A Quote by Helen Levitt

All I can say about the work I try to do, is that the aesthetic is in reality itself. — © Helen Levitt
All I can say about the work I try to do, is that the aesthetic is in reality itself.
The artist's task is not to alter the world as the eye sees it into a world of aesthetic reality, but to perceive the aesthetic reality within the actual reality. (On photographs by Helen Levitt)
I kind of talk about songwriting in the sense that it's really not my job to try to state hard truths. I'm not out to say this is what truth is, this is what's false, this is reality, this is not reality. What I prefer is to try to create a space where truth can move.
Without an allegiance to beauty, art degenerates into a caricature of itself. It is beauty that animates aesthetic experience, making it so seductive; but aesthetic experience itself degenerates into a kind of fetish or idol if it is held up as an end in itself, untested by the rest of life.
Beauty is the main positive form of the aesthetic assimilation of reality, in which aesthetic ideal finds it direct expression.
When I say Afro-American aesthetic, I'm not just talking about the United States, I'm talking about the Americas. People in the Latin countries read my books because they share the same international aesthetic that I'm into and have been into for a long time. And it's multicultural.
The Western approach to reality is mostly through theory, and theory begins by denying reality - to talk about reality, to go around reality, to catch anything that attracts our sense-intellect and abstract it away from reality itself. Thus philosophy begins by saying that the outside world is not a basic fact, that its existence can be doubted and that every proposition in which the reality of the outside world is affirmed is not an evident proposition but one that needs to be divided, dissected and analyzed. It is to stand consciously aside and try to square a circle.
I think everybody starts out by seeing a few works of art and wanting to do something like them. You want to understand what you see, what is there, and you try to make a picture out of it. Later you realize that you can't represent reality at all - that what you make represents nothing but itself, and therefore is itself reality.
As soon as we renounce fiction and illusion, we lose reality itself; the moment we subtract fictions from reality, reality itself loses its discursive-logical consistency.
Every great work of art should be considered like any work of nature. First of all from the point of view of its aesthetic reality and then not just from its development and the mastery of its creation but from the standpoint of what has moved and agitated its creator.
Reality shows are all the rage on TV at the moment, but that's not reality, it's just another aesthetic form of fiction.
Reality shows are all the rage on TV at the moment, but thats not reality, its just another aesthetic form of fiction.
I work with people. It's not about partisanship. I can't say this enough. It's about how do you set the tone to try to work together.
Then there is the further question of what is the relationship of thinking to reality. As careful attention shows, thought itself is in an actual process of movement. That is to say, one can feel a sense of flow in the stream of consciousness not dissimilar to the sense of flow in the movement of matter in general. May not thought itself thus be a part of reality as a whole? But then, what could it mean for one part of reality to 'know' another, and to what extent would this be possible?
One of the main reasons wealth makes people unhappy is that it gives them too much control over what they experience. They try to translate their own fantasies into reality instead of tasting what reality itself has to offer.
I don't have children, but my work life is as important to me as anything could be. I've dedicated a lot of time and energy and years to it. Some might say some of my childbearing years to it. In and of itself, my work is like a child to me. That is my reality.
The wine itself has aesthetic value; but what it is for a wine to have aesthetic value cannot be understood without making reference to the experience to tasting it
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