Kenneth Clark Quotes - Page 2

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• No nude, however abstract, should fail to arouse in the spectator some vestige of erotic feeling, even if it be only the faintest shadow - and if it does not do so it is bad art and false morals.

  Kenneth Clark

  Art, Erotic, Feelings

  Kenneth Clark (1956). “The nude: a study in ideal form”, M J F Books

  10 Copy quote

• One musn't overrate the culture of what used to be called "top people" before the wars. They had charming manners, but they were as ignorant as swans.

  Kenneth Clark

  War, Swans, People

  Kenneth Clark (1969). “Civilisation”

  9 Copy quote

• The eye instinctively looks for analogies and amplifies them, so that a face imagined in the pattern of a wallpaper may become more vivid than a photograph.

  Kenneth Clark

  Eye, Looks, Analogies

  Kenneth Clark (1956). “The nude: a study in ideal form”, M J F Books

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• The Cathedrals were built to the glory of God; New York was built to the glory of Mammon.

  Kenneth Clark

  New York, Glory, Cathedrals

  Kenneth Clark (2015). “Civilisation”, p.202, Hachette UK

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• The various parts of the body cannot be perceived as simple units and have no clear relationship to one another. In almost every detail the body is not the shape that art has led us to believe it should be.

  Kenneth Clark

  Art, Believe, Simple

  Kenneth Clark (1956). “The nude: a study in ideal form”, M J F Books

  5 Copy quote

• It is often said that Leonardo drew so well because he knew about things; it is truer to say that he knew about things because he drew so well.

  Kenneth Clark

  Drawing, Said, Leonardo

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• Almost all great painters in old age arrive at the same kind of broad, simplified style, as if they wanted to summarise the whole of their experience in a few strokes and blobs of colour.

  Kenneth Clark

  Style, Age, Kind

  "The Romantic Rebellion". Book by Kenneth Clark, Ch. 13: Degas, 1973.

  11 Copy quote

• Gargoyles were the complement to saints; Leonardo's caricatures were complementary to his untiring search for ideal beauty. And gargoyles were the expression of all the passions, the animal forces, the Caliban gruntings and groanings which are left in human nature when the divine has been poured away. Leonardo was less concerned than his Gothic predecessors with the ethereal parts of our nature, and so his caricatures, in their expression of passionate energy, merge imperceptibly into the heroic.

  Kenneth Clark

  Passion, Animal, Expression

  16 Copy quote

• The nude does not simply represent the body, but relates it, by analogy, to all structures that have become part of our imaginative experience.

  Kenneth Clark

  Beauty, Body, Doe

  Kenneth Clark (2015). “The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form: A Study in Ideal Form”, p.370, Princeton University Press

  8 Copy quote

• Changes in the structure of society are not brought about solely by massive engines of doctrine. The first flash of insight which persuades human beings to change their basic assumptions is usually contained in a few phrases.

  Kenneth Clark

  Doctrine, Phrases, Firsts

  John Ruskin, Kenneth Clark (1991). “Selected writings”, Penguin Group USA

  5 Copy quote

• Ruthless, greedy, tyrannical, disreputable... they have had one principle worth all the rest, the principle of delight!

  Kenneth Clark

  Principles, Delight, Greedy

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• Only the bad artists of the nineteenth century were frightened by the invention of photography; the good ones all welcomed it and used it.

  Kenneth Clark

  Photography, Artist, Invention

  Kenneth Clark (1973). “The romantic rebellion: romantic versus classic art”

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• A visual experience is vitalizing. Whereas to write great poetry, to draw continuously on one's inner life, is not merely exhausting, it is to keep alight a consuming fire.

  Kenneth Clark

  Writing, Fire, Burning

  Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Martin Dieterle, Kenneth Clark, Salander-O'Reilly Galleries (1996). “Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796-1875): late paintings”

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• People sometimes tell me that they prefer barbarism to civilisation. I doubt if they have given it a long enough trial. Like the people of Alexandria, they are bored by civilisation; but all the evidence suggests that the boredom of barbarism is infinitely greater.

  Kenneth Clark

  Boredom, Long, People

  Kenneth Clark (2015). “Civilisation”, p.16, Hachette UK

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• Our universe cannot even be stated symbolically. And this touches us all more directly than one might suppose. For example, artists, who have been very little influenced by social systems, have always responded instinctively to latent assumptions about the shape of the universe. The incomprehensibility of our new cosmos seems to me, ultimately, to be the reason for the chaos of modern art.

  Kenneth Clark

  Art, Shapes, Littles

  "Civilisation" by Kenneth Clark, (Ch. 13), 1969.

  5 Copy quote

• Devotion to the facts will always give the pleasures of recognition; adherence to the rules of design, the pleasures of order and certainty.

  Kenneth Clark

  Order, Giving, Design

  Kenneth Clark (1950). “Landscape Painting”

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• I wonder if a single thought that has helped forward the human spirit has ever been conceived or written down in an enormous room: except, perhaps, in the reading room of the British Museum.

  Kenneth Clark

  Reading, Museums, Rooms

  Kenneth Clark (2015). “Civilisation”, p.120, Hachette UK

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• Great works of art can be produced in barbarous societies - in fact the very narrowness of primitive society gives their ornamental art a peculiar concentration and vitality. At some time in the ninth century one could have looked down the Seine and seen the prow of a Viking ship coming up the river. Looked at today in the British Museum, it is a powerful work of art; but to the mother of a family trying to settle down in her little hut, it would have seemed less agreeable - as menacing to her civilisation as the periscope of a nuclear submarine.

  Kenneth Clark

  Mother, Art, Powerful

  "Civilisation" by Kenneth Clark, (Ch. 1), 1969.

  5 Copy quote

• Heroes do not easily tolerate the company of other heroes.

  Kenneth Clark

  Hero, Tolerate, Company

  Kenneth Clark (2015). “Civilisation”, p.85, Hachette UK

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• The difference between what we see and a sheet of white paper with a few thin lines on it is very great. Yet this abstraction is one which we seem to have adopted almost instinctively at an early stage in our development, not only in Neolithic graffiti but in early Egyptian drawings. And in spite of its abstract character, the outline is responsive to the least tremor of sensibility.

  Kenneth Clark

  Character, White, Drawing

  Kenneth Clark (1973). “The romantic rebellion: romantic versus classic art”

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• Ruskin's much-derided moral theory of art was part of an attempt to show that this human activity, which we value so highly, engaged the whole of human personality. His insistence on the sanctity of nature was part of an attempt to develop Goethe's intuition that form cannot be put together in the mind by an additive process, but is to be deduced from the laws of growth in living organisms, and their resistance to the elements.

  Kenneth Clark

  Art, Law, Personality

  John Ruskin, Kenneth Clark (1991). “Selected writings”, Penguin Group USA

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• The illustrator is essentially a reporter: his subjects come from the outside, lit by a flash. A subject comes to the classical artist from inside, and when he discovers confirmation of it in the outside world he feels that it has been there all the time.

  Kenneth Clark

  Artist, World, Confirmation

  Kenneth Clark (1973). “The romantic rebellion: romantic versus classic art”

  5 Copy quote

• You have no idea what portrait painters suffer from the vanity of their sitters.

  Kenneth Clark

  Vanity, Ideas, Suffering

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• All great civilisations, in their early stages, are based on success in war.

  Kenneth Clark

  Peace, War, Stage

  1969 Civilisation, ch.1.

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• Lives devoted to Beauty seldom end well.

  Kenneth Clark

  Ends, Wells, Devoted

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