for a hundred years in prison. He would have enough memories to keep him from being bored. In a way, it was an advantage."

- Meursault, in Camus' The Stranger, Part 2, ch.2

Source: Camus, Albert. The Stranger. Downloaded [2011-01-06] from Allgreatquotes.com URL: http://www.allgreatquotes.com/the_stranger_quotes_the_outsider.shtml

2010-11-17T02:19:00.000-08:00

"I suspect that many of the great cultural shifts that prepare the way for political change are largely aesthetic."

- J.G. Ballard.

Source: Adbusters.org. Downloaded [2010-11-17] from http://www.adbusters.org/blogs/adbusters-blog/aesthetics-of-activism.html

2010-11-17T00:02:00.000-08:00

"Nothing seemed true; I felt surrounded by cardboard scenery which could quickly be removed…."

- Antoine Roquetin, in Jean-Paul Sartres' Nausea.

Source: Jean-Paul Sartre. Nausea. 1959 edition, p. 106-7. Downloaded [2010-11-17] from Wikipedia.org URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nausea_(novel)

2010-11-16T23:54:00.000-08:00

"People who live in society have learned to see themselves in mirrors as they appear to their friends. Is that why my flesh is naked? You might say - yes you might say, nature without humanity… Things are bad! Things are very bad: I have it, the filth, the Nausea"

- Antoine Roquetin, in Jean-Paul Sartres' Nausea.

Source: Jean-Paul Sartre. Nausea. 1964 edition, p. 29. Downloaded [2010-11-17] from Wikipedia.org URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nausea_(novel)

2010-11-11T09:53:00.000-08:00

"The potential of the white cube is now in the tension implied by a space outside society that can be subverted or misused by artists wanting to engage in the world"

- Charles Esche in MJ - Manifesta Journal N°1.

Source: Interview with Charles Esche in ch. "Whiteness & Cubicalism" in Zabel, Igor and Viktor Misiano (eds). 2008. MJ - Manifesta Journal. N°1, Spring / Summer 2003 : journal of contemporary curatorship : the revenge of the white cube? ; MJ - Manifesta Journal. N°2, Winter 2003 / Spring 2004 : biennials ; MJ - Manifesta Journal. N°3, Spring / Summer 2004 : exhibition as a dream. Milano: Silvana 2008. ISBN 8836611982.

2010-11-11T09:45:00.001-08:00

"Art is still conditioned by the possibility that one thing might just be more important then other things. Otherwise, we are dealing with a uniformity of difference, which exclaims, like a high-school girl in a cartoon: "Daddy, I want to be different just like everybody else!"

- Branislav Dimitrijević in MJ - Manifesta Journal N°1.

Source: Interview with Branislav Dimitrijević in ch. "Whiteness & Cubicalism" in Zabel, Igor and Viktor Misiano (eds). 2008. MJ - Manifesta Journal. N°1, Spring / Summer 2003 : journal of contemporary curatorship : the revenge of the white cube? ; MJ - Manifesta Journal. N°2, Winter 2003 / Spring 2004 : biennials ; MJ - Manifesta Journal. N°3, Spring / Summer 2004 : exhibition as a dream. Milano: Silvana 2008. ISBN 8836611982.

2010-11-11T09:40:00.000-08:00

"The white cube can no longer be used for critical art, but it is the notion of "critical art" that is in crisis, not the white cube. Therefore the strategy is to go not only beyond the myth and ideology of the white cube but also beyond the myth and ideology of the denigration of the white cube"

- Branislav Dimitrijević in MJ - Manifesta Journal N°1.

Source: Interview with Branislav Dimitrijević in ch. "Whiteness & Cubicalism" in Zabel, Igor and Viktor Misiano (eds). 2008. MJ - Manifesta Journal. N°1, Spring / Summer 2003 : journal of contemporary curatorship : the revenge of the white cube? ; MJ - Manifesta Journal. N°2, Winter 2003 / Spring 2004 : biennials ; MJ - Manifesta Journal. N°3, Spring / Summer 2004 : exhibition as a dream. Milano: Silvana 2008. ISBN 8836611982.

2010-11-11T09:32:00.000-08:00

"The white cube is as relevant as a white sheet of paper. (...) If you want people to believe you are saying something "official", something essential, then it is still the case that marks made on a white surface matter"

- Branislav Dimitrijević in MJ - Manifesta Journal N°1.

Source: Interview with Branislav Dimitrijević in ch. "Whiteness & Cubicalism" in Zabel, Igor and Viktor Misiano (eds). 2008. MJ - Manifesta Journal. N°1, Spring / Summer 2003 : journal of contemporary curatorship : the revenge of the white cube? ; MJ - Manifesta Journal. N°2, Winter 2003 / Spring 2004 : biennials ; MJ - Manifesta Journal. N°3, Spring / Summer 2004 : exhibition as a dream. Milano: Silvana 2008. ISBN 8836611982.

2010-11-11T09:26:00.000-08:00

"I never had the illusion that art is autonomous, even when I studied the history of its most rebellious periods. Art depends on ideologies, on money, on fashion, on strong individuals, on information and communication technologies, and on our idealism to deal with it as an autonomous entity. Of course, it is easier to keep up the illusion of its autonomy in the white cube, with a lot of money and with a totally passive attutude to the context."

- Lara Boubnova in MJ - Manifesta Journal N°1.

