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Quote by Andre Malraux

“The present age delights in unearthing a great man's secrets; for one thing because we like to temper our admiration and also perhaps we have a vague hope of finding a clue to genius in such "revelations."”

Quote by Andre Malraux

Author

Andre Malraux was a French novelist, historian, and philosopher. Known for his unique narrative style and profound insights into history, his works have won widespread acclaim. Born on November 3, 1901, he passed away on November 23, 1976. more

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“I've become convinced that nostalgia is a fundamentally unhealthy modality. When you see it, it's usually attached to something else that's really, seriously bad. I don't traffic in nostalgia. We're becoming a global culture.”

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“If modern painters feel qualms about applying the term "masterpiece" to describe a work of capital importance, this is because it has come to convey a notion of perfection: a notion that leads to much confusion when applied to artists other than those who made perfection their ideal.”

Ifs Feels Made Artist Term Modern Ideals Perfection Importance Notion Confusion Painter Masterpiece Qualms Qualms About

Author:Andre Malraux

“Athirst for personal salvation, the West forgets that many religions had but a vague notion of the life beyond the grave; true, all great religions stake a claim on eternity, but not necessarily on man's eternal life.”

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Author:Andre Malraux

“Surely that little pseudo-gothic church on Broadway, hidden amongst the skyscrapers, is symbolic of the age! On the whole face of the globe the civilization that has conquered it has failed to build a temple or a tomb.”

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“An individualism which has got beyond the stage of hedonism tends to yield to the lure of the grandiose. It was not man, the individual, nor even the Supreme Being, that Robespierre set up against Christ; it was that Leviathan, the Nation.”

Men Individual Nations Christ Stage Supreme Yield Individualism Lure Supreme Being Hedonism Grandiose Leviathan

Author:Andre Malraux

“The great Christian art did not die because all possible forms had been used up; it died because faith was being transformed into piety. Now, the same conquest of the outside world that brought in our modern individualism, so different from that of the Renaissance, is by way of relativizing the individual. It is plain to see that man's faculty of transformation, which began by a remaking of the natural world, has ended by calling man himself into question.”

“In ceasing to subordinate creative power to any supreme value, modern art has brought home to us the presence of that creative power throughout the whole history of art.”

Art Whole Home Values Creative Modern Supreme Subordinates Modern Art Creative Power

Author:Andre Malraux

“History may clarify our understanding of the supreme work of art, but can never account for it completely; for the Time of art is not the same as the Time of history.”

May Art Understanding Art Is Accounts Supreme Works Of Art

Author:Andre Malraux

“Our art culture makes no attempt to search the past for precedents, but transforms the entire past into a sequence of provisional responses to a problem that remains intact.”

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“Our characteristic response to the mutilated statue, the bronze dug up from the earth, is revealing. It is not that we prefer time-worn bas-reliefs, or rusted statuettes as such, nor is it the vestiges of death that grip us in them, but those of life. Mutilation is the scar left by the struggle with Time, and a reminder of it - Time which is as much a part of ancient works of art as the material they are made of, and thrusts up through the fissures, from a dark underworld, where all is at once chaos and determinism.”

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Author:Andre Malraux