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Subjects Quotes

“It was a dream world, a kind of Alice in Wonderland, with its kings and queens, princes and princesses, and our millions of loyal subjects. But it wasn't real, and it couldn't last.”

World Kind Art Real Dream Lasts Millions Subjects Kings Entertainment Queens Princess Loyal Wonderland Dream World Kings And Queens

Author:Sylvia Sidney

“Lully's machine, Mill's fear and Lasswitz's chaotic library can be the subject of jokes, but they exaggerate a propensity which is common: making metaphysics and the arts into a kind of play with combinations.”

Kind Art Play Common Subjects Jokes Machines Mathematics Library Combination Metaphysics Chaotic Mills Propensity

Author:Jorge Luis Borges

“Those arts which are, to be sure, not finite, as geometry and arithmetic, do not suffer adornment; others, contrarily, are rather subject to division and embellishment, such as astronomy and jurisprudence.”

Art Suffering Subjects Mathematics Astronomy Division Finite Geometry Arithmetic Adornment Embellishment Jurisprudence

Author:Gerolamo Cardano

“Many schools today are sacrificing social studies, the arts and physical education so children can cover basic subjects like math, English and science.”

Children Art Today School Social Study Sacrifice Subjects Math Social Studies Physical Education

Author:Geoffrey Canada

“Artists have a double relationship towards nature: they are her master and her slave at the same time. They are her slave in so far as they must work with means of this world so as to be understood; her master in so far as they subject these means to their higher goals and make them subservient to them.”

World Mean Art Artist Goal Nature Subjects This World Masters Higher Understood Slave Subservient Higher Goals

Author:Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“You see I am an enthusiast on the subject of the arts.”

Book:The writings of Thomas Jefferson: being his autobiography, correspondence, reports, messages, addresses, and other writings, official and private : published by the order of the Joint Committee of Congress on the Library, from the original manuscripts, deposited in the Department of State

Source: The writings of Thomas Jefferson: being his autobiography, correspondence, reports, messages, addresses, and other writings, official and private : published by the order of the Joint Committee of Congress on the Library, from the original manuscripts, deposited in the Department of State

“Being accused of making money by selling sex in Hollywood, home of the casting couch and the gratuitous nude scene, is so rich with irony that it's a better subject for a comic novel than a column.... On one coast the cops are busting sex workers on Eighth Avenue, dragging them downtown to night court where they pay the fine and go right back to their corner; on another they're charging Heidi Fleiss with pandering in a town in which the verb is an art form.”

“That the mere matter of a poem, for instance--its subject, its given incidents or situation; that the mere matter of a picture--the actual circumstances of an event, the actual topography of a landscape--should be nothing without the form, the spirit of the handling, that this form, this mode of handling, should become an end in itself, should penetrate every part of the matter;Mthis is what all art constantly strives after, and achieves in different degrees.”

Should Art Different Ends Matter Form Spirit Poetry Given Situation Achieve Subjects Events Poet Circumstances Degrees Unity Mere Strive Instance Landscape Strife Penetrate Incidents Topography

Author:Walter Pater

“What I would like to write is a book about nothing, a book without exterior attachments, which would be held together by the innerforce of its style, as the earth without support is held in the air--a book that would have almost no subject or at least in which the subject would be almost invisible.”

Thinking Writing Art Book Would Be Earth Together Artist Language Support Air Subjects Style Invisible Thoughtful Attachment Exterior

Author:Gustave Flaubert

“Imagine a painter crucified by his subject!”

Art Artist Imagine Subjects Failure Painter

Book:Selected poems

Source: Selected poems

“New York is full of abandoned churches. A Godless city, but full of superstitions on every subject--art, money, sex, food, health.”

Art Sex Church Cities Subjects New York Abandoned Superstitions

Author:Mason Cooley

“Pytheos made a mistake by not observing that the arts are each composed of two things, the actual work and the theory of it. One of these, the doing of the work, is proper to men trained in the individual subject, while the other the theory is common to all scholars.”