Source: Lara Boubnova interviewed in chapter "Whiteness & Cubicalism" in Zabel, Igor and Viktor Misiano (eds). 2008. MJ - Manifesta Journal. N°1, Spring / Summer 2003 : journal of contemporary curatorship : the revenge of the white cube? ; MJ - Manifesta Journal. N°2, Winter 2003 / Spring 2004 : biennials ; MJ - Manifesta Journal. N°3, Spring / Summer 2004 : exhibition as a dream. Milano: Silvana 2008. ISBN 8836611982.

2010-11-11T09:24:00.000-08:00

"Sometimes I have te feeling that the white cube is supposed to provoke me to produce a "masterpiece", and that intimidates me. From the point of view of representative power, it is much more fun to deal with any "found place" than with a white cube"

- Lara Boubnova in MJ - Manifesta Journal N°1.

Source: Lara Boubnova interviewed in chapter "Whiteness & Cubicalism" in Zabel, Igor and Viktor Misiano (eds). 2008. MJ - Manifesta Journal. N°1, Spring / Summer 2003 : journal of contemporary curatorship : the revenge of the white cube? ; MJ - Manifesta Journal. N°2, Winter 2003 / Spring 2004 : biennials ; MJ - Manifesta Journal. N°3, Spring / Summer 2004 : exhibition as a dream. Milano: Silvana 2008. ISBN 8836611982.

2010-11-11T09:23:00.001-08:00

"The luxurious status of "whiteness" and "cubicalism" is more important than the space itself; it is a symbol of the status of art"

- Lara Boubnova in MJ - Manifesta Journal N°1.

Source: Lara Boubnova interviewed in chapter "Whiteness & Cubicalism" in Zabel, Igor and Viktor Misiano (eds). 2008. MJ - Manifesta Journal. N°1, Spring / Summer 2003 : journal of contemporary curatorship : the revenge of the white cube? ; MJ - Manifesta Journal. N°2, Winter 2003 / Spring 2004 : biennials ; MJ - Manifesta Journal. N°3, Spring / Summer 2004 : exhibition as a dream. Milano: Silvana 2008. ISBN 8836611982.

2010-11-11T09:06:00.000-08:00

"On the one hand, the white cube space serves as a venue for the most radical technological experiments. On the other, it is definitely a venue for commercial presentations, a space for trade. In the first case (...), the form and the space is important only as a neutral and non-intervening surface, a tabula rasa. In the second case, the luxurious status of "whiteness" and "cubicalism" is more important than the space itself; it is a symbol of the status of art"

- Lara Boubnova in MJ - Manifesta Journal N°1.

Source: Lara Boubnova interviewed in chapter "Whiteness & Cubicalism" in Zabel, Igor and Viktor Misiano (eds). 2008. MJ - Manifesta Journal. N°1, Spring / Summer 2003 : journal of contemporary curatorship : the revenge of the white cube? ; MJ - Manifesta Journal. N°2, Winter 2003 / Spring 2004 : biennials ; MJ - Manifesta Journal. N°3, Spring / Summer 2004 : exhibition as a dream. Milano: Silvana 2008. ISBN 8836611982.

2010-10-23T14:40:00.000-07:00

"If we wish to understand and appreciate formal beauty we must learn to see in a detailed way. We must concentrate on the details, on the form of the roof of a tree, on the way in which a leaf is connected to its stalk, on the structure of the bark, on the lines made by the turbid spray on the shores of a lake. Also we must not just glance carelessly at the form. Our eye must trace, minutely, every curve, every twist, every thickening, every contraction, in short we must experience every nuance in the form. For there is only one point in our field of vision which we can see exactly, and it is only that which is clearly seen, which can hold some meaning for us. If we see in this way, an immensely rich new world is revealed to us, full of totally new experience. A thousand sensations are awakened within us. New feeling and shades of feeling, continual unexpected transformations. Nature seems to live and we begin to understand that there really are sorrowing trees and wicked treacherous branches, virginal grasses and terrible, gruesome flowers. Of course, not everything is going to affect us in this way, there are also things which are boring, meaningless and ineffectual, but the alert eye will everywhere observe forms of superb, soul-shattering magnificence.

This is the power of form upon the mind, a direct immidiate influence without any intermediary stage, by no means an anthropomorphic effect, but one of direct empathy. If we speak of a sorrowing tree, we do not at all think of the tree as a living being which sorrows, but mean only that it awakens the feeling of sorrow within us. (...) We are employing nothing more than a verbal aid to make up for an inadequate vocabulary and to produce a living concept more quickly."

- August Endell (1871-1925) in "The Beauty of Form and Decorative Art" .

Source: Endell, August. 1897-8. "The Beauty of Form and Decorative Art", in Dekorative Kunst, I, Munich, 1897-8, pp. 75-7, 119-25; Translation by T. and C. Benton and D. Sharp (eds.), Form and Function, London, 1975. Printed in: Harrison & Wood (ed). Art in Theory. 1900-2000. An Anthology Of Changing Ideas. pp. 59-61. Malden: Blackwell Publishing. Also available from URL: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=SWu4SB92fHMC&q=collingwood#v=snippet&q=endell&f=false

2010-10-23T14:36:00.000-07:00

"Appreciation of visual form is also something that must be aquired. We must learn to see it and really immerse ourselves in form. We must discover how to use our eyes"

- August Endell (1871-1925) in "The Beauty of Form and Decorative Art" .

