Quotation by Octavio Paz

More Quotes From

Additional Sources

"AndrÃ© Breton or the Quest of the Beginning" (1967)"AndrÃ© Breton or the Quest of the Beginning" Alternating Current (1967)"At Table and In Bed" Convergences: Essays on Art and Literature, Harcourt Brace (1987)"Development and Other Mirages" The Other Mexico: Critique of the Pyramid (1972)"Figure and Presence" Alternating Current, Viking (1973)

Related Subjects

artists (305) government (24) life (23) nature (22) science (18) power (17) writers and writing (15) beauty (14) literature (14) elections (13)

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.

Octavio Paz

Octavio Paz (b. 1914), Mexican poet. "Seeing and Using: Art and Craftsmanship," Convergences: Essays on Art and Literature, Harcourt Brace (1987).

Cite this source Embed this quotation

Surprise me with a

The Columbia World of Quotations © 1996, Columbia University Press.
Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. Except as otherwise permitted by written agreement, the following are prohibited: copying substantial portions or the entirety of the work in machine readable form, making multiple printouts thereof, and other uses of the work inconsistent with U.S. and applicable foreign copyright and related laws.

Partners:Word Bloglines Citysearch The Daily Beast Ask Answers Ask Kids Life123 Reference Sendori