Men Art Made Two Individual Common Mistake Subjects Theory Two Things Scholar Observing Made A Mistake

Author:Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

“Astronomers have a common ground for discussion with musicians in the harmony of the stars and musical concords in tetrads and triads of the fourth and the fifth, and with geometricians in the subject of vision; and in all other sciences many points, perhaps all, are common so far as the discussion of them is concerned. But the actual undertaking of works which are brought to perfection by the hand and its manipulation is the function of those who have been specially trained to deal with a single art.”

“Architecture, either practically considered or viewed as an art of taste, is a subject so important and comprehensive in itself, that volumes would be requisite to do it justice. Buildings of every description, from the humble cottage to the lofty temple, are objects of such constant recurrence in every habitable part of the globe, and are so strikingly indicative of the intelligence, character, and taste of the inhabitants, that they possess in themselves a great peculiar interest for the mind.”

Source: A treatise on the theory and practice of landscape gardening, adapted to North America: with a view to the improvement of country residences

“It is a thoughtless and immodest presumption to learn anything about art from philosophy. Some do begin as if they hoped to learnsomething new here, since philosophy cannot and should not do anything further than develop the given art experiences and the existing art concepts into a science, improve the views of art, and promote them with the help of a thoroughly scholarly art history, and produce that logical mood about these subjects too which unites absolute liberalism with absolute rigor.”

“In teaching, you must simply work your pupil into such a state of interest in what you are going to teach him that every other object of attention is banished from his mind; then reveal it to him so impressively that he will remember the occasion to his dying day; and finally fill him with devouring curiosity to know what the next steps in connection with the subject are.”

Source: Talks to Teachers on Psychology: And to Students on Some of Life's Ideals

“In order to write about the machine you have to know it, to live with it, to love it (or hate it). I think that true writing could be done on industrial subjects by people who work in industry, who are firmly linked with it. But ... and here is the opposite 'but', the technology of literary craftsmanship is itself a very fine and complex matter. Qualified specialists from industry prove themselves dilettantes in the field of literature. The needed synthesis is not yet in sight.”

“Understanding like the eye; whilst it makes us see and perceive all things, takes no notice of itself; and it requires art and pains to set it at a distance and make it its own subject.”

Art Eye Pain Understanding Subjects All Things Distance Psychological Perceive

Book:Philosophical Works: Preliminary discourse by the editor. On the conduct of the understanding. An essay concerning human understanding

Source: Philosophical Works: Preliminary discourse by the editor. On the conduct of the understanding. An essay concerning human understanding

“One of the biggest problems of mathematics is to explain to everyone else what it is all about. The technical trappings of the subject, its symbolism and formality, its baffling terminology, its apparent delight in lengthy calculations: these tend to obscure its real nature. A musician would be horrified if his art were to be summed up as "a lot of tadpoles drawn on a row of lines"; but that"s all that the untrained eye can see in a page of sheet music... In the same way, the symbolism of mathematics is merely its coded form, not its substance.”

“I think that one of the things is that, if you are going to decide to be a painter, you have got to decide that you are not going to be afraid of making a fool of yourself. I think another thing is to be able to find subjects which really absorb you to try and do. I feel that without a subject you automatically go back into decoration because you haven't got the subject which is always eating into you to bring it back - and the greatest art always returns you to the vulnerability of the human situation.”

Ifs Thinking Feels Trying Humans Art Able Situation Subjects Havens Fool Return Eating Painter Vulnerability Decoration Always Eating Making A Fool Of Yourself

Book:Francis Bacon: Retrospektive

Source: Francis Bacon: Retrospektive

“There’s only one subject for fiction or poetry or even a joke: how it is. In all the arts, the payoff is always the same: recognition. If it works, you say that’s real, that’s truth, that’s life, that’s the way things are. ‘There it is.’”

