Jed Perl > Quotes

“Authority is the ordering impulse. Freedom is the love of experiment and play.”
― Jed Perl, Authority and Freedom: A Defense of the Arts

“1940s in The Tiger’s Eye—a short-lived, adventuresome magazine that also featured work by Pollock, Rothko, and Still”
― Jed Perl, Art in America 1945-1970: Writings from the Age of Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, and Minimalism

“He is a whirligig of a man - this elegant fellow, alone in a garden, dressed in an absurdly fancy outfit of blue-and-pink striped silk. He is an excitable dreamer, playing on his guitar and singing, his sleekly athletic presence jangled by a great restlessness or anxiety. Surely there is a somebody somewhere he adores, a woman suggested by the shadowy silhouette of a statue glimpsed just beyond his head. So he flings back that head of his and screws up his eyes, until one dark, off-center pupil becomes an addled bull's-eye, a heraldic device suggesting a lover's wild abandon in this nearly abandoned garden. Only the strongest of passions could explain the animation of his limbs, the pinwheel kaleidoscope of his fast-moving arms and legs, which vibrate with the energy of that strangest and finest of inventions, the human machine.”
― Jed Perl

“aesthetics is for the artists as ornithology is for the birds.”
― Jed Perl, Art in America 1945-1970: Writings from the Age of Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, and Minimalism