“Art is not a thing — it is a way.”
After the recent omnibus of definitions of science by some of
history’s greatest minds and definitions of philosophy by some of
today’s most prominent philosophers, why not turn to an arguably even more
nebulous domain of humanity? Gathered here are some of my favorite definitions
of art, from antiquity to today.
We work in the dark — we do what we can — we give what we have. Our
doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of
art.
Art is not, as the metaphysicians say, the manifestation of some
mysterious idea of beauty or God; it is not, as the aesthetical physiologists
say, a game in which man lets off his excess of stored-up energy; it is not the
expression of man’s emotions by external signs; it is not the production of
pleasing objects; and, above all, it is not pleasure; but it is a means of
union among men, joining them together in the same feelings, and indispensable
for the life and progress toward well-being of individuals and of humanity.
Frank Lloyd Wright, writing in 1957, as cited in Frank Lloyd Wright on
Architecture, Nature, and the Human Spirit: A Collection of Quotations:
Art is a discovery and development of elementary principles of nature
into beautiful forms suitable for human use.
To labor in the arts for any reason other than love is prostitution.
Art resides in the quality of doing; process is not magic.
Art is not a thing — it is a way.
Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.
Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.
An essential element of any art is risk. If you don’t take a risk then
how are you going to make something really beautiful, that hasn’t been seen
before? I always like to say that cinema without risk is like having no sex and
expecting to have a baby. You have to take a risk.
Art begins with resistance — at the point where resistance is overcome.
No human masterpiece has ever been created without great labor.
We have our Arts so we won’t die of Truth.
Above all, artists must not be only in art galleries or museums — they
must be present in all possible activities. The artist must be the sponsor of
thought in whatever endeavor people take on, at every level.
Federico Fellini in a December
1965 piece in The
Atlantic, not currently online:
All art is autobiographical; the pearl is the oyster’s autobiography.
Art suffers the moment other people start paying for it.
The Greek
philosopher Aristophanes, writing in the 4th century B.C.:
Let each man exercise the art he knows.
This is the power of art: The power to transcend our own self-interest,
our solipsistic zoom-lens on life, and relate to the world and each other with
more integrity, more curiosity, more wholeheartedness.
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