Warning: Undefined array key "visitor_referer_type" in /var/www/vhosts/wordinf.com/core/app/libraries/Core.php on line 98
Northrop Frye - A public that tries to do without...

A public that tries to do without criticism, and asserts that it knows what it wants or likes, brutalizes the arts and loses its cultural memory. Art for art's sake is a retreat from criticism which ends in an impoverishment of civilized life itself. (Northrop Frye)

A public that tries to do without criticism, and asserts that it knows what it wants or likes, brutalizes the arts and loses its cultural memory. Art for art's sake is a retreat from criticism which ends in an impoverishment of civilized life itself.

Northrop Frye

Related topics

art criticism impoverishment life memory public retreat sake arts ends

Related quotes

The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion.

Walter Benjamin

Alas it is not till time, with reckless hand, has torn out half the leaves from the Book of Human Life to light the fires of passion with from day to day, that man begins to see that the leaves which remain are few in number.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

All those instances to be found in history, whether real or fabulous, of a doubtful public spirit, at which morality is perplexed, reason is staggered, and from which affrighted Nature recoils, are their chosen and almost sole examples for the instruction of their youth.

Edmund Burke

The return from your work must be the satisfaction which that work brings you and the worlds need of that work. With this, life is heaven, or as near heaven as you can get. Without this with work which you despise, which bores you, and which the world does not need this life is hell.

W. E. B. Du Bois

So at a time in which the media give the public everything it wants and desires, maybe art should adopt a much more aggressive attitude towards the public. I myself am very much inclined to take this position.

Thom Mayne