25 July 2021

Out of Context: On Art (Definitions)

"Now nature is not at variance with art, nor art with nature, they being both servants of his providence: art is the perfection of nature; [...]" (Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, 1643)

"On the same terms, therefore, as art is attained to, is all knowledge and science acquired; for as art is a habit with reference to things to be done, so is science a habit in respect to things to be known; [...]" (William Harvey, Anatomical Exercises on the Generation of Animals, 1651)

"Art is only Nature operating with the aid of the instruments she has made."  (Paul-Henri T d'Holbach [Baron d'Holbach], "The System of Nature, Or, Laws of the Moral and Physical World", 1770)

"Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known." (Oscar Wilde, "The Soul of Man Under Socialism", 1891)

"Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one consciously, by means of certain external symbols, conveys to others the feelings one has experienced, whereby people so infected by these feelings, also experience them." (Leo Tolstoy, "What is Art?", 1897)

"And as the ideal in the whole of Nature moves in an infinite process toward an Absolute Perfection, we may say that art is in strict truth the apotheosis of Nature. Art is thus at once the exaltation of the natural toward its destined supernatural perfection, and the investiture of the Absolute Beauty with the reality of natural existence." (George H Howison, "The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Idealism", 1901)

"We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth." (Pablo Picasso, "The Arts", 1923)

"Science, like art, is not a copy of nature but a re-creation of her." (Jacob Bronowski, "The Creative Mind", 1965)

"The role of science, like that of art, is to blend proximate imagery with more distant meaning, the parts we already understand with those given as new into larger patterns that are coherent enough to be acceptable as truth." (Edward O Wilson, "In Search of Nature", 1996)

"Art is a symbol, a thing conjuring up reality in our mental image." (Antoni Tàpies, "Tàpies, Werke auf Papier 1943 – 2003", 2004)

"Art is constructivist in nature, aimed at the deliberate refinement and elaboration of mental models and worldviews." (Mark Turner, "The Artful Mind : cognitive science and the riddle of human creativity", 2006)

"Models need to be judged by what they eliminate as much as by what they include - like stone carving, the art is in removing what you do not need." (John H Miller & Scott E Page, "Complex Adaptive Systems: An Introduction to Computational Models of Social Life", 2007) 

"And art is always a struggle. There is no systematic way to create beautiful and meaningful paintings or sculptures, and there is also no method for producing beautiful and meaningful mathematical arguments." (Paul Lockhart, "Measurement", 2012)

"Art is a lie that makes us realise the truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand." (Pablo Picasso)

"Art is a line around your thoughts." (Gustav Klimt)

"Art is never finished, only abandoned." (Leonardo da Vinci)

"Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced." (Leo Tolstoy)

"Art is not simply an identity of illusion and reality, but a counter-illusion: its world is a material world, but the material of an intelligible spiritual world." (Northrop Frye)

"Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.” (Edgar Degas)

"Art is unquestionably one of the purest and highest elements in human happiness. (John Lubbock)

"At base, science is no more than an investigation of a miracle we can never explain, and art is an interpretation of that miracle." (Ray Bradbury)

"I think that science may be styled the knowledge of universals, or abstract wisdom; and art is science reduced to practice - or science is reason, and art the mechanism of it - and may be called practical science. Science, in fine, is the theorem, and art the problem." (Laurence Sterne)

"Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer, Art is all the rest." (Donald E Knuth)

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