A Quote by Sol LeWitt

One usually understands the art of the past by applying the conventions of the present thus misunderstanding the art of the past.

Sol LeWitt

Quote Topics

Applying Art Conventions Misunderstanding Past Present Thus Understands

Quote Author

Sol LeWitt
American - Artist
September 9, 1928 - April 8, 2007

art is the most general condition of the Past in the present. ... Perhaps no work of art is art. It can only become art, when it is part of the past. In this normative sense, a 'contemporary' work of art would be a contradiction - except so far as we can, in the present, assimilate the present to the past.

Susan Sontag

To me there is no past or future in my art. If a work of art cannot live always in the present it must not be considered at all. The art of the Greeks, of the Egyptians, of the great painters who lived in other times, is not an art of the past; perhaps it is more alive today than it ever was.

Pablo Picasso

Art is a way you discover the past, and so it brings the past into the present and the future. That's why we have anthropologists who dig up the art from the past. You can see the refinement in the society by the art. And people will see our lack of refinement when they dig up our art.

Pat Steir

But the past does not exist independently from the present. Indeed, the past is only past because there is a present, just as I can point to something over there only because I am here. But nothing is inherently over there or here. In that sense, the past has no content. The past - or more accurately, pastness - is a position. Thus, in no way can we identify the past as past

Michel-Rolph Trouillot

Sometimes we forget that if we do not encourage new work now, we will lose all touch with the work of the past we claim to love. If art is not living in a continuous present, it is living in a museum, only those working now can complete the circuit between the past, present and future energies we call art.

Jeanette Winterson

The past is not the present: pretending it is corrupts art and thus both rots the mind and shrivels the imagination and conscience.

Paul Fussell

Great art does not break with the past. It breaks with the present by emulating the best of the past.

Walter Darby Bannard

In art, there is neither past nor future. The art that is not in the present will never be.

Pablo Picasso

To me there is no past or future in art. If a work of art does not live in the present, it must not be considered at all.

Pablo Picasso

The future is foretold from the past and the future is only possible because of the past. Without past and future, the present is partial. All time is eternally present and so all time is ours. There is no sense in forgetting and every sense in dreaming. Thus the present is made rich.

Jeanette Winterson

We learn in the past, but we are not the result of that. We suffered in the past, loved in the past, cried and laughed in the past, but that's of no use to the present. The present has its challenges, its good and bad side. We can neither blame nor be grateful to the past for what is happening now. Each new experience of love has nothing whatsoever to do with past experiences. It's always new.

Paulo Coelho

the future is simply nothing at all. Nothing has happened to the present by becoming past except that fresh slices of existence have been added to the total history of the world. The past is thus as real as the present.

C. D. Broad

Jonathan Meese is not interested in the history of reality. Everything radical and precisely graphic is sustainable. Human ideologies like religions and politics are based on the past and therefore irrelevant to art. Art always transforms radicalism of the past into the future. Art is always the total time machine. Jonathan Meese is interested in the history of the future. Art is never nostalgic.

Jonathan Meese

The art and architecture of the past that we know is that which remains. The best is that which remains where it was painted, placed or built. Most of the art of the past that could be moved was taken by conquerors. Almost all recent art is conquered as soon as it's made, since it's first shown for sale and once sold is exhibited as foreign in the alien museums. The public has no idea of art other than that it is something portable that can be bought. There is no constructive effort; there is no cooperative effort. This situation is primitive in relation to a few earlier and better times.

Donald Judd

The Past -- the dark unfathomed retrospect! The teeming gulf --the sleepers and the shadows! The past! the infinite greatness of the past! For what is the present after all but a growth out of the past?