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"Art's job is to provoke thought in ways that are difficult to resolve and uncomfortable; it's a relatively neutral place to experience the unresolvable issues that dominate real life, to practice a kind of abstract flexibility that might move us toward resolution in real life." -- Roberta Smith in article: "Why Attack Art? Its Role Is to Be Helpful" in the New York Times, May 13, 2004.
_____"In a sense all artworks aspire to be arguments for argument's sake. They are places to entertain new thoughts and try out opposing viewpoints and to practice tolerance and flexibility. Real life needs all of these things as much as it ever has, if not more." -- Roberta Smith in article: "Why Attack Art? Its Role Is to Be Helpful" in the New York Times, May 13, 2004.
_____"Making social comment is an artificial place for an artist to start from. If an artist is touched by some social condition, what the artist creates will reflect that, but you can't force it." -- Susan Sontag
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From article entitled "UNEXPECTED ILLUSTRATIONS OF AYN RAND’S PHILOSOPHY OF AESTHETICS" by Christian Michel, found on the web at:
http://www.liberalia.com/htm/cm_rand_aesthetics3.htm
It says on this page that it is "from a paper presented at the ISIL Convention in Berlin, August 1998."
Quoting from this article (Where the author is explaining Ayn Rand's view of abstract art):
"Abstract painting and sculpture do not attempt to deal with the viewer above the level of the senses, i.e., the animal level."
He goes on to quote Ayn Rand: "All the arts are conceptual in essence, all are products of, and addressed to, the conceptual level of man’s consciousness." Michel then adds: "This is a fundamental point because we have here Rand’s repudiation of all forms of abstract paintings. Abstract painting and sculpture do not attempt to deal with the viewer above the level of the senses, i.e., the animal level."
I will add one full (but short) paragraph from this article by Christian Michel, but believe me, this is only meant to catch your interest, in case you might have any -- There is much, much more to read in this article, which I find extremely interesting, and which is nicely-illustrated:
"In her essay Art & Cognition, Rand states: Whereas the essence of art is integration, 'the keynote and goal of modern art is nothing less than the disintegration of man’s conceptual faculty'. She goes on to say 'To reduce man’s consciousness to the level of senses, with no capacity to integrate them is the intention behind the reducing of painting to smears and of sculpture to slabs.' Abstract art, therefore, is a war against reason."
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Intriguing ideas.
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"An observant person sees things overlooked by others. A scientist sees things going on and then asks how these goings-on array themselves into patterns, patterns that are reliable and predictable. A really good scientist--or a really good artist for that matter, anyone whose mind and soul are capable of some extension--sees what is going on, sees the patterns, and asks, 'Why?' What underlying forces are at work? How are those forces exerting themselves? How may we understand? Once pried from the universe by a great mind or a discerning heart, the hard-won understanding may then be conveyed and conferred upon humanity at large. A painting is nothing more than light reflected from the surface of a pigment-covered canvas. But a great painter can make you see the depth, make you feel the underlying emotion, make you sense the larger world."
-- Carl Safina in Song for the Blue Ocean
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"Painting is very easy when you don't know how, but very difficult when you do." - Edgar Degas
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"A photograph is a secret about a secret. .The more it tells you the less you know." -- Photographer Diane Arbus (1923-1971)
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"I think there are things that nobody would see unless I photographed them." -- Photographer Diane Arbus in an interview with Studs Terkel (1969)
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"When watching the body in action, who is conscious of detail? .How important is detail in a sketch of a cowboy on a bucking bronco? .Do we think of the exact shape of his foot, the cut of his chin? .Do these things matter? Actually, to be much involved with them in such a drawing would be a diversion, a weakness." -- from The Watson Drawing Book by Ernest and Aldren Watson, Bell Publishing Co., NY (MCMLXII), Chapter XIV: Figure Sketching
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"I cannot walk through the suburbs in the solitude of the night without thinking that the night pleases us because it suppresses idle details, just as our memory does." - Jorge Luis Borges, writer (1899-1986)
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"When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. .I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong." -- R. Buckminster Fuller (July 12, 1895 - July 1, 1983 - Engineer, mathematician, architect, and author; inventor of the Geodesic Dome)
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"Luxury is the wolf at the door and its fangs are the vanities and conceits germinated by success. .When an artist learns this, he knows where the danger is." -- Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams, American writer best known for his plays - 1911-1983
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"The authentic social function of the imagination operating through the arts (especially the novel) is to submit to destruction the standing assumptions of the moment but then to redeem that destruction through a process of rebuilding and reimagining. That's what art does." -- Curtis White in article entitled "Broken promises: Deciphering the success of 'The Da Vinci Code'" Village Voice Literary Supplement, October 2004.
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"To show your true ability is always, in a sense, to surpass the limits of your ability, to go a little beyond them: to dare, to seek, to invent; it is at such a moment that new talents are revealed, discovered, and realized." -- Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986)
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"Do you realize what will happen to you if you practice drawing with a pen? -That it will make you expert, skilful, and capable of much drawing out of our own head." -- Cennino D' Andrea Cennini - in "Il Libro dell' Arte" - Chapter XIII: "How You Should Practice Drawing with a Pen" -- See more of the book here.
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