Source: Endell, August. 1897-8. "The Beauty of Form and Decorative Art", in Dekorative Kunst, I, Munich, 1897-8, pp. 75-7, 119-25; Translation by T. and C. Benton and D. Sharp (eds.), Form and Function, London, 1975. Printed in: Harrison & Wood (ed). Art in Theory. 1900-2000. An Anthology Of Changing Ideas. pp. 59-61. Malden: Blackwell Publishing. Also available from URL: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=SWu4SB92fHMC&q=collingwood#v=snippet&q=endell&f=false

2010-10-23T14:12:00.000-07:00

"(...) the dissonant warning voices of the cautious can be heard. From the dizzy heights of their experience, they smile down sypathetically upon the foolish exploits of their juniors and still remain ready to show to the general public the only path of truth. They teach us that there can be no new form, that all possibilities have been exhausted in the styles of the past, and that all art lies in an individually modified use of old forms."

2010-05-27T08:21:00.000-07:00

"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

2010-05-27T08:04:00.000-07:00

"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

2010-05-26T07:32:00.000-07:00

"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]

2010-05-26T06:48:00.000-07:00

"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"

2010-05-26T06:44:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-26T06:37:00.000-07:00

"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"

2010-05-26T05:20:00.000-07:00

"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].

2010-05-26T05:17:00.000-07:00

"The mainspring of his genius is curiosity"

2010-05-26T05:03:00.000-07:00

"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].

2010-05-26T04:55:00.000-07:00

"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].

2010-05-26T04:13:00.000-07:00

"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].

2010-05-25T18:13:00.000-07:00

"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"

2010-05-25T18:01:00.000-07:00

"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].

2010-05-25T17:56:00.001-07:00

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

2010-05-25T17:45:00.000-07:00

"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].

2010-05-25T17:22:00.001-07:00

"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].

2010-05-25T17:04:00.000-07:00

"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].

2010-05-25T16:27:00.000-07:00

"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].

2010-05-25T16:02:00.000-07:00

"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].

2010-05-15T17:12:00.000-07:00

"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.

2010-05-15T08:42:00.000-07:00

"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.

2010-05-15T08:09:00.000-07:00

"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.

2010-05-15T08:02:00.000-07:00

"(...) 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.

2010-05-15T07:56:00.000-07:00

"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.

2010-05-15T07:52:00.000-07:00

"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.

2010-05-15T07:44:00.000-07:00

"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.

2010-05-15T07:35:00.000-07:00

"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.

2010-05-15T07:26:00.000-07:00

"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.

2010-05-15T02:51:00.000-07:00

"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/

2010-05-11T04:31:00.001-07:00

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

- Karlheinz Stockhausen

2010-05-02T13:09:00.001-07:00

"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

2010-04-18T08:14:00.000-07:00

"We've all got the disease - the disease of bein finite. Death is the basis of all horror."

- David Cronenberg

Source: David Cronenberg quoted in: Skårderud, Finn. 2010. Kjøttkunstneren. Tidsskrift for Norsk Psykologforening 2010. Nr. 47. pp 203-217.

2010-04-18T08:08:00.000-07:00

"Pathology has always done us the service of making discernible by isolation and exaggeration conditions which would remain concealed in a normal state"

- Sigmund Freud (1933)

Source: Sigmund Freud quoted in: Skårderud, Finn. 2010. Kjøttkunstneren. Tidsskrift for Norsk Psykologforening 2010. Nr. 47. pp 203-217.

2010-03-15T16:04:00.001-07:00

"The artist should know what, and why, things happen in his pictures. Formerly he lived by some kind of mood. He awaited the rising of the moon, twilight, put green shades on his lamps, and this all attuned his mood like a violin. But when asked why his face was crooked, or green, he could not give an exact answer. 'I want it so, i like it like that...' In the end this desire was ascribed to intuitive will. Consequently the intuitive feeling did not speak clearly. And in that case, its condition was not only subconscious, but totally unconscious".

- Kasimir Malevich (1878-1935)

Source: Malevich, Kasimir. From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: The New Realism in Painting. Translation by T.Anderson (ed.), K.S. Malevich: Essays on Art 1915-1933, vol. 1, Copenhagen, 1969, pp. 19-21, 23-5, 26-36 and 38-41. Printed in: Harrison & Wood (ed). Art in Theory. 1900-2000. An Anthology Of Changing Ideas. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, pp173-183.

2010-03-15T16:01:00.000-07:00

"Academic realists - they are the last descendants of the svage. It is they who go about in the worn-out robes of the past"

- Kasimir Malevich (1878-1935)

Source: Malevich, Kasimir. From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: The New Realism in Painting. Translation by T.Anderson (ed.), K.S. Malevich: Essays on Art 1915-1933, vol. 1, Copenhagen, 1969, pp. 19-21, 23-5, 26-36 and 38-41. Printed in: Harrison & Wood (ed). Art in Theory. 1900-2000. An Anthology Of Changing Ideas. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, pp173-183.

