Kenneth Clark Quotes - Page 3

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• To hurry through the rise and fall of a fine, full sentence is like defying the role of time in human life.

  Kenneth Clark

  Fall, Roles, Defying

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• Evidently one cannot look for long at the Last Supper without ceasing to study it as a composition, and beginning to speak of it as a drama. It is the most literary of all great pictures, one of the few of which the effect may largely be conveyed - can even be enhanced - by description.

  Kenneth Clark

  Drama, Long, May

  Kenneth Clark (1988). “Leonardo da Vinci”, Viking Pr

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• Antique art has come down to us in a fragmentary condition, and we have virtuously adapted our taste to this necessity. Almost all our favorite specimens of Greek sculpture, from the sixth century onward, were originally parts of compositions, and if we were faced with the complete group in which the Charioteer of Delphi was once a subsidiary figure, we might well experience a moment of revulsion. We have come to think of the fragment as more vivid, more concentrated, and more authentic.

  Kenneth Clark

  Art, Thinking, Greek

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

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• The history of art cannot be properly understood without some reference to the history of science. In both we are studying the symbols by which man affirms his mental scheme, and these symbols, be they pictorial or mathematical, a fable or formula, will reflect the same changes.

  Kenneth Clark

  Art, Men, Fables

  "How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci: Seven Steps to Genius Every Day". Book by Michael J. Gelb (p. 127), October 21, 2009.

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• Those who wish, in the interest of morality, to reduce Leonardo, that inexhaustible source of creative power, to a neutral or sexless agency, have a strange idea of doing service to his reputation.

  Kenneth Clark

  Ideas, Agency, Creative

  Kenneth Clark (1988). “Leonardo da Vinci”, Viking Pr

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• Energy is eternal delight; and from the earliest times human beings have tried to imprison it in some durable hieroglyphic. It is perhaps the first of all the subjects of art.

  Kenneth Clark

  Art, Energy, Delight

  Kenneth Clark (2015). “The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form: A Study in Ideal Form”, p.173, Princeton University Press

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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. Degas liked it not only because it provided an accurate record, but because the snapshot showed him a means of escape from the classical rules of design. Through it he learnt to make a composition without the use of formal symmetry.

  Kenneth Clark

  Photography, Mean, Artist

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

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• I just don't think the moon is going to be an adequate substitute for the fact that we haven't addressed ourselves to clearing up the slums.

  Kenneth Clark

  Moon, Thinking, Space

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• However much the various phases of the French Revolution may have modelled themselves on Roman history the early phase on Republican virtue, the later on Imperial grandeur the fact remains that classicism depended on a fixed and rational philosophy; whereas the spirit of the Revolution was one of change and of emotion.

  Kenneth Clark

  Philosophy, Phases, May

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

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• The great achievement of the Catholic Church lay in harmonizing, civilizing the deepest impulses of ordinary, ignorant people.

  Kenneth Clark

  People, Achievement, Catholic

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• Conventional nudes based on classical originals could bear no burden of thought or inner life without losing their formal completeness.

  Kenneth Clark

  Bears, Losing, Burden

  "The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form" by Kenneth Clark, (Ch. VIII), 1951.

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• It would be unfair to say that I prefer the back of a book to its contents, but it is true that the sight of a lot of books gives me the hope that I may some day read them, which sometimes develops into the belief that I have read them.

  Kenneth Clark

  Book, Sight, Giving

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• Leonardo is the Hamlet of art history whom each of us must recreate for himself.

  Kenneth Clark

  Art, Leonardo, Art History

  Kenneth Clark (1988). “Leonardo da Vinci”, Viking Pr

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• We can hardly imagine a state of mind in which all material objects were regarded as symbols of spirtual truths or episodes in sacred history. Yet, unless we make this effort of imagination, Medieval art is largely incomprehensible.

  Kenneth Clark

  Art, Imagination, Effort

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• Fine colour implies a unified relationship, in which each part is subordinate to the whole, and the transitions between them are felt to be as precious and beautiful as the colours themselves. In fact, the colours themselves must be continuously modified and broken as part of the transition.

  Kenneth Clark

  Beautiful, Broken, Transition

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

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• Just as a classical dancer repeats the same movements again and again, in order to achieve a greater perfection of line and balance, so Degas repeats the same motifs - it was one of the things that gave him so much sympathy with dancers.

  Kenneth Clark

  Order, Perfection, Dancer

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