#on

What he was after hangs between the visible and the invisible, between the here and now and the seemingly elsewhere. ↗

— André Aciman

#monet #my-monet-moment #travel #art

The novel's spirit is the spirit of complexity. . . . The novel's spirit is the spirity of continuity . . . a thing made to last, to connect the past with the future. ↗

— Milan Kundera

#art

What is certain is this, that I never rested in that way again, my feet obscenely resting on the earth, my arms on the handlebars and on my arms my head, rocking and abandoned. It is indeed a delporable sight, a deplorable example, for the people, who so need to be encouraged, in their bitter toil, and to have before their eyes manifestations of strength only, of courage and joy, without which they might collapse, at the end of the day, and roll on the ground. ↗

— Samuel Beckett

#example #identifying-with-others #people #separation #courage

When someone between twenty and forty says, apropos of a work of art, 'I know what I like,' he is really saying 'I have no taste of my own but accept the taste of my cultural milieu. ↗

— W.H. Auden

#conventionality #taste #art

There are only two styles of portrait painting: the serious and the smirk. ↗

— Charles Dickens

#expression #portrait #serious #art

(…) jest naiwnością mniemanie, jakoby zachwyt nasz wobec dzieła sztuki z nas samych pochodził: że zachwyt ten w sporej mierze nie rodzi się z ludzi, ale między ludźmi, i jest to tak jakbyśmy wzajemnie zmuszali się do zachwytu (choć nikt „osobiście” nie jest zachwycony). / It is naive to believe that the admiration for a masterpiece is spontaneous. The admiration, to a great extent, is not born within people but between people, as if we forced each other to admire (while no one is “personally” enraptured). (Dziennik, 1956, XX, Wtorek I) ↗

— Witold Gombrowicz

#art #art

The figure in the icon is not meant to represent literally what Peter or John or any of the apostles looked like, or what Mary looked like, nor the child, Jesus. But, the orthodox painter feels, Jesus of Nazareth did not walk around Galilee faceless. The icon of Jesus may not look like the man Jesus two thousand years ago, but it represents some *quality* of Jesus, or his mother, or his followers, and so becomes an open window through which we can be given a new glimpse of the love of God. ↗

— Madeleine L'Engle

#art #iconography #icons #jesus #love

Reading his autobiography many years later, I was astonished to find that Edward since boyhood had—not unlike Isaiah Berlin—often felt himself ungainly and ill-favored and awkward in bearing. He had always seemed to me quite the reverse: a touch dandyish perhaps but—as the saying goes—perfectly secure in his masculinity. On one occasion, after lunch in Georgetown, he took me with him to a renowned local tobacconist and asked to do something I had never witnessed before: 'try on' a pipe. In case you ever wish to do this, here is the form: a solemn assistant produces a plastic envelope and fits it over the amber or ivory mouthpiece. You then clamp your teeth down to feel if the 'fit' and weight are easy to your jaw. If not, then repeat with various stems until your browsing is complete. In those days I could have inhaled ten cigarettes and drunk three Tanqueray martinis in the time spent on such flaneur flippancy, but I admired the commitment to smoking nonetheless. Taking coffee with him once in a shopping mall in Stanford, I saw him suddenly register something over my shoulder. It was a ladies' dress shop. He excused himself and dashed in, to emerge soon after with some fashionable and costly looking bags. 'Mariam,' he said as if by way of explanation, 'has never worn anything that I have not bought for her.' On another occasion in Manhattan, after acting as a magnificent, encyclopedic guide around the gorgeous Andalusia (Al-Andalus) exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, he was giving lunch to Carol and to me when she noticed that her purse had been lost or stolen. At once, he was at her service, not only suggesting shops in the vicinity where a replacement might be found, but also offering to be her guide and advisor until she had selected a suitable new sac à main. I could no more have proposed myself for such an expedition than suggested myself as a cosmonaut, so what this says about my own heterosexual confidence I leave to others. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#autobiography #carol-blue #edward-said #georgetown-washington #heterosexuality

[Editorial cartooning] is essentially a destructive art. We are not pontificators, or molders of thought—or at least we shouldn't try to be. Ours is more the role of the lowly gadfly: circle and stab, circle and stab. Roughly put, our credo should be, if it's big, hit it. ↗

— Bill Mauldin

#art

Imagine you saw a colour in your dream, which you have never seen before. It doesn't consist of any colours or shades that you know. Trying to describe that colour would be as difficult as trying to belive that there is enough love & compassion in the world so every human can feel happiness. ↗

— Egor Kraft

#love #philosophy #street-art #art