Friedrich Nietzsche
[Philosopher, b. 1844, Rocken, Prussia, d. 1900, Weimar, Germany.]
To experience a thing as beautiful means: to experience it necessarily wrongly.
Peter Beard
[Artist, b. 1938, New York, lives in New York City, Montauk Point, New York, and Ngong Hills, Kenya.]
I am a parasite off beauty.
Chris Burden
[Artist, b. 1946, Boston, Massachusetts, d. 2015, Los Angeles.]
It’s about trying to frame something. And draw attention to it and say, “Here’s the beauty in this. I’m going to put a frame around it, and I think this is beautiful.” That’s what artists do. It’s really a pointing activity.
Janet Malcolm
[Writer, b. 1934, Prague, Czechoslovakia, lives in New York.]
[Richard Avedon’s] camera dwells on the horrible things that age can do to people’s faces—on the flabby flesh, the slack skin, the ugly growths, the puffy eyes, the knotted necks, the aimless wrinkles, the fearful and anxious set of the mouth, the marks left by sickness, madness, alcoholism, and irreversible disappointment.
Walker Evans
[Photographer, b. 1903, St. Louis, Missouri, d. 1975, New Haven, Connecticut.]
A garbage can, occasionally, to me at least, can be beautiful. That’s because you’re seeing. Some people are able to see that—see it and feel it. I lean toward the enchantment, the visual power, of the esthetically rejected subject.
Ingrid Sischy
[Editor and writer, b. 1952, Johannesburg, South Africa, d. 2015, New York.]
Beautification of tragedy results in pictures that ultimately reinforce our passivity toward the experience they reveal.
Robert Mapplethorpe
[Photographer, b. 1946, Floral Park, Long Island, d. 1989, Boston, Massachusetts.]
I did a picture of a guy with his finger up his cock. I think that for what it is, it’s a perfect picture, because the hand gestures are beautiful. I know most people couldn’t see the hand gestures, but compositionally I think it works. I think the hand gesture is beautiful.
Walter Benjamin
[Philosopher, critic, and theorist, b. 1892, Berlin, d. 1940, Port Bou, France.]
[Photography] has succeeded in making even abject poverty, by recording it in a fashionably perfected manner, into an object of enjoyment.
