Art respects the masses, by standing up to them for what they could be, rather than conforming to them in their degraded state.
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Art is the social antithesis of society, not directly deducible from it.
It is not the office of art to spotlight alternatives, but to resist by its form alone the course of the world, which permanently puts a pistol to men’s heads.
The forms of art reflect the history of man more truthfully than do documents themselves.
The darkening of the world makes the irrationality of art rational: radically darkened art.
Art is magic delivered from the lie of being truth.
Behind every work of art lies an uncommitted crime.
In art it is hard to say anything as good as saying nothing.
The work of art is the object seen sub specie aeternitatis; and the good life is the world seen sub specie aeternitatis. This is the connection between art and ethics. The usual way of looking at things sees objects as it were from the midst of them, the view sub specie aeternitatis from outside. In such a way that they have the whole world as background.
If the world were clear, art would not exist.