Brett Childs

“The man incapable of contemplation cannot be an artist, but only a skillful workman.”
― Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

“We have shown that art is essentially symbolic, and only accidentally illustrative or historical ; and finally that art, even the highest, is only the means to an end, that even the scriptural art is only a manner of "seeing through a glass, darkly," and that although this is far better than not to see at all, the utility of iconography must come to an end when vision is "face to face.”
― Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, Christian & Oriental Philosophy of Art Formerly: "Why Exhibit Works of Art?"

“The purpose of art is then to reveal a beauty
that we like or can be taught to like; the purpose of art is to give pleasure; the work of art as the source of pleasure is its own end; art is for art's sake.
We value the work for the pleasure to be derived from the sight, sound, or touch of its aesthetic surfaces; our conception of beauty is literally skin-deep; questions of utility and intelligibility rarely arise, and if they arise are dismissed as irrelevant.”
― Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, Christian & Oriental Philosophy of Art Formerly: "Why Exhibit Works of Art?"

“To have lost the art of thinking in images is precisely to have lost the proper linguistic of metaphysics and to have descended to the verbal logic of philosophy.”
― Ananda K. Coomaraswamy