True.

What if man had eyes to see the true beauty—the divine beauty, I mean, pure and clear and unalloyed, not clogged with the pollutions of mortality and all the colours and vanities of human life—thither looking, and holding converse with the true beauty simple and divine?

Beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may.

Plato, from "Ladder of Love"

Produce.

Apart from the desire to produce beautiful things, the leading passion of my life has been and is hatred of modern civilization.

William Morris, born on this day in 1834

Herreshoff.

Herreschoff, Westward, 1910

Happy Birthday, Karl Friedrich Schinkel

Schinkel, The Hall of Stars in the Palace of the Queen of the Night, The Magic Flute, 1815

First delight, then instruct.  Give industry a direction in which beauty is as important as utility.  Indifference to the fine arts comes close to barbarism.

Karl Friedrich Schinkel, born on this day in 1781

Truth.

If we cannot justify the very concept of the aesthetic, except as ideology, then aesthetic judgement is without philosophical foundation. An "ideology" is adopted for its social or political utility, rather than its truth. And to show that some concept—holiness, justice, beauty, or whatever—is ideological, is to undermine its claim to objectivity. It is to suggest that there is no such thing as holiness, justice or beauty, but only the belief in it—a belief that arises under certain social and economic relations and plays a part in cementing them, but which will vanish as conditions change.

Sir Roger Scruton, from Beauty: A Very Short Introduction

Blessed.

Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where others see nothing.

Camille Pissarro

Live.

van Eyck, Portrait of a Man, 1433

If your everyday life seems poor, don’t blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is not poverty and no poor, indifferent place.  And even if you found yourself in some prison, whose walls let in none of the world’s sounds—wouldn’t you still have your childhood, that jewel beyond all price, that treasure house of memories? Turn your attentions to it. Try to raise up the sunken feelings of this enormous past; your personality will grow stronger, your solitude will expand and become a place where you can live in the twilight, where the noise of other people passes by, far in the distance. 

Rainer Maria Rilke, from Letters to a Young Poet

Meant.

Enduring.

Dvorak, Head of a Girl, 1885

In an age of declining faith, art bears enduring witness to the spiritual hunger and immortal longings of our species. 

Sir Roger Scruton, from Beauty: A Very Short Introduction

Beauty.

Goodloe Harper Pennington, Portrait of Oscar Wilde at the Age of 27, 1884

In the case of handicraftsmen - the weaver, the potter, the smith - on their work are the traces of their hand. But it is not so with the painter; it is not so with the artist.

Art should have no sentiment about it but its beauty, no technique except what you cannot observe. One should be able to say of a picture not that it is "well painted," but that it is "not painted."

What is the difference between absolutely decorative art and a painting? Decorative art emphasises its material: imaginative art annihilates it. Tapestry shows its threads as part of its beauty: a picture annihilates its canvas: it shows nothing of it. Porcelain emphasises its glaze: water-colours reject the paper.

A picture has no meaning but its beauty, no message but its joy. That is the first truth about art that you must never lose sight of. A picture is a purely decorative thing.

Oscar Wilde, from his "Lecture to Art Students"

Home.

Art moves us because it is beautiful, and it is beautiful in part because it means something. It can be meaningful without being beautiful; but to be beautiful it must be meaningful.  Our need for beauty is not something that we could lack and still be fulfilled as people. It is a need arising from our metaphysical condition, as free individuals, seeking our place in a shared and public world. We can wander through this world, alienated, resentful, full of suspicion and distrust. Or we can find our home here, coming to rest in harmony with others and with ourselves. The experience of beauty guides us along this second path: it tells us that we are at home in the world, that the world is already ordered in our perceptions as a place fit for the lives of beings like us.

Sir Roger Scruton, from his best book, Beauty: A Very Short Introduction

Keep reminding me.

Unlimited.

Beauty can be consoling, disturbing, sacred, profane; it can be exhilarating, appealing, inspiring, chilling. It can affect us in an unlimited variety of ways. Yet it is never viewed with indifference: beauty demands to be noticed; it speaks to us directly like the voice of an intimate friend. If there are people who are indifferent to beauty, then it is surely because they do not perceive it.