Ifs Way Art Real Fiction Subjects Jokes Recognition Payoff

Author:Robert Stone

“Energy is eternal delight; and from the earliest times human beings have tried to imprison it in some durable hieroglyphic. It is perhaps the first of all the subjects of art.”

Firsts Humans Art Energy Human Beings Subjects Eternal Delight Hieroglyphics

Book:The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form: A Study in Ideal Form

Source: The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form: A Study in Ideal Form

“No nude, however abstract, should fail to arouse in the spectator some vestige of erotic feeling... The desire to grasp and be united with another human is so fundamental a part of our nature that our judgement of what is known as 'pure form' is inevitably influenced by it, and one of the difficulties of the nude as a subject for art is that these instincts cannot be hidden.”

Should Humans Art Feelings Form Desire United Known Failing Subjects Pure Art Is Difficulty Fundamentals Instinct Judgement Abstract Erotic Spectators

Book:The nude: a study in ideal form

Source: The nude: a study in ideal form

“As biological organisms made of matter, we are subject to the laws of physics and biology: as conscious persons who create our own history we are free to decide what that history shall be. Without science, we should have no notion of equality; without art, no notion of liberty.”

Should Persons Art Made Matter Law Liberty Subjects Conscious Should Have Notion Physics Biology Organisms Laws Of Physics

Author:W. H. Auden

“If a nonartist teaches a subject called art, it is nonart.”

Ifs Art Teach Subjects

Book:The Sculpture of Ruth Asawa: Contours in the Air

Source: The Sculpture of Ruth Asawa: Contours in the Air

“The impediment to scientific thinking is not, I think, the difficulty of the subject. Complex intellectual feats have been mainstays even of oppressed cultures. Shamans, magicians and theologians are highly skilled in their intricate and arcane arts. No, the impediment is political and hierarchical.”

Thinking Has Beens Art Political Culture Subjects Intellectual Difficulty Complexes Oppressed Theologian Magician Intricate Feats Impediments Arcane

Book:Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Source: Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“Religion should be subject to commonsense appraisal and rational review, as openly discussible as, say, politics, art and the weather. The First Amendment, we should recall, forbids Congress both from establishing laws designating a state religion and from abridging freedom of speech. There is no reason why we should shy away from speaking freely about religion, no reason why it should be thought impolite to debate it, especially when, as so often happens, religious folk bring it up on their own and try to impose it on others.”

“There has never been a book like this. At once a poetics of place, a work of deep history, a bildungsroman, and an acute inquiry into the big subjects: love, family, other animals, the nature of creativity. It is sublime. It's also very funny. Haunting and haunted, Hold Still is the memoir of an artist that is art itself.”

Art Stills Book Bigs Artist Animal Creativity Subjects Memoir Sublime Inquiry Haunting Family Love

Author:Melissa Holbrook Pierson

“Lettering is a precise art and strictly subject to tradition. The 'New Art ' notion that you can make letters whatever shapes you like,is as foolish as the notion, if anyone has such a notion, that you can make houses any shapes you like. You can't, unless you live all by yourself on a desert island.”

Ifs Art House Subjects Like You Shapes Tradition Letters Notion Foolish Desert Islands Precise

Author:Stanley Morison

“The problem with kitsch is that it is all too profound, manipulating deep libidinal and ideological forces, while true art knows how to remain at the surface, how to subtract it's subject from it's deepest context of historical reality. The same goes for contemporary art, where we often encounter brutal attempts to return to the Real, to remind the spectator or reader that he is perceiving a fiction, to awaken him from a sweet dream.”

“Sovereigns always see with pleasure a taste for the arts of amusement and superfluity, which do not result in the exportation of bullion, increase among their subjects. They very well know that, besides nourishing that littleness of mind which is proper to slavery, the increase of artificial wants only binds so many more chains upon the people.”

People Knows Want Mind Wells Art Pleasure Results Subjects Taste Increase Slavery Chains Artificial Amusement

Book:The Social Contract

Source: The Social Contract

“Men, not only in Turkish society but everywhere, have been the bosses in terms of creation. If you look at art history, women were the objects. The fact that it's not been made by women means that the subjects are not women.”