2010-03-15T14:47:00.000-07:00

"The transferring of real objects onto canvas is the art of skilful reproduction, and only that. And between the art of creating and the art of copying there is a great difference. The artist can be a creator only when the forms in his picture have nothing in common with nature. For art is the ability to construct, not on the interrelation of form and colour, and not on an aesthetic basis of beauty in composition, but on the basis of weight, speed and the direction of movement"

- Kasimir Malevich (1878-1935)

Source: Malevich, Kasimir. From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: The New Realism in Painting. Translation by T.Anderson (ed.), K.S. Malevich: Essays on Art 1915-1933, vol. 1, Copenhagen, 1969, pp. 19-21, 23-5, 26-36 and 38-41. Printed in: Harrison & Wood (ed). Art in Theory. 1900-2000. An Anthology Of Changing Ideas. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, pp173-183.

2010-03-15T14:11:00.000-07:00

"Only a cowardly consciousness and meagre creative powers in an artist are deceived by this fraud and base their art on the forms of nature (...) To reproduce beloved objects and little corners of nature is just like a thief being enraptured by his legs in irons"

- Kasimir Malevich (1878-1935)

Source: Malevich, Kasimir. From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: The New Realism in Painting. Translation by T.Anderson (ed.), K.S. Malevich: Essays on Art 1915-1933, vol. 1, Copenhagen, 1969, pp. 19-21, 23-5, 26-36 and 38-41. Printed in: Harrison & Wood (ed). Art in Theory. 1900-2000. An Anthology Of Changing Ideas. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, pp173-183.

2010-03-15T14:05:00.000-07:00

"Only with the disappearance of a habit of mind which sees in pictures little corners of nature, madonnas and shameless Venuses, shall we witness a work of pure, living art."

- Kasimir Malevich (1878-1935)

Source: Malevich, Kasimir. From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: The New Realism in Painting. Translation by T.Anderson (ed.), K.S. Malevich: Essays on Art 1915-1933, vol. 1, Copenhagen, 1969, pp. 19-21, 23-5, 26-36 and 38-41. Printed in: Harrison & Wood (ed). Art in Theory. 1900-2000. An Anthology Of Changing Ideas. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, pp173-183.

2010-03-14T18:39:00.000-07:00

"Every utterance and every gesture that each one of us makes is a work of art. It is important to each one of us that in making them, however much he deceives others, he should not deceive himself"

- R.G. Collingwood (1889-1943)

Source: R.G. Collingwood. 1938. "Good Art and Bad Art", in The Principles of Art, pp. 280-5, Oxford: Oxford university Press. Printed in: Harrison & Wood (ed). Art in Theory. 1900-2000. An Anthology Of Changing Ideas. Malden: Blackwell Publishing. Also available from URL: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=SWu4SB92fHMC&q=collingwood#v=snippet&q=collingwood&f=false

2010-03-14T18:35:00.000-07:00

"Any theory of art should be required to show, if it wishes to be taken seriously, how an artist, in pursuing his artistic labour, is able to tell whether he is pursuing it successfully or unsuccessfully: how, for example, it is posible for him to say, 'I am not satisfied with that line; let us try it this way...and this way...and this way...there! that will do.' "

- R.G. Collingwood (1889-1943)

Source: R.G. Collingwood. 1938. "Good Art and Bad Art", in The Principles of Art, pp. 280-5, Oxford: Oxford university Press. Printed in: Harrison & Wood (ed). Art in Theory. 1900-2000. An Anthology Of Changing Ideas. Malden: Blackwell Publishing. Also available from URL: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=SWu4SB92fHMC&q=collingwood#v=snippet&q=collingwood&f=false

2010-03-14T18:32:00.001-07:00

"What the artist is trying to do is to express a given emotion (...) A bad work of art is an activity in which the agent tries to express a given emotion, but fails."

- R.G. Collingwood (1889-1943)

Source: R.G. Collingwood. 1938. "Good Art and Bad Art", in The Principles of Art, pp. 280-5, Oxford: Oxford university Press. Printed in: Harrison & Wood (ed). Art in Theory. 1900-2000. An Anthology Of Changing Ideas. Malden: Blackwell Publishing. Also available from URL: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=SWu4SB92fHMC&q=collingwood#v=snippet&q=collingwood&f=false

2010-03-14T18:11:00.000-07:00

"The definition of any given kind of thing is also the definition of a good thing of that kind: for a thing that is good in its kind is only a thing which posesses the attributes of that kind. To call things good and bad is to imply success or failure. When we call things good or bad not in themselves but relatively to us, as when we speak of a good harvest or a bad thunderstorm, the success or failure implied is our own. (...) a work of art is an activity of a certain kind; the agent is trying to do something definite, and in that attempt he may succeed or he may fail. It is, moreover, a conscious activity; the agent is not only trying to do something definite, he also knows what it is that he is trying to do; though knowing here does not necessarily imply being able to describe, since to describe is to generalize, and generalizing is the function of the intellect, and consciousness does not, as such, involve intellect. A work of art, therefore, may be either a good one or a bad one
(...) Any theory of art should be required to show, if it wishes to be taken seriously, how an artist, in pursuing his artistic labour, is able to tell whether he is pursuing it successfully or unsuccessfully: how, for example, it is posible for him to say, 'I am not satisfied with that line; let us try it this way...and this way...and this way...there! that will do.' (...) The watching of his own work with a vigilating and discriminating eye, which decides at every moment of the process whether it is being successful or not, is not a critical activity subsequent to, and reflective upon, the artistic work, it is an integral part of that work itself.
(...) What the artist is trying to do is to express a given emotion. To express it, and to express it well, are the same thing (...) A bad work of art is an activity in which the agent tries to express a given emotion, but fails."

