A Quote by Ernst Gombrich

During the days of my youth, critics and art-lovers resorted freely to this term of abuse. Even some of the most renowned Old Masters were also pilloried as having manufactured insipid and sugary paintings that were offensive to good taste.
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.
And some days, he went on, were days of hearing every trump and trill of the universe. Some days were good for tasting and some for touching. And some days were good for all the senses at once. This day now, he nodded, smelled as if a great and nameless orchard had grown up overnight beyond the hills to fill the entire visible land with its warm freshness. The air felt like rain, but there were no clouds.
In the old days, ptomaine poisoning was a cover-all. If you missed a show and you were young, it meant you were having an abortion. If you were old, it meant you were having a face lift.
In the old days, there were three networks, and all of a sudden, Walter Cronkite is the most trusted man in America. Everybody believes what he says, not even thinking. In those days, we didn't even know it was being spun. We were very willing to just listen to it and go along with.
I'm getting more and more into Chinese art and Japanese, some of those scroll paintings are amazing. You follow the change of the seasons. It's really something. These guys were great masters and of course the use of space.
There are artists with palettes and easels selling the kind of modern art that Soviet art critics used to critique with bulldozers. Judging by the paintings I saw, the Soviets were right the first time.
Most people respond to my paintings quite generously, but there have been cases where I think people - a few critics in particular - were actually moved by the work but were disturbed by the feelings it evoked, so they attacked it. Some people find the realm of my work quite uncomfortable.
They asked me to do a show, and I was planning on showing my figure paintings. But my friends told me I shouldn't - the paintings were good but a little old-fashioned. They said, "Why don't you show the other stuff?" I had also been making rather strange objects, more in the Freudian tradition.
People like [Memoirs of a Woman Doctor], whether young people, young women, even critics - male critics - they were not shocked by it. Of course, some parts were cut.
I thought my parents were always having card parties - and they were - but they were actually also having meetings to organize people. My older sister would be part of youth organizing, and she'd have dance parties. People would be dancing and talking about how to improve their neighborhood.
Some old men, continually praise the time of their youth. In fact, you would almost think that there were no fools in their days, but unluckily they themselves are left as an example.
Some were beggars, some were kings, and some were masters of the arts. But in their shame they're all the same, these men with broken hearts.
This gave me occasion to observe, that when Men are employ'd they are best contented. For on the Days they work'd they were good-natur'd and chearful; and with the consciousness of having done a good Days work they spent the Evenings jollily; but on the idle Days they were mutinous and quarrelsome, finding fault with their Pork, the Bread, and in continual ill-humour. (Autobiography, 1771)
The line between humor and bad taste is your audience, in which some people will find everything offensive, and some people will find nothing offensive, but the truth is that most humor originates in what would be called bad taste.
For me to come in as the mayor already recognizing some of the problems that we were facing and also having put some of those reforms in place, I recognize what the advocates were talking about. I also recognize what the police department`s concerns were and what the community in general was concerned about.
It's strange because even in the vaudeville days, ventriloquists were never the main attraction. They were the guys brought out to stand in front of the curtain while sets were being changed. Ventriloquism wasn't even celebrated as an art until Edgar Bergen came along in the 1930s.
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. More info...
Got it!