Virginia Postrel Quotes

We believed that there's no such thing as good art or bad art. Art is art. If it's bad, it's something else. It was a much, much harder line in the '50s and '60s than it is now, because the idea of art education didn't exist - they didn't have a fine arts program when I was a kid.

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

The state of female artists is very good. But the very definition of art has been biased in that 'art' was what men did in a European tradition and 'crafts' were what women and natives did. But it's actually all the same.

Art to me is not precious enough that I feel territorial about what the word gets applied to. Conversations about what counts as art and what doesn't doesn't captivate my attention very much.

The philistine provides the best definition of art. Anything that makes him rage is first class.

Good art in general aspires to something, as a good painting aspires to something, almost spiritual or holy.

We say arts education is good for general education, but that's not the point. The arts are what great nations are remembered for. They are a mirror.

How do I define a work of art? It is not an asset in the stock-exchange sense, but a man's timid attempt to repeat the miracle that the simplest peasant girl is capable of at any time, that of magically producing life out of nothing.

In order to gain some insight into the forces that elevate certain products to the level of 'works of art' it is helpful - among other investigations - to look into the economic and political underpinnings of the institutions, individuals and groups who share in the control of power.

Art is an intersection of many human needs.

The public buys "art" - but the word is drained of its meaning.

Art cannot be separated from life. It is the expression of the greatest need of which life is capable, and we value art not because of the skilled product, but because of its revelation of a life's experience.

Fine art, poetry, that kind of thing, elevates a nation.

That complete statement which is literature.

And do you know, do you know that mankind can live without the Englishman, it can live without Germany, it can live only too well without the Russian man, it can live without science, without bread, and it only cannot live without beauty, for then there would be nothing at all to do in the world! The whole secret is here, the whole of history is here. Science itself would not stand for a minute without beauty

Were it not for music, we might in these days say, the Beautiful is dead.

Art for art's sake? I should think so, and more so than ever at the present time. It is the one orderly product which our middling race has produced. It is the cry of a thousand sentinels, the echo from a thousand labyrinths, it is the lighthouse which cannot be hidden. It is the best evidence we can have of our dignity.

Art is a delivery system for worldviews.

art, n. This word has no definition.

The power of works of art still continues to be secretly nourished by imitation... kitsch

Beauty, no doubt, does not make revolutions. But a day will come when revolutions will have need of beauty.

The arts have long been an integral and vibrant part of our nation's cultural heritage. In its many forms, art enables us to gain a deeper understanding of ourselves and of our society. Providing us with a unique way to learn about people of other cultures, it allows us to discover all that we have in common. At its best, art can beautify our cities, encourage economic development and social change, and profoundly affect the ways we live our lives.

Man cannot do without beauty, and this is what our era pretends to want to disregard.

Can one make works which are not works of 'art'?

Without music, life would be an error. The German imagines even God singing songs