14 quotes
Conformity is a mood and an atmosphere, a failure of hope or belief or rebellion.
Charles Eliot Norton Lectures (1956)
Every artist would like to communicate, but often he fails to ask himself with whom he is trying to do it.
Conversation about "The Image (1962)
I think that it can be said with certainty that the form which does emerge cannot be greater than the content which went into it. For form is only the manifestation, the shape of content.
Charles Eliot Norton Lectures (1956)
Whoever would know his day or would capture its essential character must maintain such a degree of detachment.
Charles Eliot Norton Lectures (1956)
There are, roughly, about three conditions that seem to be basic in the artist's equipment: to be cultured, to be educated, and to be integrated.
Charles Eliot Norton Lectures (1956)
I am a painter; I am not a lecturer about art nor a scholar of art. It is my chosen role to paint pictures, not to talk about them.
Charles Eliot Norton Lectures (1956)
Today's conformity is, more than anything else, the retreat from controversiality. Tomorrow's art, if it is to be at all stirring, will no doubt be performed upon today's forbidden territory.
Charles Eliot Norton Lectures (1956)
it is always in the future that the course of art lies
Charles Eliot Norton Lectures (1956)
Nonconformity is the basic pre-condition of art, as it is the pre-condition of good thinking and therefore of growth and greatness in a people. The degree of nonconformity present-and tolerated-in a society might be looked upon as a symptom of its state of health.
Charles Eliot Norton Lectures (1956)
freedom itself is a disciplined thing. Craft is that discipline which frees the spirit; and style is the result.
Charles Eliot Norton Lectures (1956)
each of them [artists] stands out as an island of civilized feeling in an ocean of corruption. Civilization has freely vindicated them in everything but their nonconformity.
Charles Eliot Norton Lectures (1956)
I think that one of the great virtues of the university lies in its being a community in the fullest sense of the word, a place of residence, and at the same time one of personal affirmation and intellectual rapport.
Charles Eliot Norton Lectures (1956)
I believe that the image I create must contain within it everything man concerns himself with: his hopes, his fears, his tears. And I find that a great deal of the imagery in use today precludes most of these concerns.
Conversation about "The Image (1962)
What is it about us, the public, and what is it about conformity itself that causes us all to require it of our neighbors and of our artists and then, with consummate fickleness, to forget those who fall into line and eternally celebrate those who do not?
Charles Eliot Norton Lectures (1956)