"One’s ears are weary of the voice of the art teacher who sits like the parrot on his perch, learning the jargon of the studios, making but poor copy and calling it criticism. We have had enough of their omniscience, their parade of technical knowledge, and their predilection for the wrong end of the stick."

Aubrey Beardsley Art See all quotes by Aubrey Beardsley →

React to this quote

More by Aubrey Beardsley

“I’m so affected, that even my lungs are affected.”

“How few of our young English impressionists knew the difference between a palette and a picture! However, I believe that Walter Sickert did — sly dog!”

“In Black and White: the literary remains of Aubrey Beardsley”

“I have always done my sketches, as people would say, for the fun of it... I have worked to amuse myself, and if it has amused the public as well, so much the better for me.”

“I think the title page I drew for Salomé was after all "impossible". You see booksellers couldn't stick it up in their windows.”

“Advertisement is an absolute necessity of modern life, and if it can be made beautiful as well as obvious, so much the better for the makers of soap and the public who are likely to wash.”

Resonant Thoughts

"Political thought as we understand it began in Athens because the Athenians were a trading people who looked at their contemporaries and saw how differently they organized themselves. If they had not …"

— Alan Ryan

Philosophy1940–2011

#politics

"A job competency is an underlying characteristic of a person in that it may be a motive, trait, skill, aspect of one’s self-image or social role, or a body of knowledge which he/she uses. The existenc…"

— Richard Boyatzis

Science1946

#knowledge

"In short it is my concern to emphasize that Gorky is, of all the surrealist artists, the only one who maintains direct contact with nature – sit down to paint before her. Furthermore, it is out of the…"

— André Breton

Literature1896–1966

#knowledge