"The art of advertisement, after the American manner, has introduced into all our life such a lavish use of superlatives, that no standard of value whatever is intact."
"Then down came the lid--the day was lost, for art, at Sarajevo. World-politics stepped in, and a war was started which has not ended yet: a "war to end war." But it merely ended art. It did not end war."
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Source: 1937 Blasting and Bombardiering, pt.5,'Toward an Art-Less Society'.
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More quotes by Wyndham Lewis
"A hundred things are done today in the divine name of Youth, that if they showed their true colors would be seen by rights to belong rather to old age."
"So-called austerity, the stoic injunction, is the path towards universal destruction. It is the old, the fatal, competitive path. Pull in your belt is a slogan closely related to gird up your loins, or the guns-butter metaphor."
"Almost anything that can be praised or advocated has been put to some disgusting use. There is no principle, however immaculate, that has not had its compromising manipulator."
"The artist is always engaged in writing a detailed history of the future because he is the only person aware of the nature of the present."
"What every artist should try to prevent is the car, in which is our civilized life, plunging over the side of the precipice -- the exhibitionist extremist promoter driving the whole bag of tricks into a nihilistic nothingness or zero."