A Quote by Edgar Degas
No art is less spontaneous than mine. What I do is the result of reflection and the study of the great masters.
Related Quotes
There is one art of which people should be masters - the art of reflection.
The spontaneous is the most beautiful thing that can appear in a picture, but nothing in art appears less spontaneously than that.
A white lace curtain on the window was for me as important as a great work of art. This gossamer quality, the reflection, the form, the movement. I learned more about art from that than I did in school.
The more you become a part of society, the less and less you are an individual, the less and less you are spontaneous - because the very membership in the society will not allow you to be spontaneous. You will have to follow the rules of the game. If you enter a society, you accept to follow those rules that the society is playing, or has decided to play.
Your kids might feel more apt to try some art of their own after viewing contemporary works that are far less intimidating than those of the Old Masters.
I have studied the art of the masters and the art of the moderns, avoiding any preconceived system and without prejudice. I have no more wanted to imitate the former than to copy the latter; nor have I thought of achieving the idle aim of art for art's sake.
Study without reflection is a waste of time; reflection without study is dangerous.
One has only to contemplate the magnitude of this task to concede that the spontaneous generation of a living organism is impossible. Yet here we are-as a result, I believe, of spontaneous generation.
What if at school you had to take an 'art class' in which you were only taught how to paint a fence? What if you were never shown the paintings of Leonardo da Vinci and Picasso? Would that make you appreciate art? Would you want to learn more about it? I doubt it..........but this is how math is taught and so in the eyes of most of us it becomes the equivalent of watching paint dry. While the paintings of the great masters are readily available, the math of the great masters is locked away.
Music is at once the product of feeling and knowledge, for it requires from its disciples, composers and performers alike, not only talent and enthusiasm, but also that knowledge and perception which are the result of protracted study and reflection.
Adults often assume that most learning is the result of teaching and that exploratory, spontaneous learning is unusual. But actually, spontaneous learning is more fundamental.
I deny that art can be taught, or, in other words, maintain that art is completely individual, and that the talent of each artist is but the result of his own inspiration and his own study of past tradition.
Government today is growing too strong to be safe. There are no longer any citizens in the world there are only subjects. They work day in and day out for their masters they are bound to die for their masters at call. Out of this working and dying they tend to get less and less.
Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our own spontaneous expression with good humored inflexibility whether the whole cry of voices is on the other side.
All spiritual growth comes from reading and reflection. By reading we learn what we did not know; by reflection we retain what we have learned. The conscientious reader will be more concerned to carry out what he has read than merely to acquire knowledge of it. In reading we aim at knowing, but we must put into practice what we have learned in our course of study.
No art or learning is to be pursued halfheartedly...and any art worth learning will certainly reward more or less generously the effort made to study it.
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