Home / Authors / Clive Bell

Clive Bell

Clive Bell Quotes

Art critic

Clive Bell, born on September 16, 1881, and died on September 18, 1964, was a British art critic. He is considered one of the most influential art critics of the early 20th century, known for his unique insights into the form and visual aesthetics of art.

Filter quotes by topic

All Art Emotion Works Of Art Form Aesthetic Ecstasy Mean Men People Significant

Famous Clive Bell Quotes

“...a work of art is like a rose. A rose is not beautiful because it is like something else. Neither is a work of art. Roses and works of art are beautiful in themselves.”

Art Quotes Art Quotations Rose Quotes

Author:Clive Bell

“It is not by his mixing and choosing, but by the shapes of his colors, and the combination of those shapes, that we recognize the colorist. Color becomes significant only when it becomes form.”

Form Color Shapes Significant Combination Colour Mixing

Author:Clive Bell

“Cezanne is the Christopher Columbus of a new continent of form.”

Form Discovery Continents Columbus Cezanne

Book:Art

Source: Art

“Detail is the heart of realism, and the fatty degeneration of art.”

Heart Art Reality Details Realism Degeneration Fatty

Book:Art

Source: Art

“Let the artist have just enough to eat, and the tools of this trade: ask nothing of him. Materially make the life of the artist sufficiently miserable to be unattractive, and no-one will take to art save those in whom the divine daemon is absolute.”

Art Enough Artist Asks Divine Tools Absolutes Trade Miserable Unattractive

Book:Art

Source: Art

“What quality is shared by all objects that provoke our aesthetic emotions? Only one answer seems possible— significant form. In each, lines and colors combined in a particular way; certain forms and relations of forms, stir our aesthetic emotions. These relations and combinations of lines and colors, these aesthetically moving forms, I call ‘Significant Form’; and ‘Significant Form’ is the one quality common to all works of visual art.”

Way Art Seems Moving Form Certain Lines Answers Common Emotion Quality Objects Particular Color Relation Significant Combination Visuals Aesthetic Provoking Visual Art

Author:Clive Bell

“Civilized people can talk about anything. For them no subject is taboo.... In civilized societies there will be no intellectual bogeys at sight of which great grownup babies are expected to hide their eyes.”

People Eye Subjects Baby Intellectual Sight Expected Civilized Taboo Civilized Society Grownups

Author:Clive Bell

“Art and religion are, then, two roads by which men escape from circumstance to ecstacy.”

Men Art Two Circumstances Ecstasy Alliances Rapture Two Roads Religion And Art

Author:Clive Bell

“A rose is the visible result of an infinitude of complicated goings on in the bosom of the earth and in the air above, and similarly a work of art is the product of strange activities in the human mind.”

Mind Humans Art Earth Results Air Strange Products Activity Art Is Rose Complicated Visible Works Of Art Human Mind Bosoms

Author:Clive Bell

“We all agree now - by 'we' I mean intelligent people under sixty - that a work of art is like a rose. A rose is not beautiful because it is like something else. Neither is a work of art. Roses and works of art are beautiful in themselves.”

People Mean Art Beautiful Art Is Intelligent Agree Rose Works Of Art Sixty Like Something

Author:Clive Bell

“Genius worship is the inevitable sign of an uncreative age.”

Age Genius Worship Inevitable

Author:Clive Bell

“The representative element in a work of art may or may not be harmful, but it is always irrelevant. For to appreciate a work of art, we must bring with us nothing from life, no knowledge of its affairs and ideas, no familiarity with its emotions.”

May Art Ideas Emotion Elements Appreciate Affair Appreciation Works Of Art Representatives Irrelevant Familiarity

Author:Clive Bell

“Only reason can convince us of those three fundamental truths without a recognition of which there can be no effective liberty: that what we believe is not necessarily true; that what we like is not necessarily good; and that all questions are open.”

Believe Reason Culture Three Justice Liberty Diversity Social Justice Fundamentals Recognition Convince Convince Us

Author:Clive Bell

“It would follow that 'significant form' was form behind which we catch a sense of ultimate reality.”

Reality Form Behinds Ultimate Significant Ultimate Reality

Author:Clive Bell

“Art and relligion are not professions: they are not occupations for which men can be paid. The artist and the saint do what they have to do, not to make a living, but in obedience to some mysterious necessity. They do not product to live - they live to produce.”

Men Art Artist Produce Products Paid Saint Profession Mysterious Obedience Occupation

Author:Clive Bell

“The starting-point for all systems of aesthetics must be the personal experience of a peculiar emotion. The objects that provoke this emotion we call works of art.”

Art Emotion Objects Starting Works Of Art Peculiar Provoking Aesthetics Personal Experiences Starting Point

Book:Art

Source: Art

“It is the mark of great art that its appeal is universal and eternal.............. Great art remains stable and unobscure because the feelings that it awakens are independent of time and place, because its kingdom is not of this world. To those who have and hold a sense of the significance of form what does it matter whether the forms that move them were created in Paris the day before yesterday or in Babylon fifty centuries ago? The forms of art are inexhaustible; but all lead by the same road of aesthetic emotion to the same world of aesthetic ecstasy.”

“Do not mistake a crowd of big wage earners for the leisure class.”

Bigs Work Mistake Class Crowds Leisure

Author:Clive Bell

“I will try to account for the degree of my aesthetic emotion. That, I conceive, is the function of the critic.”

Trying Emotion Degrees Accounts Function Critics Aesthetic

Author:Clive Bell

“All sensitive people agree that there is a peculiar emotion provoked by works of art.”

People Art Emotion Agree Sensitive Works Of Art Peculiar Provoked

Book:Art

Source: Art

“Art and Religion are, then, two roads by which men escape from circumstance to ecstasy. Between aesthetic and religious rapture there is a family alliance. Art and Religion are means to similar states of mind.”

Men Mind Mean Art Two States Religious Circumstances Ecstasy State Of Mind Aesthetic Alliances Rapture Two Roads

Author:Clive Bell

“Comfort came in with the middle classes.”

Class Middle Comfort Middle Class

Author:Clive Bell

“It is the mark of great art that its appeal is universal and eternal.”

Art Eternal Universal Mark Appeals Great Art

Book:Art

Source: Art

“The forms of art are inexhaustible; but all lead by the same road of aesthetic emotion to the same world of aesthetic ecstasy.”

World Art Form Emotion Ecstasy Aesthetic

Book:Art

Source: Art

“There must be some one quality without which a work of art cannot exist; possessing which, in the least degree, no work is altogether worthless.”

Art Quality Degrees Works Of Art Worthless Possessing

Book:Art

Source: Art

“We have no other means of recognising a work of art than our feeling for it.”

Mean Art Feelings Works Of Art

Book:Art

Source: Art

About the Author

Born: September 16, 1881
Died: September 18, 1964
Known for: Art critic
Quotes: 26

Related Topics

Art Emotion Works Of Art Form Aesthetic Ecstasy Mean Men People Significant

Popular Topics

People Ifs Thinking Knows Men World Way Want Love Life Inspirational Needs Giving Feels Should Writing Trying Years Mind Firsts

Books & Sources

ArtRelated source material

Similar Authors

Sol LeWittBrowse related quotes
Thomas HovingBrowse related quotes
Walter Darby BannardBrowse related quotes
Jerry SaltzBrowse related quotes
Joseph BeuysBrowse related quotes
Theo van DoesburgBrowse related quotes
Marcel DuchampBrowse related quotes
Wolf VostellBrowse related quotes
Lawren HarrisBrowse related quotes
Gerhard RichterBrowse related quotes