The thrill of creation which we experience which we experience when we see a masterpiece is not unlike the feeling of the artist who created it; such a work is a fragment of the world which he has annexed and which belongs to him alone. Andre Malraux More Quotes by Andre Malraux More Quotes From Andre Malraux The truth of a man is first and foremost what he hides. Andre Malraux men firsts In ceasing to subordinate creative power to any supreme value, modern art has brought home to us the presence of that creative power throughout the whole history of art. Andre Malraux creative home art Youth is a religion from which one always ends up being converted. Andre Malraux youth ends religion Communism destroys democracy. Democracy can also destroy Communism. Andre Malraux democracy communism Every creation is, at its root, the struggle between potential form and imitated form. Andre Malraux creation struggle roots The crucial discovery was made that, in order to become painting, the universe seen by the artist had to become a private one created by himself. Andre Malraux artist discovery order Surely that little pseudo-gothic church on Broadway, hidden amongst the skyscrapers, is symbolic of the age! On the whole face of the globe the civilization that has conquered it has failed to build a temple or a tomb. Andre Malraux church age civilization Just as a musician loves music and not nightingales, and a poet loves poetry and not sunsets, a painter is not primarily a person who responds to figures and landscapes. He is primarily one who loves pictures. Andre Malraux love-picture sunset musician No one can endure his own solitude. Andre Malraux endure solitude Here, reality is not subordinated to painting, indeed painting seems the handmaid of reality, though we feel it tending towards a procedure which, while not at the mercy of appearances, is not yet in conflict with them. Andre Malraux painting criticism reality History may clarify our understanding of the supreme work of art, but can never account for it completely; for the Time of art is not the same as the Time of history. Andre Malraux understanding may art Could we bring ourselves to feel what the first spectators of an Egyptian statue, or a Romanesque crucifixion, felt, we would make haste to remove them from the Louvre. True, we are trying more and more to gauge the feelings of those first spectators, but without forgetting our own, and we can be contented all the more easily with the mere knowledge of the former, without experiencing them, because all we wish to do is put this knowledge to the work of art. Andre Malraux feelings trying art Athirst for personal salvation, the West forgets that many religions had but a vague notion of the life beyond the grave; true, all great religions stake a claim on eternity, but not necessarily on man's eternal life. Andre Malraux west forget men Our art culture makes no attempt to search the past for precedents, but transforms the entire past into a sequence of provisional responses to a problem that remains intact. Andre Malraux culture past art Though man's feeling for the other-worldly often has recourse to solitude, solitude does not foster its development; rather, it is nourished by communion, to which the church is more propitious than the cemetery. Andre Malraux solitude feelings men The ordinary man puts up a struggle against all that is not himself, whereas it is against himself, in a limited but all-essential field, that the artist has to battle. Andre Malraux artist struggle men An individualism which has got beyond the stage of hedonism tends to yield to the lure of the grandiose. It was not man, the individual, nor even the Supreme Being, that Robespierre set up against Christ; it was that Leviathan, the Nation. Andre Malraux leviathan yield men Some pictures are in the gallery because they belong to humanity and others because they belong to the United States. Andre Malraux gallery united-states humanity If modern painters feel qualms about applying the term "masterpiece" to describe a work of capital importance, this is because it has come to convey a notion of perfection: a notion that leads to much confusion when applied to artists other than those who made perfection their ideal. Andre Malraux qualms-about confusion artist A large share of our art heritage is now derived from peoples whose idea of art was quite other than ours, and even from peoples to whom the very idea of art meant nothing. Andre Malraux heritage ideas art
