Quotes

A collection of posts tagged with "quotes".

Her Tenzing Norgay

I was considering a painting of the Dalai Lama so I was researching a bit. “Tenzin Gyatso”, I said, and Ryan says “Everyone has their Tenzing Norgay… where was that?”
It was in the movie “Intolerable Cruelty” and here’s the bit.
 

Wrigley: Who are you looking for?
Miles Massey: Tenzing Norgay.
Wrigley: Tenzing Norgay? That’s someone she slept with?
Miles Massey: I doubt it. Tenzing Norgay was the Sherpa that helped Edmund Hillary climb Mt. Everest.

Tenzin Norgay

Tenzin Norgay and Edmund Hillary

Wrigley: And Marilyn knows him?
Miles Massey: No, you idiot. Not the Tenzing Norgay. Her Tenzing Norgay.
Wrigley: I’m not sure that I actually follow that.
Miles Massey: Few great accomplishments are achieved single-handedly, Wrigley. Most have their Norgays. Marilyn Rexroth is even now climbing her Everest. I wanna find her Norgay.
Wrigley: But how do you determine which of the people on here are…
Miles Massey: How do you spot a Norgay?
Wrigley: Yeah.
Miles Massey: You start with the people with the funny names.

 

I’m still not sure whether to paint the Dalai Lama.

The Art of Criticizing Art

I wonder how many art critics are frustrated former artists who climbed the stairs of social success through chit-chat and favors to reach a semi-respectable position in their mini-universe allowing them to successfully suffer from the Dunning-Kruger effect?

You can always tell if an art critic is merely a failed artist by the way they dispense their criticism. Do they treat the artist and their art respectfully or is the purpose of their critique to slam and “shut down” the artist?

Norman Rockwell's "Art Critic" (1955)A quick glance across art history shows us that art is changeable and highly subjective. After all, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Yet art and what art is is constantly being defined and redefined, like anyone could ever reach the ultimate conclusion.

According to the dictionary art is the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.

Therein lies the problem.

Many artists, in order to be commercially successful, conform to “the latest fashion”. If you, as an artist, happen to not fit the taste of the masses, or simply not be willing to conform to it, then you have made a pretty big decision, the consequences of which ripple on and outward, and may make their way back to you to bite you in your derrière.

But there are worse things than being bit.

 

I will close this with the words of Oscar Wilde:

“A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament. Its beauty comes from the fact that the author is what he is. It has nothing to do with the fact that other people want what they want. Indeed, the moment that an artist takes notice of what other people want, and tries to supply the demand, he ceases to be an artist, and becomes a dull or an amusing craftsman, an honest or dishonest tradesman. He has no further claim to be considered as an artist. “

…and Henri Matisse: “Creativity takes courage.”

Verbal Haka

Here is another one of my favorite quotations and it cannot be said, listened to, written or read too many times.
It is a verbal Haka. (More about the Haka at some later point in time.)

 

Here’s to the crazy ones.

The misfits.
The rebels.
The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.

The ones who see things differently.
They’re not fond of rules.
And they have no respect for the status quo.
You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.

About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them.
Because they change things.
They invent.
They imagine.
They heal.
They explore.
They create.
They inspire.
They push the human race forward.

Maybe they have to be crazy.

How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art?
Or sit in silence and hear a song that’s never been written?
Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?

We make tools for these kinds of people.

While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world,
are the ones who do.