- R.G. Collingwood (1889-1943)

Source: R.G. Collingwood. 1938. "Good Art and Bad Art", in The Principles of Art, pp. 280-5, Oxford: Oxford university Press. Printed in: Harrison & Wood (ed). Art in Theory. 1900-2000. An Anthology Of Changing Ideas. Malden: Blackwell Publishing. Also available from URL: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=SWu4SB92fHMC&q=collingwood#v=snippet&q=collingwood&f=false

2010-03-14T17:58:00.000-07:00

"Art is community's medicine for that worst disease of the mind, the corruption of consciousness"

- R. G. Collingwood (1889-1943)

Source: R.G. Collingwood. 1938. "Good Art and Bad Art", in The Principles of Art, pp. 280-5, Oxford: Oxford university Press. Printed in: Harrison & Wood (ed). Art in Theory. 1900-2000. An Anthology Of Changing Ideas. Malden: Blackwell Publishing.
Also available from URL: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=SWu4SB92fHMC&q=collingwood#v=snippet&q=collingwood&f=false

2010-03-14T17:17:00.000-07:00

"Communism responds by politicizing art"

- Walter Benjamin (1892-1940)

Source: Benjamin, Walter. Printed in: Harrison & Wood. Art in Theory. 1900-2000. An Anthology Of Changing Ideas. Malden: Blackwell Publishing. Originally published in the Frankfurt Institute journal (operating in exile in the United States), Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, V, no. 1, New York, 1936. English translation by Harry Zohn in H. Arendt (ed), Walter benjamin, illuminations, London, 1973, pp. 219-53.

2010-03-14T17:15:00.001-07:00

"Architecture has always represented the prototype of a work of art the reception of which is consummated by a collectivity in a state of distraction"

- Walter Benjamin (1892-1940)

Source: Benjamin, Walter. Printed in: Harrison & Wood. Art in Theory. 1900-2000. An Anthology Of Changing Ideas. Malden: Blackwell Publishing. Originally published in the Frankfurt Institute journal (operating in exile in the United States), Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, V, no. 1, New York, 1936. English translation by Harry Zohn in H. Arendt (ed), Walter benjamin, illuminations, London, 1973, pp. 219-53.

2010-03-14T17:12:00.000-07:00

"The mass is a matrix from which all traditional behaviour toward works of art issues today in a new form. Quantity has been transmuted into quality"

- Walter Benjamin (1892-1940)

Source: Benjamin, Walter. Printed in: Harrison & Wood. Art in Theory. 1900-2000. An Anthology Of Changing Ideas. Malden: Blackwell Publishing. Originally published in the Frankfurt Institute journal (operating in exile in the United States), Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, V, no. 1, New York, 1936. English translation by Harry Zohn in H. Arendt (ed), Walter benjamin, illuminations, London, 1973, pp. 219-53.

2010-03-14T17:04:00.000-07:00

"The Dadaists attached much less importance to the sales value of their work than to its uselessness for contemplative immersion (...) What they intended and achieved was a relentless destruction of the aura of their creations, which they branded as reproductions with the very means of production. (...) In the decline of middle-class society, contemplation became a school for asocial behaviour"

- Walter Benjamin (1892-1940)

Source: Benjamin, Walter. Printed in: Harrison & Wood. Art in Theory. 1900-2000. An Anthology Of Changing Ideas. Malden: Blackwell Publishing. Originally published in the Frankfurt Institute journal (operating in exile in the United States), Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, V, no. 1, New York, 1936. English translation by Harry Zohn in H. Arendt (ed), Walter benjamin, illuminations, London, 1973, pp. 219-53.

2010-03-14T14:34:00.001-07:00

"Painting is simply in no position to present an object for simultaneous collective experience"

- Walter Benjamin (1892-1940)

Source: Benjamin, Walter. Printed in: Harrison & Wood. Art in Theory. 1900-2000. An Anthology Of Changing Ideas. Malden: Blackwell Publishing. Originally published in the Frankfurt Institute journal (operating in exile in the United States), Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, V, no. 1, New York, 1936. English translation by Harry Zohn in H. Arendt (ed), Walter benjamin, illuminations, London, 1973, pp. 219-53.

2010-03-14T14:22:00.000-07:00

"Mechanical reproduction of art changes the reaction of the masses toward art. The reactionary attitude toward a Picasso painting changes into the progressive reaction toward a Chaplin movie. The progressive reaction is characterized by the direct, intimate fusion of visual and emotional enjoyment with the orientation of the expert. Such fusion is of great social significance. The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion"

- Walter Benjamin (1892-1940)

Source: Benjamin, Walter. Printed in: Harrison & Wood. Art in Theory. 1900-2000. An Anthology Of Changing Ideas. Malden: Blackwell Publishing. Originally published in the Frankfurt Institute journal (operating in exile in the United States), Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, V, no. 1, New York, 1936. English translation by Harry Zohn in H. Arendt (ed), Walter benjamin, illuminations, London, 1973, pp. 219-53.

