Octavio Paz
Octavio Paz
Octavio Paz Lozano; March 31, 1914 – April 19, 1998) was a Mexican poet and diplomat. He is considered by many as one of the most influential writers of the 20th century and one of the greatest poets of all time...
NationalityMexican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth31 March 1914
CityMexico City, Mexico
CountryMexico
art destroys inherent obey returns
Art for Duchamp, all the arts, obey the same law: meta-irony is inherent in their very spirit. It is an irony that destroys its own negation and, hence, returns in the affirmative.
apply art change french goes history model modern name notions revolution tradition violent whether
The modern tradition is the tradition of revolt. The French Revolution is still our model today: history is violent change, and this change goes by the name of progress. I do not know whether these notions really apply to art.
according art creative gesture imitates living nature poet
For the Chinese, the Greeks, the Mayans, or the Egyptians, nature was a living totality, a creative being. For this reason, art, according to Aristotle, is imitation; the poet imitates the creative gesture of nature.
artists begin cliches notions seek sincerely time
If contemporary artists sincerely seek to be original, unique, and new, they should begin by disregarding the notions of originality, individuality, and innovation: they are the cliches of our time.
almost art higher lays says unfaithful work
The work of art is always unfaithful to its creator... Art lays at a higher level; it says something more, and almost always, it says something different from what the artist wanted to say.
art tree style
What is art? A violet. Is that all? An artistic style is a living entity, a continuous process of invention. It can never be imposed from without; born of the profoundest tendencies within a society, its direction is to a certain extent unpredictable, in much the same way as the eventual configuration of a tree's branches.
art reading unique
Two opposing forces inhabit the poem: one of elevation or up-rooting, which pulls the word from the language: the other of gravity, which makes it return. The poem is an original and unique creation, but it is also reading and recitation: participation. The poet creates it; the people, by recitation, re-create it. Poet and reader are two moments of a single reality.
art thinking healthy
There is nothing sacred or untouchable except the freedom to think. Without criticism, that is to say, without rigor and experimentation, there is no science, without criticism there is no art or literature. I would also say that without criticism there is no healthy society.
spiritual art museums
The religion of art, like the religion of politics, was born from the ruins of Christianity. Art inherited from the old religion the power of consecrating things and endowing them with a sort of eternity; museums are our temples, and the objects displayed in them are beyond history. Politics--or more precisely, Revolution--co-opted the other function of religion: changing human beings and society. Art was an asceticism, a spiritual heroism; Revolution was the construction of a universal church.
art struggle poetry
What characterizes a poem is its necessary dependence on words as much as its struggle to transcend them.
art yawning abyss
Art is what remains of religion: the dance above the yawning abyss.
art uprising people
Revolt is the violence of an entire people; rebellion the unruliness of an individual or an uprising by a minority; both are spontaneous and blind. Revolution is both planned and spontaneous, a science and an art.
art criticism age
What distinguishes modern art from the art of other ages is criticism.
beauty art games
Art is an invention of aesthetics, which in turn is an invention of philosophers... What we call art is a game.