#criticism

Modern paintings are like women, you'll never enjoy them if you try to understand them. ↗

— Freddie Mercury

#art-criticism #modern-art #women #art

Avant-garde is French for bullshit ↗

— John Lennon

#definitions #art

It's easy to attack and destroy an act of creation. It's a lot more difficult to perform one. ↗

— Chuck Palahniuk

#creation #creativity #criticism #art

Andy Warhol is the only genius I've ever known with an IQ of 60. ↗

— Gore Vidal

#art

There is a remarkable degree of consistency in the way mediaeval literature affirms humanity. With all its faults, humanity emerges as more realistic than heavenly ideals. ...... Because the mediaeval period is seen from our own times as historically distant, 'behind' the Renaissance with all the changes which that period brought, it has been undervalued for its own debates, developments and changes. The fact that mediaeval times have been revisited, re-imagined and rewritten, especially in the Romantic period, has tended to compound the ideas of difference and distance between this age and what came after. But in many ways the mediaeval period presages the issues and concerns of the Renaissance period and prepares the way for what was to come. ↗

— Ronald Carter

#age

The problem of knowledge is that there are many more books on birds written by ornithologists than books on birds written by birds and books on ornithologists written by birds ↗

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

#art-criticism #critics #insight #knowledge #music-criticism

The critic's aim should be to interpret the work they are writing about and help readers appreciate it, by defining and analysing those qualities that make it precious and by indicating the angle of visions from which its beauties are visible. But many critics do not realize their function. They aim not to appreciate, but to judge; they seek first to draw lines about literature and then bully readers into accepting these laws. ↗

— David Cecil

#literary-criticism #beauty

What readers ask nowadays in a book is that it should improve, instruct and elevate. This book wouldn't elevate a cow. I cannot conscientiously recommend it for any useful purposes whatever. All I can suggest is that when you get tired of reading "the best hundred books," you may take this for half an hour. It will be a change. ↗

— Jerome K. Jerome

#literary-criticism #change

Every man of character will have that character questioned. Every man of honor and courage will be faced with unjust criticism, but never forget that unjust criticism has no impact whatsoever upon the truth. And the only sure way to avoid criticism is to do nothing and be nothing. ↗

— Andy Andrews

#truth #unjust-criticism #courage

Giving importance to what we think because we thought it, taking our own selves not only (to quote the Greek philosopher) as the measure of all things but as their norm or standard, we create in ourselves, if not an interpretation, at least a criticism of the universe, which we don't even know and therefore cannot criticize. The giddiest, most weak-minded of us then promote that criticism to an interpretation that's superimposed, like a hallucination; induced rather than deduced. It's a hallucination in the strict sense, being an illusion based on something only dimly seen. ↗

— Fernando Pessoa

#criticism #opinions #philosophy #thought #education