Untitled, 24″ x 24″ chromogenic print, edition of 5

* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.

We most certainly need to test ourselves against the most extreme possibilities, just as we are probably obligated not to express, share, and impart the most extreme possibility before it has entered the work of art.  As something unique that no other person would and should understand, as one’s personal madness, so to speak, it has to enter into the work to attain its validity and to reveal there an internal law, like primary patterns that become visible only in the transparency of artistic creation.  There exist nonetheless two freedoms to express oneself that seem to me the ultimate possibilities:  one in the presence of the created object, and the other within one’s actual daily life where one can show another person what one has become through work, and where one may in this way mutually support and help and (here understood humbly) admire one another.  In either case, however, it is necessary to show results, and it is neither lack of confidence nor lack of intimacy nor a gesture of exclusion if on does not reveal the tools of one’s personal becoming that are marked by so many confusing and tortuous traits, which are valid only for one’s own use.

Ulrich Baer, editor, The Wisdom of Rilke

Comments are welcome!