“Discipline is sweetened by compromise.”

—Fairfield Porter

Lawrence Klepp on Art and the Renaissance:

“Great art…rarely appears in peaceful, pastoral societies, whether Switzerland, Lapland, or some tropical island paradise. It tends to turn up in wealthy, multifaceted, and tumultuous urban societies such as 15th-century northern Italy. Their usual accompaniment of high ambition, greed, steep social hierarchies, crimes of passion and calculation, and political and amorous intrigues provide either the subject matter for the art or the motivation to escape and transcend them through form, color, and harmony.”