Archibald Alison Quotes

Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern.

The connoisseur of art must be able to appreciate what is simply beautiful, but the common run of people is satisfied with ornament.

Our ability to perceive quality in nature begins, as in art, with the pretty.

Dear God! how beauty varies in nature and art.

Anything that is beautiful is beautiful just as it is. Praise forms no part of its beauty, since praise makes things neither better nor worse. This applies even more to what it commonly called beautiful: natural objects, for example, or works of art. True beauty has no need of anything beyond itself.

Tis the perception of the beautiful, A fine extension of the faculties, Platonic, universal, wonderful, Drawn from the stars, and filtered through the skies, Without which life would be extremely dull

Perhaps things are most beautiful when they are not quite real; when you look upon a scene as an outsider, and come to possess it in its entirety and forever; when you live in the present with the lucidity and feeling of memory; when, for want of connection, the world deepens and becomes art.

What is commonly called ugliness in nature can in art become full of beauty.

What beauty is, I know not, though it adheres to many things.

What delights us in visible beauty is the invisible.

What is important, then, is not that the critic should possess a correct abstract definition of beauty for the intellect, but a certain kind of temperament, the power of being deeply moved by the presence of beautiful objects.

Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.

It's clear on the one hand that an education enriches and informs a response to beauty, even makes it possible in esoteric cases. On the other hand, there's no question that someone with no musical education whatsoever might wander into a concert hall and be overwhelmed by the 'Beethoven Pastoral Symphony'.

Art is not for the cultivated taste. It is to cultivate taste.

I find beauty in the grotesque, like most artists.

I can weep pretty easily. I can get tears in my eyes from a beautiful work of art.

To the artist there is never anything ugly in nature.

Fashion, for me, is anything that's aesthetic and beautiful. Art, food, film. It's something that I appreciate and really like.

Mother liked beauty wherever she found it, and she found it in many different places, both in nature and in contemporary art. And that's where they pretty much parted company. Father... anything that was abstract would to him automatically be not very good.

I am of the opinion that the appreciation and the desire for what is good takes more study and insight than does the understanding and test for the best music and art.

I always loved aesthetics. Not particularly fashion, but an idea of beauty.

You know you are an artist if you appreciate beauty.

The beauty of art is that it allows you to slow down, and for a moment, things that once seemed unfamiliar become precious to you.

When I see a beautiful piece of art, it inspires me to be creative.

Beauty has became a pejorative word in art. It was not something one should aspire to, because it was pedestrian. Beautiful things became cheap and easy. If it's cheap and easy, then upper classes aren't going to aspire to it. So, they have to find something more esoteric. I wanted the paintings to be realistic enough that you would have the ability to forget that I'm showing them to you.