Gerald Finzi Quotes

There must be some one quality without which a work of art cannot exist; possessing which, in the least degree, no work is altogether worthless.

Any work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line.

The most important thing is to make quality music that will last.

I like to do really good things. But 'good' - witness Charles Dickens - doesn't mean 'not popular.'

They[ Lana and Andy Wachowski]are true artists. They really are trying to say something and trying to create something original, and there aren't that many people who do that.

The eager or dutiful persons who subject themselves to these tidal waves of the classics and the moderns find everything wonderful in an absent-minded way. The wonder washes over them rather than into them, and one of its effects is to make anything shocking or odd suddenly interesting enough to gain a month's celebrity. And so another by-product of our come-one, come-all policy is the tendency to reward cleverness, not art, and to put one more hurdle in the path of the truly original artist.

By a curious confusion, many modern critics have passed from the proposition that a masterpiece may be unpopular to the other proposition that unless it is unpopular it cannot be a masterpiece.

I'm not saying I'm not bummed if a movie doesn't do well, but that isn't the final analysis of whether it's any good.

I don't think [price] reflects if the work is good or bad.A good artist shouldn't be nervous about that.

Art should never try to be popular.

I'd rather make a show 100 people need to see, than a show that 1000 people want to see.

You have to make something good. Just because all the hot actors show up and the money is there and the explosives are ready, it doesn't matter.

The quality of a play is the quality of its ideas.

Don't worry about the rejections. Everybody that's good has gone through it. Don't let it matter if your works are not "accepted" at once. The better or more personal you are the less likely they are of acceptance.

Originality is another criterion of aesthetic value. We may formulate an originality principle, according to which highly valuable works of art provide hitherto unavailable insights.... Notice that, although originality is a necessary condition of high aesthetic value, it is far from a sufficient condition. Many original works have little or no aesthetic value. An artwork may present a novel but uninteresting perspective, or one that is original but wrong.

We measure genius by quality, not by quantity.

I want people to be like, 'Your album's just as good as Kendrick [Lamar]'s or Esperanza Spalding or Beck. I work just as hard as them.

There is no genius free from some tincture of madness

Shall I tell you what I think are the two qualities of a work of art? First, it must be indescribable, and second, it must be inimitable.

If 'Pygmalion' is not good enough for your friends with its own verbal music, their talent must be altogether extraordinary.

Genius, whether locked up in a cell or roaming at large, is always solitary.

I think that a lot of artists have succeeded in making what I might call "curator's art." Everybody's being accepted, and I always want to say, "Really? That's what you've come for? To make art that looks a lot like somebody else's art?" If I am thinking of somebody else's art in front of your art, that's a problem.

The greatness of an artist or a writer does not depend on what he has in common with other artists and writers, but on what he has peculiar to himself.

The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of Artist

Even if virtually anything can be art, there are levels of quality.