Mary Quant Quotes

In the NUDE, all that is not beautiful is obscene.

I like to aestheticize every possible thing that can be aestheticized.

TV in all its ugliness can be a beautiful thing.

Beauty in art is often nothing but ugliness subdued.

I believe that what we call beautiful is generally a by-product.

I don't know how one actually would define obscenity. I'm sure the definition is different according to the age one is living in.

A painting has to be beautiful. Even in its grotesqueness.

Beauty really has such a wide field of interpretation. I guess that's why it's forever fascinating.

I believe that one of the most powerful things of all is aesthetics.

To tell you the truth, I am rather perplexed by the concept of 'art'. What one person considers to be 'art' is often not 'art' to another. 'Beautiful' and 'ugly' are old-fashioned concepts that are seldom applied these days; perhaps justifiably, who knows? Something repulsive, which gives you a moral hangover, and hurts your ears or eyes, may well be art. Only 'kitsch' is not art - we're all agreed about that. Indeed, but what is 'kitsch'? If only I knew!

For something to be beautiful it doesn’t have to be pretty.

Though ugliness be the opposite of beauty, it is not the opposite to proportion and fitness; for it is possible that a thing may be very ugly with any proportions, and with a perfect fitness for any use.

I don't think that there's that much difference between a photograph of a fist up someone's ass and a photograph of carnations in a bowl.

Beauty is assailed from two directions - by the cult of ugliness in the arts, and by the cult of utility in everyday life.

Beauty is variable, ugliness is constant.

Art is good, bad, boring, ugly, useful to us or not.

I have to say that I reject somewhat the distinction between something called art and something called public art. I think all art demands and desires to be seen.

I have no ethics when it comes to art. You just do what you can to make it as beautiful as you can.

Beauty is that little something that fills the whole world, and is contained neither in a single straight nose, a long eyelash, nor a blue mountain. Some see it in a leg of mutton, others in a compound fracture; and to expect others to accept one's own definition of it is as absurd as to expect all humanity to use the same toilet-brush.

I'm not that obsessed with making representations of ugliness. Everything I've seen is beautiful.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Art is nature speeded up and God slowed down.

The good is the beautiful.

People tend not to use this word beauty because it's not intellectual - but there has to be an overlap between beauty and intellect.

Dear God! how beauty varies in nature and art. In a woman the flesh must be like marble; in a statue the marble must be like flesh.