George Steiner Quotes about Art

I believe that a work of art, like metaphors in language, can ask the most serious, difficult questions in a way which really makes the readers answer for themselves; that the work of art far more than an essay or a

I believe that a work of art, like metaphors in language, can ask the most serious, difficult questions in a way which really makes the readers answer for themselves; that the work of art far more than an essay or a tract involves the reader, challenges him directly and brings him into the argument.

George Steiner

Art, Believe, Difficult Questions

All serious art, music, literature is a critical act. It is so, firstly, in the sense of Matthew Arnold's phrase: "a criticism of life." Be it realistic, fantastic, Utopian or satiric, the construct of the artist is a counter-statement to the world.

George Steiner

Art, Criticism, Phrases

George Steiner (2010). “Real Presences: Is There Anything in What We Say?”, p.11, Faber & Faber

For it is a plain fact that, most certainly in the West, the writings, works of art, musical compositions which are of central reference, comport that which is "grave and constant" (Joyce's epithets) in the mystery of our condition.

George Steiner

Art, Writing, Musical

George Steiner (1991). “Real Presences”, p.224, University of Chicago Press

To a degree which is difficult to determine, the esoteric impulse in twentieth-century music, literature and the arts reflects calculation. It looks to the flattery of academic and hermeneutic notice. Reciprocally, the academy turns towards that which appears to require its exegetic, cryptographic skills.

George Steiner

Art, Skills, Degrees

George Steiner (2010). “Real Presences: Is There Anything in What We Say?”, p.43, Faber & Faber

The Oresteia, King Lear, Dostoevsky's 'The Devils' no less than the art of Giotto or the 'Passions' of Bach, inquire into, dramatize, the relations of man and woman to the existence of the gods or of God.

George Steiner

Art, Kings, Passion

"Real Presences". Book by George Steiner, 1986.

Literature and the arts are also criticism in a more particular and practical sense. They embody an expository reflection on, a value judgement of, the inheritance and context to which they pertain.

George Steiner

Art, Reflection, Judgement

George Steiner (2010). “Real Presences: Is There Anything in What We Say?”, p.12, Faber & Faber

If future society assumes the contours foretold by Marxism, if the jungle of our cities turns to the polis of man and the dreams of anger are made real, the representative art will be high comedy. Art will be the laughter of intelligence, as it is in Plato, in Mozart, in Stendhal.

George Steiner

Dream, Art, Laughter

George Steiner (1998). “Language and Silence: Essays on Language, Literature, and the Inhuman”, p.392, Yale University Press