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Octavio Paz Quotes about Art

All Octavio Paz Quotes Art quotes Criticism Culture Desire Feelings Giving Language Lying Poetry Progress Reality Revolution Solitude Values Wall Water
There is nothing sacred or untouchable except the freedom to think. Without criticism, that is to say, without rigor and experimentation, there is no science, without criticism there is no art or literature. I would

There is nothing sacred or untouchable except the freedom to think. Without criticism, that is to say, without rigor and experimentation, there is no science, without criticism there is no art or literature. I would also say that without criticism there is no healthy society.

Octavio Paz
Art, Thinking, Healthy

Poet: gardener of epitaphs.

Octavio Paz
Art, Design, Poet
Octavio Paz, Eliot Weinberger (1991). “The Collected Poems of Octavio Paz, 1957-1987”, p.379, New Directions Publishing

It is not proper to project our feelings onto things or to attribute our own sensations and passions to them. Can it also be improper to see in them a guide, a way of life? To learn the art of remaining motionless amid the agitation of the whirlwind, to learn to remain still and to be as transparent as this fixed light amid the frantic branches this may be a program for life.

Octavio Paz
Art, Passion, Light
"The Monkey Grammarian". Book by Octavio Paz, Ch. 2, 1974.

Art is what remains of religion: the dance above the yawning abyss.

Octavio Paz
Art, Yawning, Abyss
Octavio Paz (1973). “Alternating Current”, p.122, Arcade Publishing

What characterizes a poem is its necessary dependence on words as much as its struggle to transcend them.

Octavio Paz
Art, Struggle, Poetry

What distinguishes modern art from the art of other ages is criticism.

Octavio Paz
Art, Criticism, Age
Octavio Paz (1973). “Alternating Current”, p.20, Arcade Publishing

Two opposing forces inhabit the poem: one of elevation or up-rooting, which pulls the word from the language: the other of gravity, which makes it return. The poem is an original and unique creation, but it is also reading and recitation: participation. The poet creates it; the people, by recitation, re-create it. Poet and reader are two moments of a single reality.

Octavio Paz
Art, Reading, Unique
Octavio Paz (2009). “The Bow and the Lyre: The Poem, The Poetic Revelation, Poetry and History”, p.28, University of Texas Press

Art is an invention of aesthetics, which in turn is an invention of philosophers... What we call art is a game.

Octavio Paz
Beauty, Art, Games
Octavio Paz (1991). “On Poets and Others”, p.74, Arcade Publishing

The religion of art, like the religion of politics, was born from the ruins of Christianity. Art inherited from the old religion the power of consecrating things and endowing them with a sort of eternity; museums are our temples, and the objects displayed in them are beyond history. Politics--or more precisely, Revolution--co-opted the other function of religion: changing human beings and society. Art was an asceticism, a spiritual heroism; Revolution was the construction of a universal church.

Octavio Paz
Spiritual, Art, Museums
Octavio Paz (1987). “1904-1912”, San Diego : Harcourt Brace Jovanovich

Revolt is the violence of an entire people; rebellion the unruliness of an individual or an uprising by a minority; both are spontaneous and blind. Revolution is both planned and spontaneous, a science and an art.

Octavio Paz
Art, Uprising, People
Octavio Paz (1973). “Alternating Current”, p.141, Arcade Publishing

What is art? A violet. Is that all? An artistic style is a living entity, a continuous process of invention. It can never be imposed from without; born of the profoundest tendencies within a society, its direction is to a certain extent unpredictable, in much the same way as the eventual configuration of a tree's branches.

Octavio Paz
Art, Tree, Style

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