The object of the artist is the creation of the beautiful. What the beautiful is is another question.

James Joyce
About This Quote

When asked this question by the English critic Samuel Johnson, the artist Caspar David Friedrich replied, "The object of the artist is to create beauty." It seems simple enough, but it's actually quite profound. The question is not "What is beauty?", which is impossible to answer. It's impossible to even define what "beauty" is. Beauty is subjective, and the artist only has one job: To create it.

If that means that an artist can't even define what beauty is, then that's not really his problem. His job is to bring beauty into the world, no matter what it looks like.

Source: A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man

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More Quotes By James Joyce
  1. His heart danced upon her movements like a cork upon a tide. He heard what her eyes said to him from beneath their cowl and knew that in some dim past, whether in life or revery, he had heard their tale before.

  2. You made me confess the fears that I have. But I will tell you also what I do not fear. I do not fear to be alone or to be spurned for another or to leave whatever I have to leave. And I am not...

  3. And yet her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood.

  4. Why is it that words like these seem dull and cold? Is it because there is no word tender enough to be your name?

  5. Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives. The English reading public explains the reason why.

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