Robert Musil Quotes about Art

Layer by layer art strips life bare.

Art, Layers

Robert Musil (2012). “Posthumous Papers of a Living Author”, p.44, Archipelago

The thought came to me that all one loves in art becomes beautiful. Beauty is nothing but the expression of the fact that something is being loved. Only thus could she be defined.

Robert Musil

Beautiful, Art, Expression

Don't you know that every perfect life would be the end of art?

Robert Musil

Art, Mean, Perfect

"The Man Without Qualities: Picador Classic".

To love something as an artist ... means to be shaken not by its ultimate value or lack of value, but by a side of it that suddenly opens up. Where art has value it shows things that few have seen. It's conquering, not pacifying.

Robert Musil

Art, Mean, Sides

... the novel is called upon like no other art form to incorporate the intellectual content of an age.

Robert Musil

Art, Intellectual, Age

Robert Musil, Burton Pike, David S. Luft (1995). “Precision and Soul: Essays and Addresses”, p.88, University of Chicago Press

His answers were quite often like that. When she spoke of beauty, he spoke of the fatty tissue supporting the epidermis. When she mentioned love, he responded with the statistical curve that indicates the automatic rise and fall in the annual birthrate. When she spoke of the great figures in art, he traced the chain of borrowings that links these figures to one another.

Robert Musil

Art, Fall, Curves

Robert Musil (2017). “The Man Without Qualities: Picador Classic”, p.302, Pan Macmillan

Is not art a tool we employ to peel the kitsch off life? Layer by layer art strips life bare. The more abstract it gets, the more transparent the air is. Can it be that the farther it is removed from life, the clearer art becomes?

Robert Musil

Art, Air, Tools

Robert Musil Quotes about Art

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