Note on Art

Note on Art

A note from LeRoy Neiman providing a list of aphorisms on art.

An excerpt from a larger commentary from LeRoy Neiman, this note provides a list of western writers’ and artists’ aphorisms about art. The list includes quotes from Friedrich Nietzsche, Leo Tolstoy, among others, largely unattributed. The note was most likely made for personal reasons.

LeRoy Neiman

LeRoy Neiman Foundation

LeRoy Neiman Foundation

c. 1990-2011

LeRoy Neiman

Property of the LeRoy Neiman Foundation; please consult the organization's archivist for further details.

Notes, LN_Notes_1776_01, LN_Notes_1776_02, LN_Notes_1776_03, LN_Notes_1776_04, LN_Notes_1776_05, LN_Notes_1775_01, LN_Notes_1774_01, LN_Notes_1773, LN_Notes_1772_01; LN_Notes_1772_02

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English

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LN_Notes_1780_01; LN_Notes_1780_02

New York (N.Y.) New York

[III. ART & ARTISTS / 1. ABOUT ART / - Art is a passion, not a profession. Working from inspiration has its limitations. / - Reread Tolstoi's Essay "What is Art?" Tolstoi said that for a creation to be art it had to be understandable to and appreciated by the simplest peasant. (Peasant artist = must see to believe). / - Gide in 1918 saw in the following lines of Baudelaire the perfect definition of a WORK OF ART: / La tout n'est qu'ordre et beaute, Lux, calme et voupte. / [There, all is order and beauty / Luxury, calm and voluptuousness.] / - "L'Art pour l'Art": those who repeat this are like frogs croaking in their swamps, said Nietzsche. / - Art is man's aspirations for freedom of spirit with unity of man's disgust for the miseries of life and his hopes for the possibility of higher forms of life. / - Art is the most profound and ultimately the most sacred form of freedom of expression that we have. Within its depths and its mysteries is the source of new ways of looking at the world and at ourselves. / - Everything we do to aid the artist and his art should be done to enlarge, not to restrict the area of freedom which is the essence of artistic experience. / - Nothing we do to foster artistic creativity should tend to directly or indirectly influence artistic content. / - Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known. / - A work of art is a result of a unique temperament. Its beauty come from the fact that the artist is what he is. It has nothing to do with the fact that other people want what they want. / Art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic.] /

[- Art is the heart of the world. All the joys, sorrows, dreams and hopes, despair and wrath. / - Art penetrates into the the deepest recesses of the human spirits. / - Art is perhaps the mightiest and most complicated of all the miracles created by man. / - The masses suffer from the neglect of high art sources. LN. / - There should be no democracy in art. Art must be dictatorial. Art has everything to do with how talented the artist is. It is the aristocracy of the skilled and your rights are measured by how good you are. That is as it should be. / - Art can be useful as the following anecdote testifies: an Irish priest said that the early Irish settlers in New York City used art (paintings and reproductions) to cover holes or broken plaster or stained or peeling wallpaper in the walls of their home. The family dog was trained to sleep over [a] worn part of carpet. / - About 20 years ago there was a multiples explosion - art explosion in multiples - Xerox society (common written in 1990). / - Great works of art are the only things that live; things last either too long or not long enough.]

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