brettworks

“Rembrandt lived three hundred years ago and knew far more than we do now. How is that? Why is that? Why have we gotten less skilled, less competent, less knowledgeable, less adept and versatile? How can that be?” (168).

“You have been mistaught! You have been fed the lie that intent is achievement. It is not. You have been fed the lie that explaining your ideas is the same as realizing them. It is not. You have been fed the lie that people enjoy looking at theories and gags and pranks” (168).

“Those teachers, starting with Arcenaux, they kill art. Their theories kill art. As professors, they’re forced to talk, which leads to pronouncements, which lead to theories, and theories become rigid and quickly ridiculous” (178).

“But there’s this unique selfishness built into the mythology of the modern artist. There’s this notion that the best art is the most so-called personal and is deaf to its audience. Which is unsupported by all evidence throughout history. You and I both know that very often the most personal work is absolute trash. It can be personal, but it also has to be good. Then again, you can find something very personal that becomes commercial, and then you can end up repeating that personal-commercial work for the rest of your life. It becomes a job. Like Roy Lichtenstein or even Jackson Pollock. You know that first Ben-Day dot painting Roy did was a revelation and great fun, but the three hundredth comic-book picture?” (192).

“The idea matters. You can have all the skill in the world, but without an idea—something that delights or challenges the mind—it probably falls short of being art” (193).

“He concentrated on a hotly burning candle in front of him, pondering that for centuries painters were not skilled enough to depict its effects, to attempt chiaroscuro. Then, for a hundred and fifty years, candlelight was critical—a measure of an artist’s skill. And now it was gone. Had anyone painted a candlelit interior in a hundred years?” (325).

“But in the layering, in the thin washes, the glazes, he’d achieved something else, too—a vibrating, almost inexplicable glow to the canvas that bewildered him. He’d achieved it by accident, and would never, he was sure, be able to replicate it” (388).

Dave Eggers, Contrapposto: A Novel (2026)