The naturalistic literature of this country has reached such a state that no family of characters is considered true to life which... does not include at least two hypochondriacs, one sadist, and one old man who spills food down the front of his vest.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Now the hand-painted image of a person is costly because the time of a well-trained artist is required to make it. The time spent ...by the painter is time spent seeing as well as making. Literally thousands of separate perceptions must be consolidated into a single image by the portrait painter. Even where the style is naturalistic and the technique meticulous, the necessary process of amalgamation entails synthesis, generalization, exag geration, and simplification. Hence, much as we admire the painter's craft, we know that it changes optical data. The invention and perfection of photography has taught us to see how painters change what they see. Oddly enough, we are less conscious of the fact that the camera also changes reality. Beyond that, most of us do not realize how much the photographer manipulates what the camera sees because we have been thoroughly conditioned to believe in the photographer's--as opposed to the painter's--mode of representing reality. For practical purposes this means that we regard photographic imagery as truthful while painterly imagery is viewed, at best, as poetic.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Keats is minute in observation, with an eye to every particular of every object; Shelley, usually working on a panoramic scale, ge...neralizes and reduces, in order that the details of his scenes may fit within a unity of the whole. Keats is naturalistic and representative, whereas Shelley more noticeably imposes his subjective conceptions upon what he sees. Shelley's vision is usually directed either up or down, while Keats looks out before him, horizontally; he glances at the sky casually, albeit observantly, while Shelley's gaze is earnest and painful, as if he strove to pierce the atmosphere and arrive at some ultimate vision above the air itself.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
My position is a naturalistic one; I see philosophy not as an a priori propaedeutic or groundwork for science, but as continuous w...ith science. I see philosophy and science as in the same boat--a boat which, to revert to Neurath's figure as I so often do, we can rebuild only at sea while staying afloat in it. There is no external vantage point, no first philosophy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One encounters very capable fathers abashed by their piano-playing daughters. Three measures of Schumann make them red with embarr...assment.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We are not compelled in naturalism, or even in materialism, to ignore immaterial things; the point is that any immaterial things w...hich are recognized shall be regarded as names, aspects, functions, or concomitant products of those physical things among which action goes on.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »