Perspectives on Ideas February 27, 2007

Art (Continued)
203 …the spiritual life of Holland needed [Rembrandt] and so had, to some extent, created him. Clark, Civilization.

213 …any attempt to relate art to society soon gets one into a false position…one must not pretend that social conditions produce works of art. Clark, Civilization.

340 The relationship between art and society is not at all simple and predictable. Clark, Civilization.

273 There is communication [in a work of art], or the work is a failure, but the communication releases our own visions, touches some highly personal chord in our own experience. Eiseley, The Star Thrower

273 Artistic creation, on the other hand, is unique...is not cumulative Eiseley, The Star Thrower

120 To certain artists, the law of reversible statement pertains: almost anything you say about them can be turned around to show that the opposite is true. Calvin Tomkins, “The Changing Picture: A Retrospective Reveals Jasper Johns.” NYER, Nov. 11, 1996.

123 In all the years that I have been looking at Johns’s work, I have never come close to understanding it, and I have never not been fascinated…. Calvin Tomkins, “The Changing Picture: A Retrospective Reveals Jasper Johns.” NYER, Nov. 11, 1996.

225 Art, like most things, is more enjoyable when you know something about it. Gates, The Road Ahead.

974 “ 'What would be done with this water-power,' [of the fountain] suggested an artist, 'if we had it in one of our American cities…employ it to turn the machinery of a cotton mill, I wonder.' ” Hawthorne, The Marble Faun.

241 W.L .Laurence: It is not generally recognized that a concept in higher mathematics can be, and is, to those who understand it, as aesthetically satisfying, and as capable of producing an overwhelming emotional experience, as any musical composition, painting, drama, or any other form of creative expression. Hull, ed. The Writer’s Book.

Atheism
587 As soon as men have all of them denied God—and I believe that period, analogous with geological periods, will come to pass—the old conception of the universe will fall of itself…and what’s more the old morality, and everything will begin anew; men will unite to take from life all it can give, but only for joy and happiness in the present world…from hour to hour extending his conquest of nature infinitely by his will and his science, men will feel such lofty joy from hour to hour in doing it that it will make up for all his old dreams of the joys of heaven; everyone will know that he is mortal and will accept death proudly and serenely like a god. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov.