MUSINGS

I would teach children music, physics, and philosophy; but most
importantly music, for in the patterns of music and all the arts are
the keys to learning. —
Plato

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of
things, but their inward significance. —
Aristotle

Painting, n.: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather,
and exposing them to the critic. —
Ambrose Bierce

Some of us come on earth seeing— Some of us come on earth
seeing color. —
Louise Nevelson

True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative
artist. —
Albert Einstein

Pictures must not be too picturesque. —Ralph Waldo Emerson

Art is a step from what is obvious and well-known toward what is
arcane and concealed. —
Kahlil Gibran

I didn't have any interest in traditional art. —Cindy Sherman

The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without
work. —
Emile Zola

I just think it's important to be direct and honest with people
about why you're photographing them and what you're doing. After
all, you are taking some of their soul. —
Mary Ellen Mark

The man who can but sketch his purpose beforehand in words is
regarded as a wonder, and every artist and writer possesses that
faculty. But gestation, fruition, the laborious rearing of the
offspring, putting it to bed every night full fed with milk,
embracing it anew every morning with the inexhaustible affection
of a mother's heart, licking it clean, dressing it a hundred times in
the richest garb only to be instantly destroyed; then never to be
cast down at the convulsions of this headlong life till the living
masterpiece is perfected which in sculpture speaks to every eye, in
literature to every intellect, in painting to every memory, in music
to every heart! --this is the task of execution. The hand must be
ready at every moment to work in obedience to the mind.
Honore de Balzac, Cousin Bette

Painting is an attempt to come to terms with life. There are as
many solutions as there are human beings. —
George Tooker

Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting with the gift of
speech.  —
Simonides

I sometimes wonder if the hand is not more sensitive to the
beauties of sculpture than the eye. I should think the wonderful
rhythmical flow of lines and curves could be more subtly felt than
seen. Be this as it may, I know that I can feel the heart-throbs of
the ancient Greeks in their marble gods and goddesses. —
Helen
Keller, The Story of My Life

I paint my own reality. The only thing I know is that I paint
because I need to, and I paint whatever passes through my head
without any other consideration. —
Frida Kahlo

A daydream is a meal at which images are eaten. Some of us are
gourmets, some gourmands, and a good many take
their images precooked out of a can and swallow them down
whole, absentmindedly, and with little relish.
 W.H. Auden

Between seven and eleven, life is full of dulling and forgetting.  It
is fabled that we slowly lose the gift of speech with animals, that
birds no longer visit our windowsills to converse. As our eyes grow
accustomed to sight they armor themselves against wonder.  
Leonard Cohen
In Defense of Beauty
by Ruth Lorand


Philosophy and Style, or Who's Afraid of Beautiful Beasts?
by Iskra Fileva


Realism and the Riddle of Style
by Catharine Abell


Production Theories and Artistic Value
by David E. W. Fenner


Animal Aesthetics
by Wolfgang Welsch


General Semantics in To Kill a Mockingbird
by Annie Kasper


Aesthetics and Ethics:  The State of the Art
by Jeffrey Dean


Interdisciplinary Aesthetics
by Ivan Gaskell
Aesthetics
FOLLY