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quotes I warm to you are trying to intellectualise something -
desparately. And you are wasting your time... That's not a way of understanding;
to make a mini-logic. Create something, perfect it to be
yours for all time; for everything else you possess will fall to one or another master after you are dead, but this will never cease to be yours once it
has come into being. There was nothing to do but
make heads. It was a matter of eating, and this was the only way I know of
making money... The problems of portraiture interested me: the confluence of
personality and sculpture where the concentration of characteristics and
identity, of sensibility and type, of style, even, belonged, I thought, more to
the sitter or his race, than to the sculptor. Or if to the sculptor only as the
medium of expression, limited in form, as is a sonnet. It was a communion with
people I was interested in. Portraits were a gregariousness.
We are forever comparing the world perceived
by our senses with the world of the model in our minds. When the match is good
we accept this as reality. James Lovelock: both from 'The Vanishing Face of Gaia' (2009)
the
artistic efforts of this century end in a
wet fart of faddery, flim-flam and self-indulgence
Ben Nicholson, who, like all the great
artists of the past is something of a mystic, believes there is a reality
underlying appearances and that it is his business, by giving material form to
his intuition of it, to express the essential nature of this reality. He does
not draw that intuition of reality out of a vacuum, but out of a mind attuned
to the specific forms of nature - a mind which has stored within it a full
awareness
of the proportions and harmonies inherent in all natural phenomena,
in the universe itself. Art has no function. It is
not necessary. It has nothing to do with what anyone wants you to do or wants it
to be, nothing but you and itself. The work generates itself and ideas and
progress and learning come out of doing the work in a particular way. Creative art
is a learning process for the artist and not a description of
what is already known. An audience is always warming but it must never be
necessary to your work. The work needs concentration and one is often exhausted
by it. It takes so much effort just to begin and although going on is mostly a
pleasure it is also a great effort. The only thing for a creative artist to
do is to do his chosen work. But really there is no choice. Nobody chooses. The
only thing left for a creative artist to do is to do his chosen
work in spite of everything and regardless of anything because when living draws
to its end there are no excuses he can make to himself or to anyone else for not
having done it. Either he did do it or he did not do it and very often he did
not. Alas very often he did not. talent is long patience It was wise as well as witty of our friend
Atilius to say that it is better to have no work to do than to work at nothing.
the majesty of thought-worn faces All beautiful work is the work done by the work itself - Helen Pinchcombe (1908-2004) We must not try to make materials speak our language; we must go with them to the point where others will
understand their language - Constantin Brancusi (I would put Pisano among them because of his understanding of life and people...) If you asked me how I would judge great artists, it would not be because they were clever in drawing or carving or in painting or as designers; something of these qualities they must naturally have, but their real greatness, to me, lies, in their humanity. (Henry Moore, 1969, in his introduction to Michael Ayrton's book on Giovanni Pisano) Artists must deform to emphasise emotional essence, yet not in such a way to lose contact with reality. Only
when I see something to be done in abstract forms that better conveys my meaning than natural forms, do I use it -
Jacob Epstein I seemed to get full of green and had to paint and paint green until I got the green out of my system - Pablo
Picasso All a poet can do today is to warn. That is why all true poets must be truthful - Wilfrid Owen Beauty is absolute balance - Constantin Brancusi Use things found by divine chance - this is the only thing - this magic spark - that counts in art - Joan Miro All forms that exist in the universe can be found in the human
figure - Michelangelo Buonarroti I work without a theory.. my art is primarily organic and instinctive rather than conceptual. I am conscious
only of the forces I use, and I am driven by an idea that I really only grasp as it grows with the picture Perhaps what we call perfection in art… is no more than than the sense of wanting or finding in a human work
that certainty of execution, that inner necessity, that indissoluble, reciprocal union between design and matter, which I find in the humblest seashell -
Paul Valery Portraits - any picture of a person who knows their picture is being taken - are my favourite subject. I don’t
see the point of photographing trees or rocks because they’re there and anyone can capture them if they are prepared to hang around and wait for the light - David Bailey 2005 (paraphrased
