“I deny that art can be taught, or, in other words, maintain that art is completely individual, and that the talent of each artist is but the result of his own inspiration and his own study of past tradition.” ArtInspirationPastArtistIndividualResultsEducationStudyTalentTaughtArt IsTraditionDeny Author:Gustave Courbet
“Art is an evolution of techniques and materials from past to present and we can't stop learning.” ArtPastMaterialsEvolutionArt IsTechnique Author:Robert Warren
“We cleave to the past too much in Germany. All of our German art is too bogged down in the conventional... I think more highly of a free person who consciously puts convention aside.” ThinkingPersonsArtPastToo MuchArt IsGermanyConventionsConventional Author:Paula Modersohn-Becker
“Sometimes we forget that if we do not encourage new work now, we will lose all touch with the work of the past we claim to love. If art is not living in a continuous present, it is living in a museum, only those working now can complete the circuit between the past, present and future energies we call art.” IfsArtSometimesPastEnergyLosesForgetArt IsClaimsMuseumsCircuitsPast PresentPast Present And FutureNew WorkWorking Now Author:Jeanette Winterson
“The difference between writing a story and simply relating past events is that a story, in order to be acceptable, must have shape and meaning. It is the old idea that art is the bringing of order out of chaos.” WritingArtIdeasStoriesPastOrderDifferencesEventsShapesArt IsChaosAcceptableOld IdeasPast Events Author:Katherine Paterson
“art is the most general condition of the Past in the present. ... Perhaps no work of art is art. It can only become art, when it is part of the past. In this normative sense, a 'contemporary' work of art would be a contradiction - except so far as we can, in the present, assimilate the present to the past.” ArtWould BePastConditionsArt IsContemporaryContradictionWorks Of Art Author:Susan Sontag
“Art is the means by which we communicate what it feels like to be alive - in the past, that was mixed up with other illustrative duties, but that was still its central function that has been liberated in the art called modern.” FeelsMeanHas BeensArtStillsPastAliveModernDutyArt IsFunctionCommunicateLiberated Author:Antony Gormley