Ernest Flagg - Beauty Quotes

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If the chief rules of good design were understood by the masses as they might be, nothing would do more to promote beauty, improve workmanship, add to the value of manufactures, and in many other ways further the general welfare and prosperity of the country. They are simple, easy to acquire, and should be taught with the alphabet.

Ernest Flagg
Reason... to suppose any production, worthy to be called a work of art, can be made without its use is foolish.... By the use of reason many mistakes in design may be avoided and many counterfeits of art readily detected.... Beauty alone is an excellent reason for many things, but when a design is in direct conflict with common sense it cannot be a work of art.

Ernest Flagg
Why can there not be a new art founded on the only principle which can produce great art—the principle that art is the interpretation or extraction of the essence of beauty in nature, and all else is secondary?

Ernest Flagg
The most economical way of obtaining good results is to apply the great, fundamental principles of art; and depend on them for beauty, rather than upon the use of either applied ornament or more expensive materials... much better results are likely to accrue from truth than falsehood, and from architectural [rather] than archaeological methods.

Ernest Flagg
The best art, and the only art which will ever lead to great results, must have for its basis the interpretation of beauty in nature.

Ernest Flagg
Beauty is largely dependent on fitness, and fitting methods are usually the most convenient and economical; therein, indeed, to a great extent, lies their very fitness.

Ernest Flagg
Interest.... a design to be great must have great interest.... the most potent of all ways to impart interest is to endow the design with beauty of form, and... the one which makes the strongest appeal to human interest and admiration is physical beauty in human shape.

Ernest Flagg