Ernest Fenollosa Quotes

United States, Philosopher
February 18, 1853 – September, 21, 1908.

Ernest Francisco Fenollosa was an American art historian of Japanese art, professor of philosophy and political economy at Tokyo Imperial University. An important educator during the modernization of Japan during the Meiji Era, Fenollosa was an enthusiastic Orientalist who did much to preserve traditional Japanese art.

It is a mistake to suppose, with some philosophers of aesthetics, that art and poetry aim to deal with the general and the abstract. This misconception has been foisted upon us by mediaeval logic. Art and poetry deal with the concrete of nature, not with separate 'particulars,' for such rows do not exist.

Ernest Fenollosa
- Art
- Poetry
- Mistake
All truth has to be expressed in sentences... the type of sentence in nature is a flash of lightning.

Ernest Fenollosa
- Type
- Sentences
- Lightning

A true noun, an isolated thing, does not exit in nature. Things are only the terminal points, or rather the meeting points of actions, cross sections cut through actions, snapshots. Neither can a pure verb, an abstract motion, be possible in nature. The eye sees noun and verb as one, things in motion, motion in things.

Ernest Fenollosa
- Action
- Eye
- Cutting