“For a hundred years, modern painters, stubbornly and in the face of incessant hostility, have moved, step by step, leaving superb monuments by the wayside, towards an art of arrangement whose expressiveness depends less and less upon its elements imitating the objects of the external world.” WorldYearsArtFacesStepsModernObjectsDependsElementsHundredMovedLeavingPainterArrangementsHostilityMonumentModernismImitatingSuperbIncessant Book:The Collected Writings of Robert Motherwell Source: The Collected Writings of Robert Motherwell
“Modern transcendental idealism, Emersonianism, for instance, also seems to let God evaporate into abstract Ideality. Not a deity in concreto, not a superhuman person, but the immanent divinity in things, the essentially spiritual structure of the universe, is the object of the transcendentalist cult. In that address of the graduating class at Divinity College in 1838 which made Emerson famous, the frank expression of this worship of mere abstract laws was what made the scandal of the performance.” PersonsMadeSeemsSpiritualLawUniverseClassModernObjectsCollegeExpressionLetting GoWorshipPerformancesStructureMereInstanceAbstractDivinityAddressesGraduatesFrankIdealismCultScandalDeitiesTranscendentalSuperhumanGraduating Class Author:William James
“The question so often asked of modern painting, "What is it?", contains more than the dull skepticism of the man who is not going to have the wool pulled over his eyes. It speaks of a fundamental placement in relation to the work, that of a voyager in the world coming upon a strange object. The reader reconstitutes the work by his active participation, by approaching the object, tapping it, shaking it, holding it to his ear to hear the roaring within. It is characteristic of the object that it does not declare itself all at once, in a rush of pleasant naïveté.” MenWorldDoeEyeSpeakModernObjectsStrangeHe ManPaintingReaderEarsRelationFundamentalsActiveCharacteristicsPleasantHis EyesDullSkepticismParticipationShakingRoaringTappingWoolVetsPlacementActive ParticipationShaking It Author:Donald Barthelme
“Modern man, seeking a middle position in the evaluation of sense impression and thought, can, following Plato , interpret the process of understanding nature as a correspondence, that is, a coming into congruence of pre-existing images of the human psyche with external objects and their behaviour. Modern man, of course, unlike Plato , looks on the pre-existent original images also as not invariable, but as relative to the development of a conscious point of view, so that the word "dialectic" which Plato is fond of using may be applied to the process of development of human knowledge.” MenHumansLooksMayCoursesProcessUnderstandingViewsModernMiddlePositionObjectsDevelopmentConsciousOriginalsSeekingFollowingPoint Of ViewImpressionRelativeBehaviourPlatoEvaluationModern ManCorrespondenceHuman KnowledgeDialecticsHuman PsycheCongruenceUnderstanding Nature Author:Wolfgang Pauli
“The modern artist is living in a mechanical age and we have a mechanical means of representing objects in nature such as the camera and photograph. The modern artist, it seems to me, is working and expressing an inner world - in other words - expressing the energy , the motion and the other inner forces ... the modern artist is working with space and time , and expressing his feelings rather than illustrating.” WorldMeanFeelingsSeemsAgeArtistEnergyForceSpaceModernObjectsCamerasPhotographTime And SpaceRepresentingInner WorldModern ArtIllustrating Author:Jackson Pollock
“What is essential to understand at this point is that until now there was no such thing as mind and matter, subject and object, form and substance. Those divisions are just dialectical inventions that came later...They are just ghosts, immortal gods of the modern mythos which appear to us to be real because we are within that mythos. But in reality they are just as much an artistic creation as the anthropomorphic gods they replaced.” MindRealMatterRealityFormModernSubjectsCreationObjectsEssentialsGhostInventionArtisticSubstanceImmortalDivisionBeing RealReplacedRationalityMind And MatterArtistic CreationForm And Substance Author:Robert M. Pirsig
“As soon as man applies his intelligence to any object at all, he unfailingly destroys the object.” MenModernObjectsModern Life Author:Leo Tolstoy
“Kitschis one of the major categories of the modern object. Knick-knacks, rustic odds-and-ends, souvenirs, lampshades, and African masks: the kitsch-object is collectively this whole plethora of "trashy," sham or faked objects, this whole museum of junk which proliferates everywhere.... Kitsch is the equivalent to the "cliché" in discourse.” EndsWholeModernObjectsMajorsMaskMuseumsCategoriesOddsDiscourseJunkKnackKitschSouvenirsRusticKnicksOdds And Ends Author:Jean Baudrillard
“Inanimate objects are sometimes parties to litigation. A ship has a legal personality, a fiction found useful for maritime purposes. The corporation sole - a creature of ecclesiastical law - is an acceptable adversary, and large fortunes ride on its cases... So it should be as respects valleys, alpine meadows, rivers, lakes, estuaries, beaches, ridges, groves of trees, swampland, or even air that feels the destructive pressures of modern technology and modern life.” FeelsShouldSometimesWaterPartyCasesTechnologyAirTreeModernObjectsPersonalityPressureFortuneEnvironmentalShipsCorporationsDestructiveValleysAcceptableModern LifeAdversariesGroveRidgesInanimate ObjectsModern Technology Author:William O. Douglas
“Modern minds no longer object to the Church because of the way they think, but because of the way they live. They no longer have difficulties with the Creed, but with her Commandments. The heresy of our day is not the heresy of thought, but of action.” ThinkingWayMindActionChurchModernObjectsDifficultyCreedsCommandmentsHeresy Author:Fulton J. Sheen
“Modern woman is no longer satisfied to be the beloved of a man; she looks for understanding, comradeship; she wants to be treated as a human being and not simply as an object for sexual gratification.” MenWantHumansLooksUnderstandingHuman BeingsModernObjectsSatisfiedTreatedBelovedGratificationComradeshipModern Woman Author:Emma Goldman
“To the engineer, all matter in the universe can be placed into one of two categories: (1) things that need to be fixed, and (2) things that will need to be fixed after you've had a few minutes to play with them. Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art.” NeedsGivingArtTwoMatterPlayUniverseImaginationModernMinutesObjectsSkillsFixedCategoriesEngineersBasketsModern ArtPicnicsCraftsmanshipPicnic Baskets Author:Tom Stoppard
“Modern man has lost any sense of God's nearness, but Christianity teaches that God reveals himself through every single thing he has ever brought into being, whether a created object or historical event.” MenLostChristianityTeachModernEventsObjectsHistoricalModern ManHistorical Events Author:R. C. Sproul
“It's an essay that Sigmund Freud wrote about E.T.A. Hoffman's short story called "The Sandman" where someone mistakes an inanimate object for a living, breathing human being. And one of the things that Sigmund Freud really felt was that in modern life people assign qualities to objects around them that may not exist there whatsoever.” PeopleHumansMayStoriesFeltHuman BeingsMistakeQualityModernObjectsBreathingShort StoryEssaysModern LifeSandmanInanimate ObjectsOne Mistake Author:DJ Spooky