A Quote by Ambrose Bierce

REALISM, n. The art of depicting nature as it is seem by toads. The charm suffusing a landscape painted by a mole, or a story written by a measuring-worm. — © Ambrose Bierce
REALISM, n. The art of depicting nature as it is seem by toads. The charm suffusing a landscape painted by a mole, or a story written by a measuring-worm.
Art is beauty, and every exposition of art, whether it be music, painting, or the drama, should be subservient to that one great end. As long as nature is a means to the attainment of beauty, so-called realism is necessary and permissable [sic], but it must be realism enhanced by idealism and uplifted by the spirit of an inner life or purpose.
A story is told that Whistler once painted a tiny picture of a spray of roses. The artistry involved in the picture was magnificent. Never before, it seemed, had the art of man been able to execute quite so deftly a reproduction of the art of nature.
No words will ever describe the exquisite beauty and charm of this mountain park – Nature’s landscape garden at once tenderly beautiful and sublime. No wonder it draws nature-lovers from all over the world.
I personally found 'Avatar' - the blue people, to me, looked like painted art from the seventies. It didn't have the realism as, say, the robotic machines.
The world is moving into a phase when landscape design may well be recognized as the most comprehensive of the arts. Man creates around him an environment that is a projection into nature of his abstract ideas. It is only in the present century that the collective landscape has emerged as a social necessity. We are promoting a landscape art on a scale never conceived of in history.
I often told the fanatics of realism that there is no such thing as realism in art: it only exists in the mind of the observer. Art is a symbol, a thing conjuring up reality in our mental image. That is why I don't see any contradiction between abstract and figurative art either.
The British have a unique relationship with horses. They are etched into our landscape in chalk, they have been written about, painted, sung about, celebrated and gambled upon for centuries.
Neither realism nor romance furnishes a more striking and picturesque figure than that of Christopher Columbus. The mystery about his origin heightens the charm of his story.
All good art is in the nature of a letter written to amuse a sick friend. Too much art, particularly in our time, is only a letter written to oneself.
Many people seem to think that art is a luxury to be imported and tacked on to life. Art springs out of the very stuff that life is made of. Most of our young authors start to write a story and make a few observations from nature to add local color. The results are invariably false and hollow. Art must spring out of the fullness and richness of life.
It is not possible to find a landscape, which if painted precisely as it is, will not make an impressive picture. No one knows, till he has tried, what strange beauty and subtle composition is prepared to his hand by Nature.
To select, combine and concentrate that which is beautiful in nature and admirable in art is as much the business of the landscape painter in his line as in the other departments of art.
Ideologically, I have a lot of problems with that, especially when people toss around that form of story as realism. What's called "realism" is actually highly formulaic.
I had the landscape in my arms as I painted it. I had the landscape in my mind and shoulder and wrist.
Of Nature itself upon the soul; the sunrise, the haze of autumn, the winter starlight seem interlocutors; the prevailing sense is that of an exposition in poetry; a high discourse, the voice of the speaker seems to breathe as much from the landscape as from his own breast; it is Nature communing with the seer.
Learn from the birds what food the thickets yield; Learn from the beasts the physic of the field; The arts of building from the bee receive; Learn of the mole to plow, the worm to weave.
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