2010-03-14T14:05:00.000-07:00

"How does the cameraman compare with the painter? To answer this we take recourse to an analogy with surgical operation. The surgeon represents the polar opposite of the magician. The magician heals a sick person by the laying on of hands; the surgeon cuts into the patients body. The magician maintains the natural distance between the patient and himself; though he reduced it very slightly by the laying on of hands, he greatly increases it by virtue of his authority. The surgeon does exactly the reverse; he greatly diminishes the distance between himself and the patient by penetrating into the patient's body, and increases it but little by the caution with which his hand moves among the organs. In short, in contrast to the magician - who is still hidden in the medical practitioner - the surgeon at the decisive moment abstains from facing the patient man to man; rather it is through the operation that he penetrates into him. Magician and surgeon compare to painter and cameraman. The painter maintains in his work a natural distance from reality, the cameraman penetrated deeply into its web. There is a tremendous difference between the pictures they obtain. That of the painter is a total one, that of the cameraman consists of multiple fragments which are assembled under a new law. Thus, for contemporary man the representation of reality by the film is incomparably more significant than that of the painter, since it offers, precisely because of the thouroughgoing permeation of reality with mechanical equipment, an aspect of reality which is free of all equipment. And that is what one is entitled to ask from a work of art."

- Walter Benjamin (1892-1940)

Source: Benjamin, Walter. Printed in: Harrison & Wood. Art in Theory. 1900-2000. An Anthology Of Changing Ideas. Malden: Blackwell Publishing. Originally published in the Frankfurt Institute journal (operating in exile in the United States), Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, V, no. 1, New York, 1936. English translation by Harry Zohn in H. Arendt (ed), Walter benjamin, illuminations, London, 1973, pp. 219-53.

2010-03-14T14:00:00.000-07:00

"Mechanical reproduction emancipated the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual. (...) But the instant the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applicable to artistic production, the total function of art is reversed. Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice - politics"

- Walter Benjamin (1892-1940)

Source: Benjamin, Walter. Printed in: Harrison & Wood. Art in Theory. 1900-2000. An Anthology Of Changing Ideas. Malden: Blackwell Publishing. Originally published in the Frankfurt Institute journal (operating in exile in the United States), Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, V, no. 1, New York, 1936. English translation by Harry Zohn in H. Arendt (ed), Walter benjamin, illuminations, London, 1973, pp. 219-53.

2010-03-14T13:34:00.000-07:00

"Originally the contextual integration of art in tradition found its expression in the cult. We know that the earliest art works originated in the service of a ritual - first the magical, then the religious kind. It is significant that the existence of the work of art with reference to its aura is never entirely separated from its ritual function. In other words, the unique value of the 'authentic' work of art has its basis in ritual, the location of its original use value. This ritualistic basis, however remote, is still recognizable as secularized ritual even in the most profane forms of the cult of beauty. The secular cult of beauty, developed during the Renaissance and prevailing for three centuries, clearly showed that ritualistic basis in its decline and the first deep crisis which befell it. With the advent of the first truly revolutionary means of reproduction, photography, simultaneously with the rise of socialism, art sensed the approaching crisis which has become evident a century later. At the time, art reacted with the doctrine of l'art pour l'art, that is, with a theology of art. This gave rise to what might be called a negative theology in the form of the idea of 'pure' art, which not only denied any social function of art but also any categorizing by subject matter... An analysis of art in the age of mechanical reproduction must do justice to these relationships, for they lead us to an all-important insight: for the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipated the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual. To an even greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility. From a photographic negative, for example, one can make any number of prints; to ask for the 'authentic' print makes no sense. But the instant the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applicable to artistic production, the total function of art is reversed. Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice - politics"

- Walter Benjamin (1892-1940)

Source: Benjamin, Walter. Printed in: Harrison & Wood. Art in Theory. 1900-2000. An Anthology Of Changing Ideas. Malden: Blackwell Publishing. Originally published in the Frankfurt Institute journal (operating in exile in the United States), Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, V, no. 1, New York, 1936. English translation by Harry Zohn in H. Arendt (ed), Walter benjamin, illuminations, London, 1973, pp. 219-53.

2010-03-14T12:27:00.000-07:00

"That which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art. (...) One might generalize by saying: the technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition. By making many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence."

- Walter Benjamin (1892-1940)

Source: Benjamin, Walter. Printed in: Harrison & Wood. Art in Theory. 1900-2000. An Anthology Of Changing Ideas. Malden: Blackwell Publishing. Originally published in the Frankfurt Institute journal (operating in exile in the United States), Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, V, no. 1, New York, 1936. English translation by Harry Zohn in H. Arendt (ed), Walter benjamin, illuminations, London, 1973, pp. 219-53.

2010-03-14T12:22:00.000-07:00

"The presence of the original is the perequisite to the concept of authenticity"

- Walter Benjamin (1892-1940)

Source: Benjamin, Walter. Printed in: Harrison & Wood. Art in Theory. 1900-2000. An Anthology Of Changing Ideas. Malden: Blackwell Publishing. Originally published in the Frankfurt Institute journal (operating in exile in the United States), Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, V, no. 1, New York, 1936. English translation by Harry Zohn in H. Arendt (ed), Walter benjamin, illuminations, London, 1973, pp. 219-53.