from Observer article) portraits... range between truth and aggrandisement (paraphrased) - Brian Sewell; Radio 4, 2006 I would remind you that motor cars and hunters are passing things and drop into wreckage - but a bust outlasts Rome - advisor to Lady Cunard, regarding sitting for Jacob Epstein, 1906 to die is to go into the (Jung) Collective Unconscious, to lose oneself in order to be transformed into form, pure form... Herman Hesse, in conversation with Miguel Serrano, 1950s Words are really a mask. They rarely express the true meaning. If you can live in pure fantasy then you don't need religion since with fantasy you can understand that after death, man is reincorporated into the universe. Once again I will say it is not important to know there is something beyond this life. What counts is having done the right sort of work; if that is right then everything else will be all right - Herman Hesse in conversation with Miguel Serrano, 1961 (Significant in that Humankind has evolved with) This unique awareness is the product of our ability to make 'images'. Of all the image-making activities, the outcome of bifocal vision, thumb and pronating wrist is the most 'retainable' form of communication. Sound, sign and gesture are more immediate but are lost in the ether as they are produced. (The modern world) The Sculptor now presents the heroic figure of humanity; showing us to be the supreme physical animal. Or power is akin to God and we are seen to bend the natural order at our will. Nothing is beyond the scope of humankind/ The Spirit of Sculpture is no longer a natural phenomenon but a contrived technique to demonstrate skill and power. The Sculptor produces the likeness of ourselves as a mirror to our self-esteem. The
Sculptor who creates images for the next phase will be seen by future
generations and in retrospect, as having been 'ahead of his or her time'. By
comparison, the sculptor who reflects the contemporary scene will be popular and
applauded in his own time. For (Vincent) Woropay (1951-2002) sculpture was an alchemical process. What mattered, finally, was the aura the work generated rather than its meaning, although the work might be a compound of phrases from history, from the language of forms, from science or from literature. Anthony Howell in The Guardian obituary 5/7/02 even as a child I had had at strange intervals a fondness for observing strange forms in nature, not so much examining them as surrendering to their magic, their oblique message..... The consideration of such images as I have mentioned, the surrender to odd, irrational forms in nature produces in us a sense of harmony of our inner being with the will which has been responsible for these shapes. Soon we become aware to think of them being our own moods, our own creations; we see the boundaries between us and nature quiver and dissolve... Portraiture
was beyond my powers; I wanted to start with something else and so I painted
ornaments.... and became completely immersed in this game and was happy as a
child with a paint box. Finally I began on my portrait of Beatrice. I spoilt a
number of sheets of paper and threw them away. The more I endeavoured to capture
the features of the girl... the less successful I was. Finally I gave up the
attempt and contented with painting a face from my imagination and ideas that
rose spontaneously as I dipped my brush in the paint. It was a dream face which
emerged and I was not satisfied with it. Yet I persisted with the experiment and
with every new sketch approached the type more nearly even if it was still far
from reality. I grew more accustomed to drawing lines idly with my pencil and
colouring areas, without any model in mind except whatever found its way onto
the paper from my subconscious and took shape in these half-serious scrawls. At
length one day, almost without knowing, I produced a portrait which expressed
something more definite than the previous ones. (...) It was impressive and
hinted at a secret inner life. I became conscious of a strange impression as I
sat before (it); it resembled a kind of god-image... this face had some message
for me; it belonged to me. I believe in those
figures. They are only scribbled little things but they're already very much
there. ...it doesn't make a lot of difference what people think. I just hope there's
something real here to cling to, because nothing else matters. out
of the millions of pebbles I passed in walking along the shore, I choose out to
see with excitement only those which fit with my existing form-interest at the
time. A different thing happens if I sit down and examine a handful one by one.
I may then extend my form-experience more, by giving my mind time to become
conditioned to a new shape. After
all, it is not ignorance which damages the clarity of our portraits, but the
accumulation of knowledge. For
some writers, it is precisely being empty of meaning that makes music good.
Meaning limits. To mean one thing is to exclude everything else. The beautiful object must be admired in and for itself. Further it is its pure form that we must admire, not its colour or, even worse, its smell as these are mere sensuous pleasures; Kant's 'charms'. Colour is a mere accessory. (referring to Kant's Critique of Judgement, 1790) all from: 'What Good are the Arts?' John Carey 2005 We left the
theatre slightly dazed, but almost moved. The performance had satisfied our
deepest feelings; it had been improvised in a few days, and this was noticeable;
it was a home made performance, unpretentious, puritanical, often childish. Yet
it presupposed something not improvised, but deep-rooted and robust; a youthful
intense native capacity for joy and self-expression, a loving and friendly
capacity with the stage and with the audience a long way removed from empty
exhibitionism or intellectual abstractions, from conventionality or tired
imitations. Consequently, within its limits, it had been a warm, alive
performance, not vulgar, not commonplace, but generously free and
self-assertive.
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