78 replies to this topic

[Diane]

When a book leaves your hands, it belongs to God. He may use it to save a few souls or to try a few others, but I think that for the writer to worry is to take over God's business.

-Flannery O'Connor

[Diane]

The fact is that if the writer's attention is on producing a work of art, a work that is good in itself, he is going to take great pains to control every excess, everything that does not contribute to this central meaning and design. He cannot indulge in sentimentality, in propagandizing, or in pornography and create a work of art, for all these things are excesses. They call attention to themselves and distract from the work as a whole.

-Flannery O'Connor

[DanBuck]

Art is why I get up in the morning, but my definition ends there. It doesn't seem fair. I'm living for something I can't even define.

-Ani DiFranco

[Clint M]

"We have to remind ourselves continually that even though the arts have power, their power is of a lesser order. The arts are less than their makers and users, who are, in turn, instructed to be sovereign over them... We worship the power of the Lord while the power of the artifact finds its humble place among all lesser powers over which we have been granted sovereignty and from which we are completely free. Therefore, God forbid that we calls these powers 'ministry' and hide behind them while we watch them go to work."

Harold Best, Unceasing Worship

[Overstreet]

“[T]he last thing I would wish for would be the existence of two literatures, one for Christian consumption and the other for the pagan world. What I believe to be incumbent upon all Christians is the duty of maintaining consciously certain standards and criteria of criticism over and above those applied by the rest of the world; and that by these criteria and standards everything that we read must be tested.”
–T.S. Eliot

[mrmando]

ART

In placid hours well-pleased we dream
Of many a brave unbodied scheme.
But form to lend, pulsed life create,
What unlike things must meet and mate:
A flame to melt--a wind to freeze;
Sad patience--joyous energies;
Humility-yet pride and scorn;
Instinct and study; love and hate;
Audacity--reverence. These must mate,
And fuse with Jacob's mystic heart
To wrestle with the angel--Art.

Herman Melville, 1891

[Anya]

"You are kind to painters, and I tell you the more I think, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people."

~Vincent Van Gogh

[Tim Willson]

« Nous connaîtrions-nous seulement un peu nous-mêmes, sans les arts? »
"Could we ever know each other in the slightest without the arts?"
--Gabrielle Roy, La montagne secrète, (The Hidden Mountain)

[Overstreet]

"The problem is not that modern evangelicals are less intelligent than Lewis. As Mark Noll explains in his book The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, the problem is that our sharpest intellects have been channeled into biblical scholarship, exegesis, and hermeneutics. While that is a vital enterprise, we rarely give the same scholarly attention to history, literature, politics, philosophy, economics, or the arts. As a result, we are less aware of the culture than we should be, less equipped to defend a biblical worldview, and less capable of being a redemptive force in our postmodern society -- less aware, as well, of the threats headed our way from cultural elites."
- Chuck Colson
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/chuckco...c20041129.shtml

[Tim Willson]

"Art is the solution of a problem which cannot be expressed explicitly until it is solved."
-Piet Hein

[Tim Willson]

"When telling a story, we should only resort to dialogue when it is impossible to do otherwise."
-Alfred Hitchcock

[Tim Willson]

"While tremendously superior to some analogue techniques, digital also lets you make crap in record time."
-www.popstudios.com

[Tim Willson]

"Artists working in motion pictures in general, and ILM in particular, must be willing to discard work and start all over again when changes are made in a film. It is the finished film that matters, not its artifacts."
-Thomas G Smith in ILM: Art of Special Effects

[Tim Willson]

"A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art."
-Paul Cezanne

[Peter T Chattaway]

"The trouble with composing is that, when it's done, it doesn't exist. It's just notes on a piece of paper. Until it's performed. And each performer will stick his own thumb print on it and change it. Whereas in a book there it is, you can't change it. If you read Thomas Mann, you're reading Thomas Mann. Nobody improvises around his sentences. The two most honest and pure media are painting and literature. Van Gogh's Starry Night remains the same wherever you hang it. You can achieve your perfection. In music, you can only approximate it."
-- Artie Shaw

[sevry]

Judd Rose: … As Charles Murray told us, “Selling books is the best revenge.”

[“Murray’s Curve”. television episode magazine.  PrimeTime Live. anchor Sam Donaldson. NY: ABC. 27 OCT 1994]

[sevry]

There is a tendency to call any new book important when you agree with it, and to call it a classic when you agree with it entirely.

[Rutler, Rev. George William. “Why Catholics can't sing”. magazine article.  Homiletic & Pastoral Review. editor Kenneth Baker SJ. NY: Catholic Polls, Inc. AUG 1991. v.XCI #11-12: 75]

[Rastas]

“Because of the secularization of society and the elevation to the foreground of such concepts as quality, artistic production, aesthetic commodity, and the like, claims of mystical powers and otherworldly intervention have become a mark of bad taste. From a certain point, all this has been out of bounds, as it were, and talking about it is like farting at the table.”
Ilya Kabakov in Ilya Kabakov, Margarita Tupitsyn, Victor Tupitsyn. About installation. Art Journal. New York. Winter 1999. 58/4 p62-74

[Tim Willson]

In an article about Anne Rice's recent book Christ the Lord, Books & Culture editor John Wilson cited an old, unpublished review of his (a review of Anne's earlier work):

"Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating."

[artrx]

On Color:

Color is born of the interpenetration of light and dark. -Sam Francis

It is the eye of ignorance that assigns a fixed and unchangeable color to every object; beware of this stumbling block. -Paul Gauguin


Generally speaking color directly influences the soul. Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another purposively, to cause vibrations in the soul.
It is evident,therefore, that color harmony must rest ultimately on purposive playing upon the human soul; this is one of the guiding principles of necessity. -Wassily Kandinsky