Charles Baudelaire Art Quotations

To say the word Romanticism is to say modern art - that is, intimacy, spirituality, color, aspiration towards the infinite, expressed by every means available to the arts.

Modernity is the transitory, the fugitive, the contingent, which make up one half of art, the other being the eternal and the immutable. This transitory fugitive element, which is constantly changing, must not be despised or neglected.

Modernity is the transient, the fleeting, the contingent; it is one half of art, the other being the eternal and the immovable.

In order for the artist to have a world to express he must first be situated in this world, oppressed or oppressing, resigned or rebellious, a man among men.

It is from the womb of art that criticism was born.

Modernity signifies the transitory, the fugitive, the contingent, the half of art of which the other half is the eternal and the immutable.

Evil is done without effort, naturally, it is the working of fate; good is always the product of an art

Who would dare assign to art the sterile function of imitating nature?

Evil is committed without effort, naturally, fatally; goodness is always the product of some art.

A frenzied passion for art is a canker that devours everything else.

What is art? Prostitution.

If photography is allowed to stand in for art in some of its functions it will soon supplant or corrupt it completely thanks to the natural support it will find in the stupidity of the multitude. It must return to its real task, which is to be the servant of the sciences and the arts, but the very humble servant, like printing and shorthand which have neither created nor supplanted literature.

The will to work must dominate, for art is long and time is brief.

It is the greatest art of the devil to convince us he does not exist.

Art is an infinitely precious good, a draught both refreshing and cheering which restores the stomach and the mind to the natural equilibrium of the ideal.

Since photography gives us every guarantee of exactitude that we could desire (they really believe that, the mad fools !), then photography and art are the same thing.

The artist is today and has been for many years, despite his absence of merit, simply a spoiled child. So many honors, so much money bestowed on men without souls and without education.

In art, there is one thing which does not receive sufficient attention. The element which is left to the human will is not nearly so large as people think.

This industry [photography], by invading the territories of art, has become art's most mortal enemy.

If photography is allowed to supplement art in some of its functions, it will soon have supplanted or corrupted it altogether, thanks to the stupidity of the multitude which is its natural ally.

In the domain of painting and statuary, the present-day credo of the worldly wise, especially in France, is this: ... I believe that art is, and can only be, the exact reproduction of nature... An avenging God has heard the prayers of this multitude; Daguerre was his messiah.

The more a man cultivates the arts the less he fornicates. A more and more apparent cleavage occurs between the spirit and the brute.

Blessed art Thou, Lord, who giveth suffering As a divine remedy for our impurities.

Torture, as the art of discovering the truth, is barbaric nonsense; it is the application of a material means to a spiritual end.

There can be no progress-real, moral prgress-except in the individual and by the individual himself.

...an industry which can furnish results identical to nature must be the absolute in art.

A work of art should be like a well-planned crime.

An artist is only an artist on condition that he neglects no aspect of his dual nature. This dualism is the power of being oneself and someone else at one and the same time.

The beautiful is always bizarre.

It is one of the prodigious privileges of art that the horrific, artistically expressed, becomes beauty, and that sorrow, given rhythm and cadence, fills the spirit with a calm joy.

Le mal se fait sans effort, naturellement, par fatalite ; le bien est toujours le produit d'un art. Evil is done without effort, naturally, it's destiny; good is always a product of art.

To say the word Romanticism is to say modern art -- that is, intimacy, spirituality, color, aspiration towards the infinite, expressed by every means available to the arts.