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About this quote

What does it mean?
Beauty often arises from disruption before becoming familiar and classical.
In plain terms
New beauty shocks before it becomes accepted as classic.
What can you take from it?
True beauty disrupts habits before it becomes tradition.

Where it applies

  • art criticism
  • fashion
  • innovation

Putting it to work

  • art direction
  • marketing
  • design

Questions to consider

  • When did a new style first shock you?
  • Is shock necessary for beauty?

Another view

Not all disruption leads to beauty or acceptance.

More from Jean Cocteau

  1. Poetry, being elegance itself, cannot hope to achieve visibility. In that case, you ask me, of what use is it? Of no use. Who will see it? No one. Which does n…

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  2. Man seeks to escape himself in myth, and does so by any means at his disposal... unnable to withdraw into himself, he disguises himself. Lies and inaccuracy gi…

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  3. The ultimate politeness in art consists of speaking only to those who are able to uncover and measure its relationships. Anything else is symbolic, and symboli…

    Permalink to quote #81

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