August 31

Any work of false art praised by critics is a door through which “hypocrites of art” enter our minds.

The creation and sale of most art today is pure prostitution. The comparison is true in every detail. Real art can only rarely be created even by a real artist; like a child in a mother’s womb, it is the ripened fruit of his prior life. False art, though, can be ceaselessly produced by crafts men, according to the dictates of a market. Like a faithful wife who loves her husband, real art does not need any excess decoration; like a prostitute, false art demands to be decorated.

True art comes out of an artist’s urgent need to express the feelings that have formed inside him, just as a mother needs to give birth to her baby. False art answers only to profit. Real art brings new feelings into our life, as a woman brings a new person into the world.

False art corrupts; it makes a person dissipated, distracts him, weakens his spiritual power. Everyone must understand this, in order that they shun the terrible proliferation of this dirty, dissipated type of art which is, on its face, prostitution.

You cannot sell your talent, your genius; as soon as you do, you are a prostitute. You can sell your work, but not your soul.

— John Ruskin

Until they throw away the money changers out of the temple of art, it will never be a real temple. But the time will come when these salesmen will be sent away from the temple of art.