2010-03-14T11:53:00.000-07:00

"Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be. This unique existence of the work of art determined the history to which it was subject throughout the time of its existence"

- Walter Benjamin (1892-1940)

Source: Benjamin, Walter. Printed in: Harrison & Wood. Art in Theory. 1900-2000. An Anthology Of Changing Ideas. Malden: Blackwell Publishing. Originally published in the Frankfurt Institute journal (operating in exile in the United States), Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, V, no. 1, New York, 1936. English translation by Harry Zohn in H. Arendt (ed), Walter benjamin, illuminations, London, 1973, pp. 219-53.

2010-03-13T08:38:00.000-08:00

"Kultur er kunsten å ikke skape. Selvfølgelig må vi ha disse rabiate menneskene i samfunnet, som ikke kan leve uten å skape. Det er kunstnerne. Kunst og kultur er aldeles ikke det samme. Kunstnerisk genialitet er oftest uavhengig av det omgivende miljø. Michelangelo ble født og fremdrevet i det høykultiverte Italia; Henrik Ibsen vokste opp i et barbarland som aldri har rakt en kunstner en vennlig hånd. Slik er den skapende kunstner. Sprenger seg opp i lyset, selv om han har ligget kvalt under en isbre. Men kultur er å ikke skape. Kultur er å nyde. Kultur er ikke å gi, kultur er å ta imot. Vi behøver ikke bekymre oss, og kan ikke bekymre oss, for de skapende genier. Et samfunn kan så likevel ikke skape et geni. Det vi kan gjøre, er å skape et kultursamfunn, oppdra menneskene til å lytte og å se, skape et miljø som kan ta imot et geni, når det kommer. Mennesker som har evnen til å skjelne mellom det gode og det dårlige. Mennesker som kan nyde. Det er kultur."

- Doffen til Ask Burlefot i Mykle, Agnar. 1956. Sangen om den Røde Rubin. s. 239-240. Denne utgave: 1994. Oslo: Gyldendal Norsk Forlag.

2010-02-16T15:13:00.000-08:00

"The important thing is that at a given moment one arrives at illusion. Around it one finds a sensitive spot, a lesion, a locus of pain, a point of reversal of the whole of history, insofar as it is the history of art and insofar as we are implicated in it; that point concerns the notion that the illusion of space is different from the creation of emptiness."

Jacques Lacan, Ethics. Quoted in Bhabha, Homi K. Anish Kapoor: Making Emptiness. 1998. In Anish Kapoor. Ed: Hayward Gallery. Los Angeles: University of California Press Berkley. pp:11. Also available from URL http://www.anishkapoor.com/writing/homibhabha.htm

2010-02-16T13:23:00.000-08:00

"Inability to tolerate empty space limits the amount of space available"

- Wilfred Ruprecht Bion

Source: Wilfred Ruprecht Bion, Cogitations. Quoted in Bhabha, Homi K. Anish Kapoor: Making Emptiness. 1998. In Anish Kapoor. Ed: Hayward Gallery. Los Angeles: University of California Press Berkley. pp:11.
Also available from URL http://www.anishkapoor.com/writing/homibhabha.htm

2010-02-02T15:19:00.000-08:00

"As a small child, I felt in my heart two contradictory feelings, the horror of life and the ecstasy of life."

- Charles Baudelaire

Source: Quoted in BrainyQuote.com. Available from URL: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/c/charles_baudelaire.html [Downloaded 2010-02-03]

2010-02-02T15:13:00.000-08:00

"Any newspaper, from the first line to the last, is nothing but a web of horrors, I cannot understand how an innocent hand can touch a newspaper without convulsing in disgust."

- Charles Baudelaire

Source: Quoted in BrainyQuote.com. Available from URL: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/c/charles_baudelaire.html [Downloaded 2010-02-03]

2010-02-02T14:52:00.000-08:00

"Det å male et ansikt er således ikke noe man bør gjøre - hvis man nå har forstå meg rett - med det vulgære og tarvelige mål for øye å etterligne den naturlige skjønnhet og rivalisere med ungdommen. Man har for øvrig bemerket at hesligheten slett ikke blir forskjønnet gjennom kunstgrep; de kan bare tjene skjønnheten. Hvem ville våge å tilkjenne kunsten den åndsfattige funksjon å skulle etterlikne naturen? Sminkekunsten behøver ikke å skjule seg eller prøve å gjøre seg usynlig; den bør tvert imot stilles til skue, om ikke med skapaktighet så i hvert fall med en slags oppriktighet"

- Charles Baudelaire

Source: Baudelaire, Charles. Fra Kunsten og det moderne liv (1863). Translation to Norwegian by Arne Kjell Haugen. I Bale og Bø-Rygg. 2008, s. 167-172. Quoted in Bale, Kjersti. 2009. Estetikk: En Innføring. Oslo: Pax Forlag. s. 56.

2010-01-07T06:09:00.000-08:00

"Understood in its metaphysical sense, Beauty is one of the manifestations of the Absolute Being. Emanating from the harmonious rays of the Divine plan, it crosses the intellectual plane to shine once again across the natural plane, where it darkens into matter."

Jean Delville (1867-1953). Quoted in Wikipedia. Available online from URL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Delville. Downloaded [2010-01-07]

2010-01-06T11:50:00.000-08:00

Alfredo: Living here day by day, you think it's the center of the world. You believe nothing will ever change. Then you leave: a year, two years. When you come back, everything's changed. The thread's broken. What you came to find isn't there. What was yours is gone. You have to go away for a long time... many years... before you can come back and find your people. The land where you were born. But now, no. It's not possible. Right now you're blinder than I am.

Salvatore: Who said that? Gary Cooper? James Stewart? Henry Fonda? Eh?

Alfredo: No, Toto. Nobody said it. This time it's all me. Life isn't like in the movies. Life... is much harder.

From Nuovo Cinema Paradiso. 1988: Cristaldifilm.

2010-01-06T11:46:00.000-08:00

"Progress always comes late"

Alfredo in Nuovo Cinema Paradiso. 1988: Cristaldifilm.

2009-12-01T10:27:00.000-08:00

"Det har vært min tese at post-modernismen er en logisk videreføring av modernitetens bestrebelser. Den analytiske og livsfjerne rasjonalitet som utfolder seg i det moderne prosjekt tømmer virkeligheten for værensfylde og spalter dens enhet i separate gyldighetsområder, for så til sist å servere det hele som usammenhengende fragmenter. Dette er post-modernismens utgangsposisjon, der så vel verden som bevisstheten er pulverisert til particularia. Hvilket innebærer at det ikke lenger går forpliktelseslinjer, verken til nåtiden eller til fremtiden"

Grøtvedt, Paul. 1987. Moderniteten og Post-Modernismen. Et essay om kunst og tenkning. pp.139. Oslo: Aventura Forlag.

2009-11-28T09:04:00.000-08:00

"Conceptual art is not necessarily logical. The logic of a piece or series of pieces is a device that is used at times only to be ruined. Logic may be used to camouflage the real intent of the artist, to lull the viewer into the belief that he understands the work, or to infer a paradoxical situation (such as logic vs illogic).* The ideas need not be complex. Most ideas that are successful are ludicrously simple. Successful ideas generally have the appearance of simplicity because they seem inevitable. In terms of idea the artist is free even to surprise himself. Ideas are discovered by intuition.

*Some ideas are logical in conception and illogical perceptually."

Source: Sol Lewitt. 1967. "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art". Artforum, 5 n¤.10 (June 1967): 79-83. Reprinted in Garrels, Gary, ed. 2000. Sol Lewitt: A Retrospective. pp. 369-371. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

2009-11-28T08:47:00.000-08:00

"In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work.* When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art. This kind of art is not theoretical or illustrative of theories; it is intuitive, it is involved with all types of mental processes and it is purposeless. It is usually free from the dependence of the skill of the artist as craftsman. It is the objective of the artist who is concerned with conceptual art to make his work mentally interesting to the spectator, and therefore usually he would want it to become emotionally dry. There is no reason to suppose, however, that the conceptual artist is out to bore the viewer. It is only the expectation of an emotional kick, to which one conditioned to expressionist art is accustomed, that would deter the viewer from perceiving this art.

*In other forms of art the concept may be changed in the process of execution"

Source: Sol Lewitt. 1967. "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art". Artforum, 5 n¤.10 (June 1967): 79-83. Reprinted in Garrels, Gary, ed. 2000. Sol Lewitt: A Retrospective. pp. 369-371. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

2009-11-28T08:29:00.000-08:00

"Conceptual art is good only when the idea is good"

Sol Lewitt. 1967. "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art". Artforum, 5 n¤.10 (June 1967): 79-83. Reprinted in Garrels, Gary, ed. 2000. Sol Lewitt: A Retrospective. pp. 369-371. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

2009-11-28T07:40:00.001-08:00

"The editor has written me that he is in favor of avoiding 'The notion that the artist is a kind of ape that has to explained by the civilised critic.' This should be good news to both artists and apes"

Sol Lewitt. 1967. "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art". Artforum, 5 n¤.10 (June 1967): 79-83. Reprinted in Garrels, Gary, ed. 2000. Sol Lewitt: A Retrospective. pp. 369-371. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

2009-11-27T09:47:00.000-08:00

"My ideal postmodernist author neither merely repudiated nor merely imitates either his twentieth-century Modernist parents or his nineteenth-century premodernist grandparents. He has the first half of our century under his belt, but not on his back. Without lapsing into moral or artistic simplism, shoddy craftsmanship, Madison Avenue venality, or either false nor real naiveté, he nevertheless aspires to a fiction more democratic in its appeal than such late-modernist marvels (by my definition and my judgement) as Beckett's Stories and Texts for Nothing or Nabokov's Pale Fire. He may not hope to reach and move the devotees of James Michener and Irving Wallace - not to mention the lobotomized mass-media illiterates. But he should hope to reach and delight, at least part of the time, beyond the circle of what Mann used to call the Early Christians: professional devotees of high art"

Source: John Barth, "The Literature of Replenishment, Postmodernist Fiction", The Atlantic, January 1980, pp. 65-71. quoted in Charles Jencks. 1986. What is Post-Modernism? Third Edition 1989. pp. 9. Academy Editions London/ St. Martin's Press New York.

2009-11-27T09:35:00.000-08:00

"The word and concept [of Post-Modernism] have changed over fifty years and have only reached such clarification in the last ten. (...) 'What is Post-Modernism?' It is a question, as well as the answer I will give, and one must see that its continual growth and movement mean that no definitive answer is possible - at least until it stops moving"

Source: Charles Jencks. 1986. What is Post-Modernism? Third Edition 1989. Page 7. Academy Editions London/ St. Martin's Press New York.