Don Colacho’s Aphorisms

If we are ignorant of an epoch’s art, its history is a colorless narrative. Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección , p. 471

It is fine to demand that the imbecile respect arts, letters, philosophy, the sciences, but let him respect them in silence. Escolios a un T...

The nature of the work of art can depend on social conditions, but its aesthetic quality depends on nothing. Escolios a un Texto Implícito: ...

In modern art there were numerous trends that exhausted the aesthetic consciousness’s capacity for indignation. Escolios a un Texto Implícit...

I am not so dumb as to deny the indisputable successes of modern art; but when I look at modern art in itself, just as when I look at Egypti...

The modern desire to be original makes the mediocre artist believe that simply being different is the secret to being original. Escolios a u...

Until the end of the 18th century, what man added to nature increased its beauty. Since then, what he adds destroys it. Escolios a un Texto ...

“Modern art” still seems alive because it has not been replaced, not because it has not died. Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección , p. ...

The existence of a work of art demonstrates that the world has meaning. Even when it does not say what that meaning is. Escolios a un Texto ...

We should only encourage someone to do something that is worth doing because it is worth it. Goodness for goodness’s sake, truth for truth’s...

The two most insufferable types of rhetoric are religious rhetoric and the rhetoric of art criticism. Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selecci...

The civilizing effect of works of art is due less to the aesthetic value than to the ethic of aesthetic work. Escolios a un Texto Implícito:...

Arts and letters soon become sterile where the practice of them gives one wealth and the admiration of them prestige. Escolios a un Texto Im...

Approaching religion through art is not the caprice of an aesthete: aesthetic experience spontaneously tends to expand into a presentiment o...

One soon turns one’s back on the art of the end of this century not because it shocks one with the scandal of what is unusual, but because i...

The evolution of works of art into objects of art and of objects of art into investments or into articles for consumption is a modern phenom...

Intelligence is the only art that can survive in any historical climate. Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección , p. 384

Authentic French art and authentic French literature have always existed on the fringe of those “latest Parisian intellectual fashions” whic...

The possibility of selling to the public any man-made object in the name of art is a democratic phenomenon. Democratic ages, in effect, fome...

The greatest disrespect that can be paid to a work of art is to treat it as an expensive object. No nouveau riche, fortunately, can hang a p...