Roger Fry Art Quotes & Sayings

I think it was Roger Fry who first coined what he took to be a final definition of a work of art, whether it was a painting, building, poem or Hepplewhite chair. He said that the best works of art are finished products that preserve 'a valuable state of mind'. — Alistair Cooke

Perhaps, the highest pleasure in art is identical with the highest pleasure in scientific theory. The emotion which accompanies the clear recognition of unity in a complex seems so similar in art and in science that it is difficult not to suppose that they are psychologically the same. It is, as it were, the final stage of both a processes.This unity-emotion in science supervenes upon a process of pure mechanical reasoning; in art it supervenes upon a process of which emotion has all along been an essential concomitant. — Roger Fry

Art is significant deformity. — Roger Fry

No-one who has a real understanding of the art of painting attaches any importance to what we call the subject of a picture - what is represented. To one who feels the language of pictorial form, all depends on how it is presented, nothing on what. — Roger Fry

First I have a think, and then I put a line around it. — Roger Fry