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Full Idea
The motives we actually experience are too close to us to enable us to feel them clearly. They are in a sense unintelligible.
Gist of Idea
Most of us are too close to our own motives to understand them
Source
Roger Fry (An Essay in Aesthetics [1909], p.30)
Book Ref
Fry,Roger: 'Vision and Design' [Penguin 1937], p.30
A Reaction
Fry is defending the role of art in clarifying and highlighting such things, but I am not convinced by his claim. We can grasp most of our motives with a little introspection, and those we can't grasp are probably too subtle for art as well.
| 20423 | If graphic arts only aim at imitation, their works are only trivial ingenious toys [Fry] |
| 20424 | Imaginative life requires no action, so new kinds of perception and values emerge in art [Fry] |
| 20425 | In the cinema the emotions are weaker, but much clearer than in ordinary life [Fry] |
| 20426 | For pure moralists art must promote right action, and not just be harmless [Fry] |
| 20427 | Everyone reveals an aesthetic attitude, looking at something which only exists to be seen [Fry] |
| 20428 | Popular opinion favours realism, yet most people never look closely at anything! [Fry] |
| 20429 | Most of us are too close to our own motives to understand them [Fry] |
| 20430 | In life we neglect 'cosmic emotion', but it matters, and art brings it to the fore [Fry] |
| 20431 | Art needs a mixture of order and variety in its sensations [Fry] |
| 20433 | 'Beauty' can either mean sensuous charm, or the aesthetic approval of art (which may be ugly) [Fry] |
| 20432 | When viewing art, rather than flowers, we are aware of purpose, and sympathy with its creator [Fry] |