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Subjects Quotes

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Subjects Quotes

“And yet the artist will go on with his work without knowing in some way if any of his representations are sound or unsound. The artist knows nothing worth mentioning about the subjects he represents, and that art is a form of play, not to be taken seriously.”

Ifs Knows Way Art Play Form Artist Sound Knowing Taken Subjects Goes On Art Is Representation

Author:Plato

“The beautiful, which is perhaps inseparable from art, is not after all tied to the subject, but to the pictorial representation. In this way and in no other does art overcome the ugly without avoiding it.”

Way Doe Art Beautiful Beauty Subjects Art Is Overcoming Ugly Tied Representation Avoiding Inseparable Pictorial

Book:The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918

Source: The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918

“The character of the subject must influence the choice of the method of its representation.”

Character Choices Influence Subjects Method Representation

Author:Walter J. Phillips

“The motive for criticizing myth, that is, its objectifying representations, is present in myth itself, insofar as its real intention to talk about a transcendent power to which both we and the world are subject is hampered and obscured by the objectifying character of its assertions.”

World Real Character Subjects Intention Myth Motive Criticize Representation Assertion Transcendent Objectifying

Author:Rudolf Bultmann

“In the potential of absurdity, hiding in the disparate combination of the various different subjects which in themselves are nothing but daily items equally in the exclusive representation of a normal item taken out of their usual context, is by far the most radical - in its effect comparable to a Japanese Zen koan - paradox to be witnessed, which modern art has produced, one of the most forceful impulses that generated from it.”

Art Different Taken Modern Subjects Effects Normal Various Radical Combination Impulse Paradox Hiding Usual Representation Absurdity Items Exclusive Modern Art Different Subjects

Author:Antoni Tapies

“Another striding instance is recorded by the very intelligent traveler regarding a representation of the fall of our first parents, sculptured in the magnificent temple of Ipsambul in Nubia. He says that a very exact representation of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is to be seen in that cave, and that the serpent climbing round the tree is especially delineated, and the whole subject of the tempting of our first parents most accurately exhibited.”

“The bizarre but all too common transformation of the woman artist from a producer in her own right into a subject for representation forms a leitmotif in the history of art. Confounding subject and object, it undermines the speaking position of the individual woman artist by generalizing her. Denied her individuality, she is displaced from being a producer and becomes instead a sign for male creativity.”

Art Form Artist Individual Common Creativity Subjects Position Objects Transformation Males Individuality Producers Denied Representation Bizarre Woman Artist Confounding

Book:Women, Art, and Society

Source: Women, Art, and Society

“In literary representation, the distinction between the genuinely erotic and the licentious is a distinction not of subject-matter, but of perspective. The genuinely erotic work is one which invites the reader to re-create in imagination the first-person point of view of someone party to an erotic encounter. The pornographic work retains as a rule the third-person perspective of the voyeuristic observer.”

Source: Sexual Desire: A Philosophical Investigation

“They are, in a sense, two sides of the same coin: women are, on the one hand, subjects of an extremely real and abject (as Julia Kristeva put it) body and denigrated sexuality; on the other, the proliferation of images, and their digitalisation produces more and more abstract and air-brushed representations of impossible female bodies. Both indicate, certainly, a "lack of progress." But, one hopes, discussions and resistance are emerging in response.”

“If done well, I believe the photographic representation of the human subject has the potential to be more revealing than what is revealed by the eye alone, since the human glance is usually a momentary one.”

Ifs Believe Humans Wells Done Eye I Believe Subjects Representation Glances Revealing Momentary

Author:Dawoud Bey

“The thing itself is never just out there in the world waiting to be framed by the photographer's Leica; rather, it is something dynamically produced in the act of representation and reception and already subject to the grids of meaning imposed on it by culture, history, language, and so forth.”

World Culture Language Waiting Subjects Photographer Representation Framed Reception Grids Leica

Author:Abigail Solomon-Godeau