The greatest artists have never been men of taste. By never sophisticating their instincts they have never lost the awareness of the great simplicities, which they relish both from appetite and from the challenge these offer to skill in competition with popular art.

Jacques Barzun (1907-2012) French-American historian, educator, polymath

Essay (1956), “Whirligig: Last Words on Berlioz,” The Energies of Art: Studies of Authors Classic and Modern,
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Update of an earlier, uncited essay.