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Art History Quotes

Browse 151 quotes about Art History.

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Art History Quotes

“If you look at the image [ Portrait of the Artist as a Shadow of His Former Self ], it treads on a kind of popular stereotypical image of the black figure, in both its flatness and slightly comic edge. To take that image as a starting point and to render it in a proto-classical medium, like egg tempera, and then use a repertoire of classical compositional devices to make the picture was a way of setting up an engagement with art history.”

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Author:Kerry James Marshall
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“I started my professional life as a philosopher of language and for several years took the orthodox line that meaning is an essentially linguistic phenomenon. Whether as a result of simply listening to everyday talk about meaning, or reading books of anthropology, sociology and art history, it dawned on me that there is nothing at all privileged or central about linguistic meaning.”

YearsArtBookReadingLanguageLinesResultsListeningEverydayPhilosopherOrthodoxPhenomenonReading BooksPrivilegedSociologyAnthropologyArt HistoryProfessional Life
Author:David E. Cooper
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“I can go to parties all the time and not see people I want to work with, but then sometimes I do, and the way I try to describe it is that I like to refer to art history a lot in my paintings, and there are some people who just have a face that feels like art historical. Like they could be in a Tiepolo painting as a person riding through the sky in a chariot, or she could be in a fashion magazine.”

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Author:Will Cotton
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“When you study art history, you learn that there is very little that is completely new, and in many ways digital art is no different. I love to derive inspiration from all types of images: mosaics, hieroglyphics, petroglyphs, woven patterns in textiles, and needlework. There is a lot of very good "pixel" design work before the 20th century, like a 1760 sampler by Elizabeth Laidman that looks like a bitmap font.”

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Author:Susan Kare
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“There are so many people who have a training in art history; and if you've spent time looking at old art, you become attuned to what art does through materiality and so you begin to look to that in contemporary art as well. And anyway, I do think that matching one's experience with what you're looking at and questioning what you're looking inevitably involves materiality, just like it involves the sense of place.”

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Author:Laura Belem
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“If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful at all.”

PeopleIfsInspirationalArtHardHumorSeemsArtistWorkInspiringWonderfulIntelligencePainterMasteryBodybuildingFine ArtsArt HistoryFamous ArtistCreative ArtistsArt And ArtistsArt And CreativityInspirational ArtistArtists And CreativityInspirational ArtFine ArtistsFavorite ArtistInspiring ArtInspiring ArtistPassion For WorkArtists And LifePassion For Art
Author:Michelangelo
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“Imagine it's 1981. You're an artist, in love with art, smitten with art history. You're also a woman, with almost no mentors to look to; art history just isn't that into you. Any woman approaching art history in the early eighties was attempting to enter an almost foreign country, a restricted and exclusionary domain that spoke a private language.”

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Author:Jerry Saltz
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“Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.”

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Author:Leonardo da Vinci
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“I ate them like salad, books were my sandwich for lunch, my tiffin and dinner and midnight munch. I tore out the pages, ate them with salt, doused them with relish, gnawed on the bindings, turned the chapters with my tongue! Books by the dozen, the score and the billion. I carried so many home I was hunchbacked for years. Philosophy, art history, politics, social science, the poem, the essay, the grandiose play, you name 'em, I ate 'em.”

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Author:Ray Bradbury
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“Because subjects like literature and art history have no obvious material pay-off, they tend to attract those who look askance at capitalist notions of utility. The idea of doing something purely for the delight of it has always rattled the grey-bearded guardians of the state. Sheer pointlessness has always been a deeply subversive affair.”

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Author:Terry Eagleton
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“I had become a kind of information magpie, gathering to myself all manner of shiny scraps of fact and hokum and books and art-history and politics and music and film, and developing, too, a certain skill in manipulating and arranging these pitiful shards so that they glittered and caught the light. Fool's gold, or priceless nuggets mined from my singular childhood's rich bohemian seam? I leave it to others to decide.”

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Book:The Moor's last sigh
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“PICARD: There is no greater challenge than the study of philosophy. WESLEY: But William James won't be in my Starfleet exams. PICARD: The important things never will be. Anyone can be trained in the mechanics of piloting a starship. WESLEY: But Starfleet Academy PICARD: It takes more. Open your mind to the past. Art, history, philosophy. And all this may mean something.”

MindMayMeanArtImportantPhilosophyPastChallengesStudyGreaterImportant ThingsMechanicAcademyExamArt History
Author:Gene Roddenberry
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“The visual is sorely undervalued in modern scholarship. Art history has attained only a fraction of the conceptual sophistication of literary criticism. Drunk with self-love, criticism has hugely overestimated the centrality of language to western culture. It has failed to see the electrifying sign language of images.”

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Book:Sexual Personae
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“Desire is not what you see, but what you imagine.”

LifeArtInspirationDesireArtistCreativityCreativeImaginePaintingArt IsPainterArtisticWorks Of ArtGreat ArtistFine ArtsCreative ArtArt HistoryFamous ArtistCreative ArtistsArt And ArtistsArt And CreativityInspirational ArtistInspire CreativityInspiration And CreativityArtists And CreativityInspirational ArtFavorite ArtistArt TeacherInspirational Graphic DesignArt DanceInspiring ArtPainting ArtPainting And ArtInspiration And ArtInspiring ArtistGraphic Design InspirationArtists And LifeArt InspirationPassion For ArtHistory And Art
Author:Paulo Coelho
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“Drawing is not what you see but what you must make others see.”

ArtArtistBeautyVisionCreativityCreativeSeeingPaintingArt IsDancePainterArtisticWorks Of ArtGreat ArtistFine ArtsCreative ArtArt HistoryFamous ArtistCreative ArtistsArt And ArtistsArt And CreativityInspirational ArtistInspire CreativityInspiration And CreativityArtists And CreativityInspirational ArtImpressionismFavorite ArtistArt TeacherInspirational Graphic DesignArt DanceImpressionistsInspiring ArtPainting ArtPainting And ArtInspiration And ArtInspiring ArtistArt MakingGraphic Design InspirationArtists And LifeArt InspirationPassion For ArtHistory And Art
Author:Edgar Degas
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“In The Art and Aesthetics of Boxing, David Scott addresses the daunting task of establishing a groundwork for the aesthetics of boxing-and succeeds with consummate authority. . . . In Scott's incisive blend of art history, sociology, and sports writing, he makes a daring and original statement about fighters and the artists who enshrined them.”

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Author:Robert Anasi
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“Grigsby's marvelous exploration-a deep, wide, and beautiful inquiry into Sojourner Truth's use of technology-features more of her photographs than have ever been collected before. Among its many insights, I especially relished the analysis of Truth's illiteracy. Enduring Truths is art history with a wide-ranging concept of history left in. A terrific book, and one we've needed for a long time.”

LongArtBookUseBeautifulLeftTechnologyNeededTruth IsLong TimeConceptsEndurePhotographInsightWideFeaturesAnalysisExplorationMarvelousInquiryTerrificArt HistoryIlliteracyUse Of TechnologySojourners
Author:Nell Irvin Painter
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