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Century Quotes

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Century Quotes

“I was born into the century in which novels lost their stories, poems their rhymes, paintings their form, and music its beauty, but that does not mean I have to like that trend or go along with it.”

Mean Doe Stories Form Lost Born Novel Century Fashion Painting Trends Rhyme

Author:Pat Conroy

“Abstract paintings must be as real as those created by the 16th century Italians.”

Real Century Painting Abstract Abstract Painting

Author:Frank Stella

“To an art historian a Giotto is a 14th Century painting. To an artist it was painted yesterday. We free ourselves from the past when we see it freshly.”

Art Past Artist Century Painting Masters Yesterday Historian Giotto

Author:Walter Darby Bannard

“I honestly believe students of painting in the next century will laugh at the abstract art movement. They will marvel at such a drawn-out regression in the plastic arts.”

Believe Art Next Laughing Century Movement Students Painting Honestly Abstract Plastic Abstract Art Regression

Author:Richard Schmid

“The element of heroic maleness had always been present in the concept of the artist as one who rides the winged horse above the clouds beyond the sight of lesser men, a concept seldom applied to those who worked with colours until the nineteenth century. When the inevitable question is asked, "Why are there no great women artists?" it is this dimension of art that is implied. The askers know little of art, but they know the seven wonders of the painting world.”

Source: The Obstacle Race: The Fortunes of Women Painters and Their Work

“If paintings are so important - worth so much, reproduced, cherished, and visited so often - then isn't it troubling that we can hardly make emotional contact with the artists? Few centuries, it seems, are as determinedly tearless as ours.”

Ifs Important Seems Artist Century Emotional Painting Importance Contact

Author:James Elkins

“Modern paintings often seem to have been made quickly, by comparison with the paintings of earlier centuries, and that seems to give us the license to look at them quickly - to consume them and move on.”

Giving Looks Has Beens Made Seems Moving Modern Century Painting Comparison License Modernism

Author:James Elkins

“The effort of painting from life has cost my models a great deal of physical discomfort, and cost me a great deal of money in model fees... I have wanted to make the camera obsolete... because, in my reading about early 20th century art, I found that the most frequently used argument made in favor of abstraction was that the camera made realist painting obsolete.”

Art Made Wanted Used Reading Found Deals Effort Century Painting Cost Photography Models Argument Cameras Favors 20th Century Abstraction Discomfort Obsolete Realist Fees

Author:Philip Pearlstein

“The whole Renaissance tradition is antipethic to me. The hard-and-fast rules of perspective which it succeeded in imposing on art were a ghastly mistake which it has taken four centuries to redress; Cezanne and after him Picasso and myself can take a lot of credit for this. Scientific perspective forces the objects in a picture to disappear away from the beholder instead of bringing them within his reach as painting should.”

Should Art Hard Whole Form Force Mistake Taken Four Century Objects Painting Perspective Tradition Credit Disappear Renaissance Imposing Beholder Ghastly Redress Cezanne

Author:Georges Braque

“One of the interesting things I discovered is that in the late 19th century, painters actually had black-and-white copies made of their own paintings. They chose it even over photographs because they knew the photographic medium would distort their work.”

Made Black White Interesting Century Painting Late Photograph Mediums Painter Copies Black And White Interesting Things 19th Century

Author:Robert Longo

“Indeed, the idea that doubt can be heroic, if it is locked into a structure as grand as that of the paintings of Cezanne's old age, is one of the keys to our century. A touchstone of modernity itself.”

Ifs Ideas Age Doubt Century Painting Keys Structure Old Age Heroic Locked Modernity Touchstones Cezanne

Book:The Shock of the New

Source: The Shock of the New

“Nevertheless, what was made in the hope of transforming the world need not be rejected because it failed to do so – otherwise, one would also have to throw out a good deal of the greatest painting and poetry of the nineteenth century. An objective political failure can still work as a model of intellectual affirmation or dissent.”

Source: The Shock of the New

“For me, going back to itinerant landscape painting, it's not about returning to an older method, but about building on what happened in the 20th century in photography. And also highlighting what the differences are between a painting and a photograph in picturing space.”

Differences Space Happened Century Building Painting Photography Method Photograph Landscape 20th Century Highlighting Landscape Painting

Author:Cynthia Daignault

“The most powerful words in English are 'Tell me a story,' words that are intimately related to the complexity of history, the origins of language, the continuity of the species, the taproot of our humanity, our singularity, and art itself. I was born into the century in which novels lost their stories, poems their rhymes, paintings their form, and music its beauty, but that does not mean I had to like that trend or go along with it. I fight against these movements with every book I write.”

“Through the 13th century, paintings of Angels exhibit a predominantly masculine appearance. Over the next 300 years, their images become more delicate, gentle, and feminine, until Angels are shown as androgynous or even distinctly female.”

Years Next Century Painting Angel Female Appearance Gentle Feminine Delicate Masculine Exhibits Androgynous

Author:David Connolly

“The invention of photography has dealt a mortal blow to the old modes of expression, in painting as well as in poetry, where automatic writing, which appeared at the end of the nineteenth century, is a true photography of thought. Since a blind instrument now assured artists of achieving the aim they had set themselves up to that time, they now aspired, not without recklessness, to break with the imitation of appearances.”

Writing Wells Ends Artist Break Achieve Century Painting Expression Photography Aim Instruments Blind Blow Appearance Invention Mortals Imitation Assured Nineteenth Century Recklessness

Author:Andre Breton

“Now that photography is a digital medium, the ghost of painting is coming to haunt it: photography no longer retains a sense of truth. I think that's great, because it frees photography from factuality, the same way photography freed painting from factuality in the mid-nineteenth century.”

Thinking Way Century Painting Photography Ghost Mediums Digital Nineteenth Century

Author:Vik Muniz

“You have the 20th century wrapping up and everything is moving at this breakneck speed? And then, painting is still walking. It's just a very human activity that takes time.”

Humans Stills Moving Century Painting Walking Activity Speed Take Time 20th Century Human Activity Wrapping Wrapping Up

Author:Joe Bradley

“Looking at paintings was a huge part of finding my way into the lush world of the 18th century.”

World Way Century Painting Huge Findings My Way 18th Century Lush

Author:Rebecca Miller

“I'm from Holland and the history of "Admiral" is something you would read about when you're at school. Nobody knows about these stories and when you go to any museum in Holland, you will see these paintings of these 17th century sea beckels that the Dutch were in to, so it always intrigued me.”

Knows Stories School Sea Century Painting Museums Nobody Knows Intrigued Dutch Holland Admiral 17th Century

Author:Roel Reine