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Arts Quotes

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Arts Quotes

“Why do you paint, Akram?” I asked. “What—” “Close your eyes, Sebastian,” he said, stopping me. “Just for a minute, close them and tell me what you see.” I did as he asked and answered, “Nothing, just black.” He tilted my head a bit to the west. “Open them now and find the blessing of vision. This abundance, the explosion, the mixture of colors, the movement, life passing by… See the sun setting? What colors can you find in the sea? Surely there are blue and gray, but don’t you also see that darker gray, light green, even black? Look at the hues of the sun drowning in the sea, melting in oranges, reds, purples. Look at those trees over there. Look at the waves, at me, at your hands, the eyes of your friends. Now, must you still ask me why I paint?” Akram replied. He then left me and walked to the tip of the yacht to enjoy the sunset and the breeze. “Artists,” I mumbled to myself.”

ArtArtistSkyPaintingParisColorsAvant GardeArtsPaintersAhmad Ardalan
Book:The Art Collector of Le Marais
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“It’s so easy to lose faith and become lost in all of the politics of the world. That’s why we need the arts. To sublimate our frustration and anger into something beautiful. Freud called sublimation a virtuous defence mechanism because it is in the arts that we can find our humanity.”

WorldLifeArtBeautifulFaithHumanityHopePoliticsLostBeautyCreativityCreativeVirtuePsychologyMediaTheoryNewsEmpathyAngerCorruptionSurrenderFrustrationHopefulHopelessVirtuousCreateDefenceKamandKojouriKamand KojouriCorruptLoseGive UpArtsHumannessHopefulnessFreudCorporationFreudianDefence MechanismSublimationCreative ArtsSublimate
Author:Kamand Kojouri
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“The assault on education began more than a century ago by industrialists and capitalists such as Andrew Carnegie. In 1891, Carnegie congratulated the graduates of the Pierce College of Business for being “fully occupied in obtaining a knowledge of shorthand and typewriting” rather than wasting time “upon dead languages.” The industrialist Richard Teller Crane was even more pointed in his 1911 dismissal of what humanists call the “life of the mind.” No one who has “a taste for literature has a right to be happy” because “the only men entitled to happiness… is those who are useful.” The arrival of industrialists on university boards of trustees began as early as the 1870s and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business offered the first academic credential in business administration in 1881. The capitalists, from the start, complained that universities were unprofitable. These early twentieth century capitalists, like heads of investment houses and hedge-fund managers, were, as Donoghue writes “motivated by an ethically based anti-intellectualism that transcended interest in the financial bottom line. Their distrust of the ideal of intellectual inquiry for its own sake, led them to insist that if universities were to be preserved at all, they must operate on a different set of principles from those governing the liberal arts.”

EducationAssaultArtsLiberalProfessor
Book:Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle
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“Whenever an art form loses its fire, when it gets weakened by intellectual inbreeding and first principles fade into stale tradition, a radical fringe eventually appears to blow it up and rebuild from the rubble. Young Gun ultrarunners were like Lost Generation writers in the ’20s, Beat poets in the ’50s, and rock musicians in the ’60s: they were poor and ignored and free from all expectations and inhibitions. They were body artists, playing with the palette of human endurance.”

ArtsSports InspirationalBeat Poetry
Book:Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen
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“It was good to be gay on Top of the Pops years before it was good to be gay in Parliament, or gay in church, or gay on the rugby pitch. And it’s not just gay progress that happens in this way: 24 had a black president before America did. Jane Eyre was a feminist before Germaine Greer was born. A Trip to the Moon put humans on the Moon in 1902. This is why recent debates about the importance of the arts contain, at core, an unhappy error of judgment. In both the arts cuts—29 percent of the Arts Council’s funding has now gone—and the presumption that the new, “slimmed down” National Curriculum will “squeeze out” art, drama and music, there lies a subconscious belief that the arts are some kind of . . . social luxury: the national equivalent of buying some overpriced throw pillows and big candle from John Lewis. Policing and defense, of course, remain very much “essentials”—the fridge and duvets in our country’s putative semi-detached house. But art—painting, poetry, film, TV, music, books, magazines—is a world that runs constant and parallel to ours, where we imagine different futures—millions of them—and try them out for size. Fantasy characters can kiss, and we, as a nation, can all work out how we feel about it, without having to involve real shy teenage lesbians in awful sweaters, to the benefit of everyone’s notion of civility.”

ArtsArts And HumanitiesArts EducationArts FundingFunding For The Arts
Book:Moranthology
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“She preferred the quiet solitary atmosphere, to create in her own world of paint and colour, the thrill of anticipating how her works would turn out as she eyed the blank sheets of paper or canvas before starting her next masterpiece. How satisfying it was to mess around in paint gear, without having to worry about spills, starch or frills, that was the life!”

