Alfred H. Barr, Jr. famous quotes

The non-geometric biomorphic forms of Arp and Miro and Moore are definitely in the ascendant. The formal tradition of Gauguin, Fauvism and Expressionism will probably dominate for some time to come the tradition of Cezanne and Cubism.
-- Alfred H. Barr, Jr.

#Cezanne #Tradition #Form

As a movement Cubism had consistently stopped short of complete abstraction. Heretics such as Delaunay had painted pure abstractions but in so doing had deserted Cubism.
-- Alfred H. Barr, Jr.

#Movement #Cubism #Heretic

While majority opinion may not take kindly to forms of modern art, that same majority has also been hostile to most original and radical innovations, such as automobiles or airplanes or transatlantic cables or Protestantism or the theory that the earth is round and not flat.
-- Alfred H. Barr, Jr.

#Art #Airplane #Innovation

The historical museum has to be very conservative and careful in its choices. The modern museum, on the other hand, has to be audacious, to take chances. It has to consider the probability that it would be wrong in a good many cases and take the consequences later.
-- Alfred H. Barr, Jr.

#Museums #Hands #Choices

The primary purpose of the Museum is to help people enjoy, understand, and use the visual arts of our time.
-- Alfred H. Barr, Jr.

#Art #Museums #People

Sometimes in the history of art it is possible to describe a period or a generation of artists as having been obsessed by a particular problem.
-- Alfred H. Barr, Jr.

#Art #Generations #Problem

Except for the woman, nothing interests the eye of the American man more than the automobile, or seems so important to him as an object of esthetic appreciation.
-- Alfred H. Barr, Jr.

#Appreciation #Eye #Men

If Picasso drips, I drip... For a long while I was with Cezanne, and now I am with Picasso.

There is no such thing as starting where Cezanne left off. You have to start where he started... at the beginning.

The things I felt... about certain painters of the past that... inspired me, like Cezanne and Manet... that complete losing of oneself in the work to such an extent that the work itself... felt as if a living organism was posited there on the canvas, on this surface... That's truly... the act of creation.

You've got to know the rules to break them. That's what I'm here for, to demolish the rules but to keep the tradition.

As soon as tradition has come to be recognized as tradition, it is dead.

Lists are a form of power.

I like the freedom of podcasting. With podcasting you can really mess around with the form and the format. You can do as much time as you like without having to pause for commercials.

You have to work with what you are given, even in Shakespeare. we have our form and it is important that we free ourselves through it.

In my introductory course, Anthropology 160, the Forms of Folklore, I try to show the students what the major and minor genres of folklore are, and how they can be analyzed.

The most elementary form of rebellion, paradoxically , expresses an aspiration for order .