Sir Roger Scruton, from Beauty: A Very Short Introduction

Complicit.

Faking is a social activity in which people act together to draw a veil over unwanted realities and encourage each other in the exercise of their illusory powers. The arrival of fake thought and fake scholarship in our universities should not therefore be attributed to any explicit desire to deceive. It has come about through the complicit opening of territory to the propagation of nonsense. Nonsense of this kind is a bid to be accepted. 

Sir Roger Scruton, from "The Great Swindle"

Dance.

An overcast morning in July. A taste of ashes flies through the air; - an odor of sweating wood on the hearth, - dew-ret flowers, - devastation along the promenades, - the mist of the canals over the fields - why not incense and toys already?

I have stretched ropes from steeple to steeple; garlands from window to window; golden chains from star to star, and I dance.

The upland pond smokes continuously. What witch will rise against the white west sky? What violet frondescence fall?

While public funds evaporate in feasts of fraternity, a bell of rosy fire rings in the clouds.

Reviving a pleasant taste of India ink, a black powder rains on my vigil. I lower the jets of the chandelier, I throw myself on my bed, and turning my face towards the darkness, I see you, my daughters! my queens!

Arthur Rimbaud, from "Phrases"

Happy Birthday, Chagall

Chagall, Paysage de Peyra-Cava: Le nuage, 1930

Art is the most beautiful deception of all. And although people try to incorporate the everyday events of life in it, we must hope that it will remain a deception lest it become a utilitarian thing, sad as a factory.

Marc Chagall, born on this day in 1887

Power.

Simon Schama preaches the power of art ...

His corpse is going the color of young Stilton.

Need.

No longer does art have a sacred status raising us to a higher moral or spiritual plane, it is just one human gesture among others, no more meaningful than a laugh or shout. Art once made a cult of beauty. Now we have a cult of ugliness instead. Since the world is disturbing, art should be disturbing too.

Those who look for beauty in art are just out of touch with modern realities. Sometimes the intention is to shock us. But what is shocking first time round, is boring and vacuous when repeated. This makes art into an elaborate joke, though by now that has ceased to be funny, yet the critics go on endorsing it, afraid to say that the emperor has no clothes. Creative art is not achieved, just like that, simply by having an idea. Of course, ideas can be interesting and amusing, but this does not justify the appropriation of the label “art.” If a work of art is nothing more than an idea, anybody can be an artist. And any object can be a work of art. There is no longer any need for skill, taste or creativity.

Sir Roger Scruton from his documentary, Why Beauty Matters

Happy Birthday, Scruton

Art moves us because it is beautiful, and it is beautiful in part because it means something. It can be meaningful without being beautiful; but to be beautiful it must be meaningful.  Our need for beauty is not something that we could lack and still be fulfilled as people. It is a need arising from our metaphysical condition, as free individuals, seeking our place in a shared and public world. We can wander through this world, alienated, resentful, full of suspicion and distrust. Or we can find our home here, coming to rest in harmony with others and with ourselves. The experience of beauty guides us along this second path: it tells us that we are at home in the world, that the world is already ordered in our perceptions as a place fit for the lives of beings like us.

Sir Roger Scruton, born on this day in 1944, from his best book, Beauty

Keep reminding me.

Exuberance.

Exuberance is Beauty. If the lion was advised by the fox, he would be cunning. Improvement makes strait roads, but the crooked roads without Improvement, are roads of Genius. Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires. Where man is not nature is barren. Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd. Enough! or Too much!

William Blake, from Proverbs of Hell

Related.

Jarman, Tilda Swinton, 1986

The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related that it is difficult to class them separately. One step above the sublime makes the ridiculous, and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again; the account, however, abstracted from the poetical fancy, shews the ignorance of Joshua, for he should have commanded the earth to have stood still.

Thomas Paine, from The Age of Reason