Blog Archives
Pearls from artists* # 523

*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
How strange the human mind is! When I first began, I think I should have been willing to work at it from the top of a church steeple, whereas now, even to think of finishing requires a real effort. And all this, simply because I have been away from it for so long. It is the same with my picture and with everything else I do. There is always a thick crust to be broken before I can give my whole heart to anything; a stubborn piece of ground, as it were, that resists the attack of plough and hoe. But with a little perseverance the hardness suddenly gives and it becomes so rich in fruit and flowers that I am quite unable to gather them all.
The Journal of Eugene Delacroix edited by Hubert Wellington
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Pearls from artists* # 436
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Cassirer’s partial definition of art as symbolic language has dominated art studios in our [20th] century. A new history of culture anchored upon the work of art as a symbolic expression thus came into being. By these means art has been made to connect with the rest of history.
But the price has been high, for while studies of meaning received all our attention, another definition of art, as a system of formal relationships, thereby suffered neglect. This other definition matters more than meaning. In the same sense speech matters more than writing, because speech preceded writing, and because writing is but a special case of speech.
The other definition of art as form remains unfashionable, although every thinking person will accept it as a truism that no meaning can be conveyed without form. Every meaning requires a support, or a vehicle, or a holder. These are the bearers of meaning, and without them no meaning would cross from me to you, or from you to me, or indeed from any part of nature to any other part.
… The structural forms can be sensed independent of meaning. We know from linguistics in particular that the structural elements undergo more or less regular evolutions in time without relation to meaning, as when certain phonetic shifts in the history of cognate languages can be explained only by a hypothesis of regular change. Thus phoneme a occurring in an early stage of language, becomes phoneme b at a later stage, independently of meaning, and only under the rules governing the phonetic structure of the language. The regularity of these changes is such that the phonetic changes can be used to measure durations between recorded but undated examples of speech.
Similar regularities probably govern the formal infrastructure of every art. Whenever symbolic clusters appear, however, we see interferences that may disrupt the regular evolution of the formal system. An interference from visual images is present in almost all art. Even architecture, which is commonly thought to lack figural intention, is guided from one utterance to the next by the images of the admired buildings of the past, both far and near in time.
George Kubler in The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things
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Pearls from artists* # 397
* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Our species requires a greater capacity to see into the Real, not just the outer universe of the senses but also the inner cosmos of the psyche, the normally invisible dimensions. Near the end of his life, Jung said to an English journalist, “The only real danger that exists is man himself… His psyche should be studied because we are the origin of all coming evil.” It is a beautiful statement until the word studied comes up, at which point we are reminded that Jung at bottom was a rationalist: he refused to see that while psychology could talk brilliantly about the soul, it could never descend into its depths. For this we need imagination, madness, prophecy – art. We must understand that creative expression is not a pastime or distraction, but a psychonautic science in its own right. Allowed to operate in freedom, it can illuminate the darkness beyond our field of vision.
J.F. Martel in Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice: A Treatise, Critique, and Call to Action
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 168
* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
How strange the human mind is! When I first began, I think I should have been willing to work at it from the tops of a church steeple, whereas now, even to think of finishing requires a real effort. And all this, simply because I have been away from it for so long. It is the same with my picture and with everything else I do. There is always a thick crust to be broken before I can give my whole heart to anything; a stubborn piece of ground, as it were, that resists the attacks of plough and hoe. But with a little perseverance the hardness suddenly gives and it becomes so rich in fruit and flowers that I am quite unable to gather them all.
The Journal of Eugene Delacroix edited by Hubert Wellington
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 157
* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Only passion gives us a powerful emotion, a supreme strength and the enduring energy to fulfill our duty. It provides a stimulus, giving us hope and courage as well as stamina. The strength, love and joy passion gives us have no limitations. They are what drive us to sacrifice everything in order to achieve that which our passion requires. Passion is like a bribe from the gods, its great enthusiasm enticing us to do a particular work and to enjoy that more than anything else, without thought of the sacrifices and consequences.
Samuel Adoquei in Origin of Inspiration: Seven Short Essays for Creative People
Comments are welcome!