Rebecca Solnit Quotes

The whole history of modern poetry is a continuous commentary on the short text of philosophy: every art should become science, and every science should become art; poetry and philosophy should be united.

The Earth is Art, The Photographer is only a Witness.

I began to stack my sculptures into an environment. It was natural. It was a flowing of energy.

Being in the studio, it's more of a controlled environment, where you can be Salvador Dali and sit back and look at the painting. And you can go, 'Ah, you know what? Maybe a little bit more red over here...maybe add some blue over here.' You can sit back and look at the painting.

I never read, I just look at pictures.

If you try to make interesting films, you're going to be disappointed most of the time. I choose just not to look at it that way.

Look about you. Take hold of the things that are here. Let them talk to you. You learn to talk to them.

Theory has nothing to do with a work of art. Pictures which are interpretable, and which contain a meaning, are bad pictures. A picture presents itself as the Unmanageable, the Illogical, the Meaningless.

A work of art, so far as it is a work of art, cannot - whatever the artist's personal intention - advocate anything at all.

The critical sense is so far from frequent that it is absolutely rare, and the possession of the cluster of qualities that minister to it is one of the highest distinctions... In this light one sees the critic as the real helper of the artist, a torchbearing outrider, the interpreter, the brother... Just in proportion as he is sentient and restless, just in proportion as he reacts and reciprocates and penetrates, is the critic a valuable instrument.

It’s a very new, not to mention vulgar, idea that the spectator’s experience should be identical to, or even have anything to do with, the artist’s.

Look here brother, who you jivin' with that cosmik debris?

Artists themselves are neurotic and fearful people, and you can look at their work and figure out what they're scared of.

When I look at nature I feel as if I'll be able to paint it all, note it all down, and then you might as well forget it once you're working.

The feeling we experience while we look at a picture is not to be distinguished from the picture or from ourselves. the feeling, picture, and ourselves are united in one mystery.

One of two things is usually lacking in the so-called Philosophy of Art: either philosophy or art.

You're the woman in my life,” he said. “Another thing about me and my brothers? We look after the women in our lives. We don't know any other way.

Formal art is essentially rational.

As for the outside world, the artist is confronted by what he sees; but what he sees is primarily what he looks at.

I think we just have to look at all the ways in which we are violating the Earth, each other, economic violence, racial violence, environmental violence - where we are dominating and not cooperating .

It [voicing animation] is very freeing. Nobody in the cast is doing their voice. No one is talking like they normally talk and it's because, all of a sudden, you're freed from the physical limitations of how you look, which is amazing.

Unfortunately most criticism is by poseurs. They use their comments about someone else's work as a platform on which to strike poses. What they're really saying is: "Look at me! Look at me!"

It is a thoughtless and immodest presumption to learn anything about art from philosophy. Some do begin as if they hoped to learnsomething new here, since philosophy cannot and should not do anything further than develop the given art experiences and the existing art concepts into a science, improve the views of art, and promote them with the help of a thoroughly scholarly art history, and produce that logical mood about these subjects too which unites absolute liberalism with absolute rigor.

But there is a more virulent strain at the root of Western Lysenkoism today. Scientists, like Holdren and Michael Mann, can be leftist ideologues as well, posing to manipulate and mislead for the good of the cause. Bottom line: green is the new red. That is why Obama at root is so committed to it.

It is possible to deal with the entire environment as a work of art.