ArtInspirationArtistImaginationCreativityPaintingSolitudeArtisticCreative ProcessArtistsCreative PeopleCreative WorkArtsArtists LifeArts And HumanitiesPaintersThrilling Life
Book:Brushstrokes of a Gadfly
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“The twins spend their second day in Paris at the Louvre. ''... Really great geniuses, eh Fritz? One could barely call them human beings.'' '' As a matter of fact, I don't think they were... just superior beings from some other planet... perhaps from the same one that gave us Mozart and Plato, for it's impossible that a mere human being create such monumental works.'' ''Wonderful...”

FranceParisPlato1960sArtsArtists LifeLouvreMozartMalteseMusée D Orsay
Book:Memories of Recurrent Echoes
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“In the following days the twins went all over the city; they visited more museums, particularly the avant-garde ones. Whenever Magda spotted a Van Gogh her eyes would fill with tears, remembering the aberrational agony this great artist had gone through. The work that stirred her most was one of those many self-portraits of the artist in a sober and tormented mood; a painting built by many heavy brushstrokes of dense undiluted paint applied spirally giving the impression that the image was materializing from a turquoise background. Magda spent a full ten minutes before one such portrait. When she returned back to earth she noticed a young man beside her, as absorbed with the painting as she was and whose face looked familiar.”

FranceParis1960sArtsArtists LifeLouvreVan GoghVincent Van GoghMalteseMusée D Orsay
Book:Memories of Recurrent Echoes
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“The kingdom of God works in all spheres of culture, whether church, family, education, government, arts, business, or media. It is time to stop operating under the mindset that these spheres ought to be separated into secular and Christian, hoarding all the ‘sanctified spheres’ into the church, thereby leaving the world struggling in a vacuum of death. When we suck all the living water into the church, the world is left to die of thirst.”

GovernmentCultureChurchBusinessEducationMediaSpheresSecularKingdom Of GodArts
Book:Back to the Future
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“A midst deceit I found the truth; there in the rough I found a diamond. And from the moment we met, I think of no one else Today I choose to be, to live and breathe; to dream, to weep, and to sing in free verse. And you, the object of my delight: a like-minded opposite I am myself with, a mind-fuck times six, seven, eight thousand and three. I know that you love me with every inch of your deep.”

LoveArtPoetryLiteratureRelationshipsBlogArtsFree VerseGlbtDonatoOnline Writing
Book:Compound Delusions: The Rise and Fall of our Design
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“I make so many plans but fail at follow-through. Gemini mind once a mat for you to wipe your feet. I’d beg for it. I’d plead 'Here! I’m here waiting for you to be the one. Take my heart, my life, my air: rip them to shreds and hand them back.No need to worry. I have enough superglue and tears to keep me busy for months...”

PoetryRelationshipsSelf HelpRemedyBlogArtsKindleThreads Of LifeAmazon KindleE BookDonatoOnline Writing
Book:Compound Delusions: The Rise and Fall of our Design
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“Can-Do Attitude: Essential to develop because all along the way people will hit you with questions like: Is it worth it? Why is it taking so long? This is a very hard business isn’t it? Are you sure you’re doing the right thing? and other questions that might make you doubt yourself. Just keep doing what you are doing and decide that whatever you need to do you will find a way to do and that you can do it, even though at the moment, you might not know how.”

ProjectsEntertainmentPerformanceArtsPerforming ArtsProductionProducerTheatre Production BooksProduction BooksTheatre Direction
Book:The Guerrilla Guide To Being A Theatrical Producer
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“Passion needs to be at the heart of the project. Passion is infectious, so the more people who are enthusiastic about the project the better. Where and when a solution or answer does not easily present itself, there needs to be enough belief and energy for the project that still drives the production forward. Without the passion to go through whatever it is that will be thrown your way, you will not make it to opening night.”

ActorsCreativePlanningOwnershipCrewArtsRaising FundsLegal AdvisesLearning The Ropes
Book:The Guerrilla Guide To Being A Theatrical Producer
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“What many producers don’t understand is that lawyers by definition are not trained in solving business problems. They are trained in interpreting and propagating the law based on a set of precedents that have been laid down before. And as each branch of law is an entity unto itself, an entertainment lawyer that normally works in music may not necessarily be useful when dealing with theatre. If you want to do a deal that might involve some creative thinking, you would do better to talk with someone that makes deals for a living, for example maybe a salesperson who has developed “outside of the box” thinking in order to make their business rise above that of the competition. In my experience lawyers are not by definition the most creative business thinkers.”

