What a test that is: more than devotion, admiration, passion. If you long and long for someoneβs company you love them.
Iris MurdochRead
All art deals with the absurd and aims at the simple. Good art speaks truth, indeed is truth, perhaps the only truth.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Art addresses life's absurdities while seeking simplicity and truth.
This quote by Iris Murdoch emphasizes the intrinsic connection between art and the human experience, suggesting that art reflects the absurdities of life while striving to convey fundamental truths. It posits that good art not only represents these truths but embodies them, serving as a vital medium for understanding reality in a chaotic world.
Themes
ArtAbsurdityTruthSimplicityExpression
In practice
Example use cases
A discussion in an art class about what defines good art.
More from Iris Murdoch
All quotes βThe bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to man. Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish. Only the bicycle remains pure in heart.
Iris MurdochRead
Man's creative struggle, his search for wisdom and truth, is a love story.
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A bad review is even less important than whether it is raining in Patagonia.
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Perhaps when distant people on other planets pick up some wavelength of ours all they hear is a continuous scream.
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For most of us, for almost all of us, truth can be attained, if at all, only in silence. It is in silence that the human spirit touches the divine.
Iris MurdochRead
Similar quotes
People like Dick Gregory, Paul Robeson, Harry Belafonte and Nina Simone show me what the definition of an artist is - it isn't just to make art but to speak truth to what's happening, speak beauty into the world, speak love into the world and also... get involved.
John LegendRead
I started under my master, Etienne Decroux, who taught me a new grammar for mime he called statuary mime. This grammar brings style creations. Without it, no art survives.
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It is my feeling that a story is not finished until it is read, and that the reader finishes it through his or her life experience, prejudices, worldview and thoughts.
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Anyway I feel myself a bit on the edge on the art world, but I don't mind, I'm just pursuing my work in a very excited way. And there isn't really a mainstream anymore, is there?
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Photography is the easiest thing in the world if one is willing to accept pictures that are flaccid, limp, bland, banal, indiscriminately informative, and pointless. But if one insists in a photograph that is both complex and vigorous it is almost impossible
John SzarkowskiRead
To express a marriage of two complementary colors, their mingling and their opposition, the mysterious vibrations of kindred tones.
Vincent Van GoghRead