Why should we expect modernist taste to be any smarter than premodernist or postmodernist? Robert Hughes More Quotes by Robert Hughes More Quotes From Robert Hughes The greater the artist, the greater the doubt; perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize. Robert Hughes motivational inspirational art The basic project of art is always to make the world whole and comprehensible, to restore it to us in all its glory and its occasional nastiness, not through argument but through feeling, and then to close the gap between you and everything that is not you, and in this way pass from feeling to meaning. It's not something that committees can do. It's not a task achieved by groups or by movements. It's done by individuals, each person mediating in some way between a sense of history and an experience of the world. Robert Hughes groups feelings art What we need more of is slow art: art that holds time as a vase holds water: art that grows out of modes of perception and making whose skill and doggedness make you think and feel; art that isn’t merely sensational, that doesn’t get its message across in ten seconds, that isn’t falsely iconic, that hooks onto something deep-running in our natures. In a word, art that is the very opposite of mass media. Robert Hughes running art thinking In the Somme valley, the back of language broke. It could no longer carry its former meanings. World War I changed the life of words and images in art, radically and forever. It brought our culture into the age of mass-produced, industrialized death. This, at first, was indescribable. Robert Hughes forever war art A determined soul will do more with a rusty monkey wrench than a loafer will accomplish with all the tools in a machine shop. Robert Hughes perseverance determination motivational We have entered a period of intolerance which combines, as it sometimes does in America, with a sugary taste for euphemism. This conjunction fosters events that go beyond the wildest dream of satire- if satire existed in America anymore; perhaps the reason for its weakness is that reality has superseded it. Robert Hughes dream reality america Essentially, perspective is a form of abstraction. It simplifies the relationship between eye, brain and object. It is an ideal view, imagined as being seen by a one-eyed, motionless person who is clearly detached from what he sees. It makes a God of the spectator, who becomes the person on whom the whole world converges, the Unmoved Onlooker. Robert Hughes perspective eye views On the whole, money does artists much more good than harm. The idea that one benefits from cold water, crusts and debt collectors is now almost extinct, like belief in the reformatory power of flogging. Robert Hughes artist water ideas Far from affording artists continuous inspiration, mass-media sources for art have become a dead end. They have combined with the abstractness of institutional art teaching to produce a fine-arts culture given over to information and not experience. This faithfully echoes the drain of concreteness from modern existence- the reign of mere unassimilated data instead of events that gain meaning by being absorbed into the fabric of imaginative life. Robert Hughes inspiration teaching art At 40 years of age, I thought I knew everything. I got a reality check with this class. Kenny (Winston) has become like a big brother to me. We've learned to agree to disagree. I hope and pray that this program continues and we all keep in touch. I'm a st Robert Hughes brother reality years Confidence is the prize given to the mediocre Robert Hughes prize mediocre given A Gustave Courbet portrait of a trout has more death in it than Rubens could get in a whole Crucifixion. Robert Hughes rubens trout portraits What has our culture lost in 1980 that the avant-garde had in 1890? Ebullience, idealism, confidence, the belief that there was plenty of territory to explore, and above all the sense that art, in the most disinterested and noble way, could find the necessary metaphors by which a radically changing culture could be explained to its inhabitants. Robert Hughes avant-garde culture art What strip mining is to nature the art market has become to culture. Robert Hughes mining culture art Works of art... do not force meanings on their audience; meaning emerges, adds up, unfolds from their imagined centres... takes one through the process of discovering meaning. Robert Hughes process add art When the war (WWI) finally ended it was necessary for both sides to maintain, indeed even to inflate, the myth of sacrifice so that the whole affair would not be seen for what it was: a meaningless waste of millions of lives. Logically, if the flower of youth had been cut down in Flanders, the survivors were not the flower: the dead were superior to the traumatized living. In this way, the virtual destruction of a generation further increased the distance between the old and the young, between the official and the unofficial. Robert Hughes distance flower war The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Robert Hughes inspirational-art artist doubt Popular in our time, unpopular in his. So runs the stereotype of rejected genius. Robert Hughes genius time running Most of the time they buy what other people buy. They move in great schools, like bluefish, all identical. There is safety in numbers. If one wants Schnabel, they all want Schnabel, if one buys a Keith Haring, two hundred Keith Harings will be sold. Robert Hughes numbers school moving Fishing largely consists of not catching fish; failure is as much a part of the sport as knee injuries are of football. Robert Hughes sea football sports