ActorsCreativePlanningOwnershipCrewArtsRaising FundsLegal AdvisesDeveloping Shows
Book:The Guerrilla Guide To Being A Theatrical Producer
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“Why do you choose to write about such gruesome subjects? I usually answer this with another question: Why do you assume that I have a choice? Writing is a catch-as-catch-can sort of occupation. All of us seem to come equipped with filters on the floors of our minds, and all the filters have differing sizes and meshes. What catches in my filter may run right through yours. What catches in yours may pass through mine, no sweat. All of us seem to have a built-in obligation to sift through the sludge that gets caught in our respective mind-filters, and what we find there usually develops into some sort of sideline. The accountant may also be a photographer. The astronomer may collect coins. The school-teacher may do gravestone rubbings in charcoal. The sludge caught in the mind's filter, the stuff that refuses to go through, frequently becomes each person's private obsession. In civilized society we have an unspoken agreement to call our obsessions “hobbies.” Sometimes the hobby can become a full-time job. The accountant may discover that he can make enough money to support his family taking pictures; the schoolteacher may become enough of an expert on grave rubbings to go on the lecture circuit. And there are some professions which begin as hobbies and remain hobbies even after the practitioner is able to earn his living by pursuing his hobby; but because “hobby” is such a bumpy, common-sounding little word, we also have an unspoken agreement that we will call our professional hobbies “the arts.” Painting. Sculpture. Composing. Singing. Acting. The playing of a musical instrument. Writing. Enough books have been written on these seven subjects alone to sink a fleet of luxury liners. And the only thing we seem to be able to agree upon about them is this: that those who practice these arts honestly would continue to practice them even if they were not paid for their efforts; even if their efforts were criticized or even reviled; even on pain of imprisonment or death. To me, that seems to be a pretty fair definition of obsessional behavior. It applies to the plain hobbies as well as the fancy ones we call “the arts”; gun collectors sport bumper stickers reading YOU WILL TAKE MY GUN ONLY WHEN YOU PRY MY COLD DEAD FINGERS FROM IT, and in the suburbs of Boston, housewives who discovered political activism during the busing furor often sported similar stickers reading YOU'LL TAKE ME TO PRISON BEFORE YOU TAKE MY CHILDREN OUT OF THE NEIGHBORHOOD on the back bumpers of their station wagons. Similarly, if coin collecting were outlawed tomorrow, the astronomer very likely wouldn't turn in his steel pennies and buffalo nickels; he'd wrap them carefully in plastic, sink them to the bottom of his toilet tank, and gloat over them after midnight.”

WritingSelf ActualizationArtsHobby
Book:Night Shift
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“Poets must be grounded in the education of the arts, drama, history, mysticism, esotericism, and philosophy. To gain knowledge and become learned of the above is easy - read. Poets should apply this knowledge to their work, so a poet will advance to the next level, to their next phase of their emotional, psychological and spiritual development, growing in years in a short space of time, in hours or months if he or she is an avid reader. This knowledge will birth work that is not meretricious but of noble parentage.”

HistoryDramaArtsMysticism Sufi WisdomEsotericismPhilosophy Literature
Book:Feeding The Beasts
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“In 2018, Linarejos Moreno, a professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the Complutense University of Madrid, held a solo exhibition titled Cloud Chamber, in which she brought together the genius of abstraction with a nuclear physics experiment designed to reveal the decay of subatomic particles. The year 1911 marks both the birth of abstraction in art, through Wassily Kandinsky’s foundational work, and the invention of the cloud chamber by C.T.R. Wilson, which enabled the first visual observations of cosmic rays. Both figures were concerned with the traceability of points and lines on a plane, an investigation that directly inspired Kandinsky’s second major theoretical work, Point and Line to Plane. This unexpected encounter, which subtly suggests that the foundation of reality may not align with the constructs of an abstracted universe distanced from nature, offers a glimpse into the dynamic interplay between mythos and logos. The guiding axiom of our journey under the manifesto of Science and Poetry is the desire to envision new frontiers where the dervishes who wander at the boundaries of Nature and the scientists of our age converge within the cosmic pattern. The irrational ratios of Nature are a manifesto of the geometry of reality. This manifesto is no less significant for the miraculous concord it establishes with poetic narration, the very instrument by which we convey feeling and thought. B. C. C. – On Nature and Against Method, Reflections & Propositions, XXV”

SciencePoetryNatureAbstractArtsKandinskyLinarejos Moreno
Book:Doğa Üzerine ve Yönteme Karşı - On Nature & Against Method, Reflections & Propositions
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