The Ecole des Beaux-Arts seduced the weak with school triumphs and popular successes, and destroyed them in the end, while it identified, repelled, and strengthened the vigorous by forcing them to struggle with reality and to find their own way.
(Lorenz Eitner, in An Outline of 19th Century European Painting)
Recently added to the Library are two amazing books about typography, published by Taschen. These beautiful volumes are a collection of type specimens, initial letters, decorative lettering, engravings, borders and ornaments. Volume 1 covers 1628 – 1900 and Volume 2 explores 1901 – 1938.
When you borrow the book you also gain online access to over 2000 high resolution, downloadable images , which are great for building up your own archive of reference material. An ID and password are required and these will be given to you when you borrow the book.
The making of superior art is arduous, usually.
(Clement Greenberg, Modernism and Postmodernism, Late Writings, p32)
The other – the others!
Millions of them are left to sink. They are asphixiated, starved, tortured, reduced to silence. Yet, at great risk, a few men and women refuse to bow down in front of hypocrisy, pseudo-truths, inflated authority. Loud or silent, their testimony sends endless echoes around the world.
(Dominique de Menil, Statement at the first Rothko Chapel Awards for Commitment to Truth and Freedom, 1981)
(Dave Eggars, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius)
(Clement Greenberg, Affirmations and Refusals, p277)
Even when I was young, I said to myself that what is meant to be mine will come to me. I don’t have to go and look for it, just be attentive.
If there is any wisdom in life, it is knowing how to wait.
(José Saramago)
Education is not filling a pail, but lighting a fire.
( WB Yeats)
A person caught in a philosophical confusion is like a man in a room who wants to get out but doesn’t know how. He tries the window but it is too high. He tries the chimney but it is too narrow. And if he would only turn around he would see that the door has been open all the time!
…the problems are solved, not by giving new information, but by arranging what we have always known.
(Wittgenstein, Investigations §109)
Did you know we have a collection of materials samples from German supplier Materialworks? More information is available here.
Our Materialworks samples boxes are available at the library service desk for reference purposes. The categories of materials which we currently hold are:
