Leo Steinberg famous quotes

If a work of art or a new style disturbs you, then it is probably good work. If you hate it, it is probably great.
-- Leo Steinberg

#Art #Hate #Style

All art is infested by other art.
-- Leo Steinberg

#Art #Art Is

Whatever else art is good for, its chief effectiveness lies in propagating more art.
-- Leo Steinberg

#Art #Lying #Effectiveness

...it is in the nature of original contemporary art to present itself as a bad risk. And we the public...should be proud of being in this predicament, because nothing else would seem to us quite true to life; and art, after all, is supposed to be a mirror of life.
-- Leo Steinberg

#Art #Mirrors #True Life

One way to cope with the provocations of novel art is to rest firm and maintain solid standards... set by the critic's long-practiced taste and by his conviction that only those innovations will be significant which promote the established direction of advanced art.
-- Leo Steinberg

#Art #Long #Innovation

The critic interested in a novel manifestation holds his criteria and taste in reserve. Since they were formed upon yesterday's art, he does not assume that they are ready-made for today.
-- Leo Steinberg

#Art #Yesterday #Doe

One of the things I find most mysterious in Picasso's work is what I would call the 'unlocation of place.
-- Leo Steinberg

#Mysterious

Poems very seldom consist of poetry and nothing else; and pleasure can be derived also from their other ingredients. I am convinced that most readers, when they think they are admiring poetry, are deceived by inability to analyse their sensations, and that they are really admiring, not the poetry of the passage before them, but something else in it, which they like better than poetry.

Poetry leads us to the unstructured sources of our beings, to the unknown, and returns us to our rational, structured selves refreshed. Having once experienced the mystery, plenitude, contradiction, and composure of a work of art, we afterward have a built-in resistance to the slogans and propaganda of oversimplification that have often contributed to the destruction of human life. Poetry is a verbal means to a nonverbal source. It is a motion to no-motion, to the still point of contemplation and deep realization.

Art, however innocent, looks like deceiving.

How aware were photographers in the past of other visual arts? "No photographer of any distinction at all could approach his work without some awareness of what was going on in other visual media, and for that matter neither the painter nor the draughtsman could ignore photography."

Toby Zeigler: There's literally no one in the world I don't hate right now.

I know you love her. I’ve never seen you act this crazed in your life. I get that. But Nan hates her. If you love Blaire then protect her from the venom that is dripping from your sister’s fangs. Or I will.

I love the saliheen (pious people) even though I’m not one of them, and I hate the taliheen (evil people) even though I (may be) worse than them.

Fear less, hope more. Eat less, chew more. Talk less, say more. Hate less, love more...

Tossed into the Secaucus graveyard are about 25 centuries of classical culture and the standards of style, elegance and grandeur that it gave to the dreams and constructions of Western man. That turns the Jersey wasteland into a pretty classy dump.

In Paris style is everything. That is traditionally understood. Every street, every structure, every shopgirl has style. The style of Parisian architecture has been proved and refined by at least three centuries of academic dictates and highly developed taste. There are few violations of this taste, and there is exemplary architectural consistency. Paris has defined the aesthetics of a sophisticated urban culture.