Ifs Men Looks Mean Has Beens Art Made Facts Term Subjects Creation Objects Boss Turkish Art History

Author:Deniz Gamze Erguven

“I think with art you have to do a bit of transforming of the subject to make the art worth having.”

Thinking Art Bits Subjects Transforming

Author:Matthew Collings

“All art constantly aspires to the condition of music....In its ideal, consummate moments, the end is not distinct from the means, the form from the matter, the subject from the expression; they inhere in and completely saturate each other.”

Mean Art Ends Matter Moments Form Conditions Subjects Expression Ideals Aspire

Author:Walter Pater

“The subject matter of art is life, life as it actually is; but the function of art is to make life better.”

Art Matter Subjects Art Is Function Subject Matter

Author:Gertrude Stein

“There's a snobbery at work in architecture. The subject is too often treated as a fine art, delicately wrapped in mumbo-jumbo. In reality, it's an all-embracing discipline taking in science, art, maths, engineering, climate, nature, politics, economics.”

Art Reality Subjects Fine Discipline Economics Climate Math Architecture Treated Engineering Fine Arts Snobbery

Author:Norman Foster

“An object of art creates a public capable of finding pleasure in its beauty. Production, therefore, not only produces an object for the subject, but also a subject for the object.”

Art Pleasure Subjects Objects Produce Findings Capable Productions

Author:Karl Marx

“I have increasingly become conversant with Pythagoras' and Goethe's idea of a primordial music, not perceptible to the sensuous ear, but sounding and soaring throughout the cosmos. Tracing it to such exalted origins, I begin to understand more deeply the essence of our art and its elemental power over the human soul. Man, being a creature of Nature and subject to the cosmic influences that inform all earthly beings, must needs have been under the sway of that music from his earliest days; his organism reverberated with its vibrations and received it's rhythmic impulses.”

“We get to the point then with modern science where you could almost say that modern science is the art of describing those systems so crude in their structure that they are not subject to temporal variables.”

Art Modern Subjects Structure Describing Crude Variables Modern Science

Author:Terence McKenna

“We live in an age when the traditional great subjects - the human form, the landscape, even newer traditions such as abstract expressionism - are daily devalued by commercial art.”

Humans Art Age Form Subjects Tradition Traditional Landscape Abstract Human Form Expressionism Commercial Art Abstract Expressionism

Author:Andy Warhol

“I don't do abstract art because I don't find it as interesting as I do subjects and depictions.”

Art Interesting Subjects Art Is Abstract Depiction Abstract Art

Author:Claes Oldenburg

“Mine was not pop art. I maybe started with a subject, but I changed the subject.”

Art Subjects Changed Mines Pops Pop Art

Author:Claes Oldenburg

“I didn't want make art about the internet at all. It's a really hard subject to take on and I did not set out to do that. But, it was real and it was what was happening.”

Want Art Real Hard Subjects Internet Happenings

Author:Erika M. Anderson

“It's a pity I am so impatient and careless, as any ordinary person could learn all the techniques of photography in a week. It is the democratic art, i.e. technical skill is practically eliminated - the more foolproof cameras become with focusing and exposure gadgets the better - and artistic quality depends only on choice of subject.”

“Through reproductive technology, postmodernist art dispenses with the aura. The fiction of the creating subject gives way to a frank confiscation, quotation, excerptation, accumulation, and repetition of already existing images. Notions of originality, authenticity, and presence... are undermined.”

Way Giving Art Fiction Technology Subjects Creating Notion Authenticity Originality Frank Quotations Repetition Accumulation Auras

Book:On the Museum's Ruins

Source: On the Museum's Ruins

“To extend the depth of what has been called 'art' into photography requires... making available to the spectator the amazing transformations the subject undergoes to become the photograph.”

Has Beens Art Subjects Photography Transformation Depth Photograph Available Spectators

Author:Michael Snow