Aesthetic Critique Quotes

In the swirling rain that came at dusk the broad avenue glistened with that deep bluish tint which is so widely condemned when it is put into pictures.

The best one can say of modern creative art is that it is just a little less vulgar than reality.

The true function of art is to criticize, embellish and edit nature… the artist is a sort of impassioned proof-reader, blue penciling the bad spelling of God.

I hate Gucci,' said Francis. 'Do you?' said Henry, glancing up from his reverie. 'Really? I think it's rather grand.' 'Come on, Henry.' 'Well, it's so expensive, but it's so ugly too, isn't it? I think they make it ugly on purpose. And yet people buy it out of sheer perversity.' 'I don't see what you think is grand about that.' 'Anything is grand if it's done on a large enough scale,' said Henry.

The real genres: good and bad.

It is doubtful whether anyone who has travelled widely has found anywhere in the world regions more ugly than in the human face.

But the mark of American merit in painting, in sculpture, in poetry, in fiction, in eloquence, seems to be a certain grace withoutgrandeur, and itself not new but derivative; a vase of fair outline, but empty,--which whoso sees, may fill with what wit and character is in him, but which does not, like the charged cloud, overflow with terrible beauty, and emit lightnings on all beholders.

I could not possibly improve on the sentiment, but I don't think it ought to depend on the current austerities. Isn't Christmas a moral and aesthetic nightmare whether or not the days are prosperous?

The way his plump hand clutched at her hip seemed somehow improper; not morally, aesthetically.

America is supposed to be given over to ugliness. There are a good many ugly things there and the ugliest are the most pretentious.

There is nothing so loathsome as a sentimental surrealist.

There's something ugly about the flawless.

I am only satisfied insofar as I feel 'Broadway Boogie Woogie' is a definite progress, but even about this picture I am not quite satisfied. There is still too much of the old in it.