Andre Gide
Andre Gide
André Paul Guillaume Gidewas a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1947 "for his comprehensive and artistically significant writings, in which human problems and conditions have been presented with a fearless love of truth and keen psychological insight". Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionAutobiographer
Date of Birth22 November 1869
CountryFrance
The great artist is one whom constraint exalts, for whom the obstacle is a springboard.
Art that submits to orthodoxy, to even the soundest doctrines, but lacks imagination and deep self-expression is lost leaving only the craftsmanship.
An artist cannot get along without a public; and when the public is absent, what does he do? He invents it, and turning his back on his age, he looks toward the future for what the present denies.
There is no work of art that is without short cuts.
There is no prejudice that the work of art does not finally overcome.
The scholar seeks truth, the artist finds.
How much more sensuality invites to art than does sentimentality.
"Let the dead bury the dead." There is not a single word of Christ to which the Christian religion has paid less attention.
If life were organized, there would be no need for art.
The only really Christian art is that which, like St. Francis, does not fear being wedded to poverty. This rises far above art-as-ornament.
The artist who is after success lets himself be influenced by the public. Generally such an artist contributes nothing new, for the public acclaims only what it already knows, what it recognizes.
A work of art is an exaggeration.
The sole art that suits me is that which, rising from unrest, tends toward serenity.
The most subtle art, the strongest and deepest art - supreme art - is the one that does not at first allow itself to be recognized.