The greatest artists have never been men of taste. By never sophisticating their instincts they have never lost the awareness of the great simplicities, which they relish both from appetite and from the challenge these offer to skill in competition with popular art.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Greatest artists avoid sophistication to keep instinct alive and simple, competing with popular art.
- In plain terms
- Great artists keep their instincts simple and avoid over complicating them.
- What can you take from it?
- Keep instincts simple and avoid over sophisticated tastes.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- Is simplicity a mark of greatness?
- How do artists stay fresh?
Another view
Some art requires sophistication to achieve its goals.
More from Jacques Barzun
Many of us affect a tone of irony about gadgets, as if we lived always in realms above and dealt with trifles only during rare descents from sublime thoughts. …
Permalink to quote #7 The one thing that unifies men in a given age is not their individual philosophies but the dominant problem that these philosophies are designed to solve.
Permalink to quote #9 We are accustomed to the artist scoundrel or specialist in vice, and unaccustomed to the creator in whom passion and reason and moral integrity hold in balance…
Permalink to quote #10
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