Transformations: Critical and Speculative Essays on Art |
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accept admirable Anatomy of Melancholy appearance architecture artist aspects attitude Baroque Bartolommeo beauty become bronze Caravaggio Carlo Dolci century Cézanne Cézanne's Chinese art Claude Phillips clearly colour complete consciousness contour Cubist culture decorative doubt dramatic drawing effect emotions Epstein esthetic European evocations expression fact feeling figure Fra Bartolommeo gesture give Gogh Gogh's Guido Reni hand harmony High Renaissance idea illustration imagination impression Impressionist influence intensity interest Italian kind landscape least less light and shade linear rhythm masters Matisse method Michelangelo modern movement nature never nude organisation painters painting passion peculiar perhaps Philistine pictorial picture space Piero di Cosimo plane plastic plastic idea poetical possible psychological pure question realisation recognise relations Rembrandt rhythmic Sargent sculpture seems seen Seicento sense sensibility sentimental Seurat significance snobbism strange suggestion surface tion tradition values VINCENT VAN GOGH vision visual volumes whole Wölfflin
Popular passages
Page 8 - The consideration of ulterior ends, whether by the poet in the act of composing or by the reader in the act of experiencing, tends to lower poetic value. It does so because it tends to change the nature of poetry by taking it out of 15 its own atmosphere.
Page 8 - Poetry for poetry's sake" tell us about this experience? It says, as I understand it, these things. First, this experience is an end in itself, is worth having on its own account, has an intrinsic value. Next, its poetic value is this intrinsic worth alone. Poetry may have also an ulterior value as a means to culture or religion; because it conveys instruction, or softens the passions, or furthers a good cause; because it brings the poet fame or money or a quiet conscience. So much the better: let...
Page 2 - When we look at a picture, or read a poem, or listen to music, we are not doing something quite unlike what we were doing on our way to the Gallery or when we dressed in the morning. The fashion in which the experience is caused in us is different, and as a rule the experience is more complex and, if we are successful, more unified. But our activity is not of a fundamentally different kind.
Page 8 - For its nature is to be not a part, nor yet a copy, of the real world (as we commonly understand that phrase), but to be a world by itself, independent, v complete, autonomous; and to possess it fully you must enter that world, conform to its laws, and ignore for the time the beliefs, aims, and particular conditions which belong to you in the other world of reality.
Page 10 - But, in point of fact, the experience, though it was far more acute and poignant, was recognisably distinct and was judged at once as of far less value and significance than the experience of a great tragic drama. And it became evident to me that the essential of great tragedy was not the emotional intensity of the events portrayed, but the vivid sense of the inevitability of their unfolding...
Page 139 - But this digression has not stopped the inner voice. It persists: Is he a master of sculpture? And, alas ! I am bound to say to the best of my belief, No. If I examine my own sensations and emotions, I am bound to confess that they seem to be of quite a different nature when I look at good sculpture from what I feel in front of Mr. Epstein's bronzes. There is an undoubted pleasure in seeing any work accomplished with such confidence and assurance, such certainty and precision of touch; there is a...
Page 7 - Even in the novel, which as a rule has pretensions to being a work of art, the structure may be so loose, the esthetic effects may be produced by so vast an accumulation of items that the temptation for the artist to turn aside from his purpose and interpolate criticisms of life, of manners or morals, is very strong. Comparatively few novelists have ever conceived of the novel as a single perfectly organic esthetic whole. An instance of the confusion to which this loose nomenclature may give rise,...
Page 63 - Literature: large print, respectfully descriptive of getting up at eight, shaving close at a quarter past, breakfasting at nine, going to the City at ten, coming home at half-past five, and dining at seven. Painting and Sculpture: models and portraits representing Professors of getting up at eight, shaving close at a quarter...
Page 14 - Shakespeare will at times throw in in a couple of lines of description. But it is, I repeat, purely literary, and throughout this picture it is clear that Brueghel has subordinated plastic to psychological considerations. It is indeed to my mind entirely trivial and inexpressive when judged as a plastic and spatial creation. In short, it is almost pure illustration, for we may as well use that as a convenient term for the visual arts employed on psychological material.
Page 63 - Mutual Friend.") The artist knows, then, exactly where he stands with the Philistine. With culture, too, his position is ascertainable. He finds himself, indeed, inspired and consoled by the great tradition which culture guards and proclaims. Through culture he is made free of the great art of the past and is encouraged to emulate its glories. It is only when he proceeds to do so that culture turns on him a sterner aspect. In imitating the attitude of the great masters he cannot possibly repeat their...