Few artists were ever fully well, so it is no great trick to prove them ill. There are commentators who can't get interested in Caravaggio until they find out he killed someone. They are only one step from believing that every killer is Caravaggio.
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'Georg Christoph Lichtenberg', p. 395Clive James
The convention by which the great events in biblical or secular history could be enacted only by magnificent physical specimens, handsome and well-groomed, went on for a long time — till the middle of the nineteenth century. Only a very few artists — perhaps only Rembrandt and Caravaggio in the first rank — were independent enough to stand against it. And I think that this convention, which was an element in the so-called grand manner, became a deadening influence on the European mind. It deadened our sense of truth, even our sense of moral responsibility.
Kenneth Clark
All art is probably erotic in its ultimate character, but painting more than anything else is a purely nervous erotic activity... The eroticism of Caravaggio is special because it exists in that area between the simple sensual appreciation of the object which produces the desire to posses it, and the passionate but detached concern of the Observer, which also seeks to posses but to posses through understanding.
Patrick Swift
Great artists are products of their own time: they do not spring forth fully equipped from the head of Jove, but are formed by the circumstances acting upon them since birth. These circumstances include the ambiance created by the other, lesser artists of their own time, who have all done their part in creating the pressure that forces up an exceptional talent. Unjustly, but unavoidably, the very closeness of a great artist to his colleagues and contemporaries leads to their eclipse.
Germaine Greer
Hinduism is a religion of violence. All Hindu gods killed their enemies and became heroic images. This is the only religion in the world where the killer becomes god. Whom did they kill? From Brahma to Krishna, those who were killed were Dalitbahujans. Now these images and the stories and narratives and everything is out there in the civil society. Now, because of this, the consciousness of worshipping the killer or worshipping violence did not give any space for human rights. So my question is the human rights discourse must start with an anti-warrior position.
Kancha Ilaiah
The decay of our culture since 1941 can be measured by the fact that academic historians today are no longer interested in historical truth or interested in it only marginally; what really interests them is jobs. They match the anthropologists and geneticists who, with practiced effrontery, can say that all races are equal and there is no difference between them. There are now 'scientists' who boast they are so versatile they can prove anything, for a suitable fee, while others abuse spectroscopes to prove that a painted rag is a 'Holy Shroud,' or use quantum mechanics to prove that the old Jew-god converted mud into Adam. 'Truth' is whatever pays the most. The academicians have conformed to what is now the American ethic. Whether any nation so decadent and depraved can or should survive is a question I am unwilling to consider.
Revilo P. Oliver
James, Clive
James, Donald
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