William Blake

"I must create a system or be enslaved by another mans; I will not reason and compare: my business is to create."

Harold Rosenberg,

wrote in Criticism and its Premises:

"Art criticism today is beset by art historians turned inside out to function as prophets of so-called inevitable trends. A determinism similar to that projected into the evolution of past styles is clamped upon art in the making. In this parody of art history, value judgments are deduced from a presumed logic of development, and an ultimatum is issued to artists either to accommodate themselves to these values or be banned from the art of the future."

Heidegger

...Le devoir du philosophe. comme celui de l'artiste et du grand amoureux, est d'ècouter battre le coeur de l'être, cette pulsation sourde, de la faire entendre aux autres.

Prince Albert

The works of art, by being publicly exhibited and offered for sale, are becoming articles of trade, following as such the unreasoning laws of markets and fashion; and public and even private patronage is swayed by their tyrannical influence.

Pablo Picasso

Art is a finger up the bourgeoisie ass.

G. I. Gurdjieff

In Search of the Miraculous

To define what I call objective Art is difficult, first of all because you ascribe to subjective art the characteristics of objective art, and secondly because when you happen upon objective works of art you take them as being on the same level as subjective works of art... In subjective art everything is accidental. The artist, as I have already said, does not create; with him "it creates itself." This means that he is in the power of ideas, thoughts, and moods which he himself does not understand and over which he has no control whatever. They rule him and they express themselves in one form or another. And when they have accidentally taken this or that form, this form just as accidentally produces on man this or that action according to his mood, tastes, habits, the nature of the hypnosis under which he lives, and so on. There is nothing invariable; nothing is definite here. In objective art there is nothing indefinite.

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Views from the real World

The Keys to all the ancient Arts are lost, were lost many centuries ago. And therefore there is no longer a sacred art embodying laws of the Great Knowledge, and so serving to influence the instincts of the multitude.

     There are no creators today. The contemporary priests of art do not create but imitate. They run after beauty and likeness or what is called originality, without possessing even the necessary knowledge. Not knowing, and not being able to do anything, since they are groping in the dark, they are praised by the crowd, which places them on a pedestal. Sacred art vanished and left behind only the halo which surrounded its servants. All the current words about the divine spark, talent, genius, creation, sacred art, have no solid basis - they are anachronisms. What are these talents? We will talk about them on some suitable occasion.

     Either the shoemaker's craft must be called art, or all contemporary art must be called craft. In what way is a shoemaker sewing fashionable custom shoes of beautiful design inferior to an artist who pursues the aim of imitation or originality? With knowledge, the sewing of shoes may be sacred art too, but without it, a priest of contemporary art is worse than a cobbler.

Dominique Nourry

sur "Grande Jeu'" de Roger-Gilbert Lecomte et Rene Daumal

..."Comment le Poete, investi dans les societes traditionnelles d'un pouvoir religieux, au sens etymologique du terme, n'entrerait-il pas en guerre contre une societe vouee au seul profit et s'appuyant pour ce faire sur les apories du positivisme ou d'un materialisme primaire?"

Kahlil Gibran

Art arises when the secret vision of the artist and the manifestation of nature agree to find new shapes.

Benedetto Croce

Art is ruled uniquely by the imagination.

Wu Guan-Zhong

Art is like a kite. You have to pull the string hard in order to stretch it to its limit, but you don't want to pull it so hard that you break the thread, because the thread connects you to the land and its peoples.

Rene Magritte

Art evokes the mystery without which the world would not exist.

Friedrich Nietzsche

We have art so that we may not perish by the truth.

Curtis Verdun

Art is the only means by which one soul can truly touch another.

Gino Severini

Art is nothing but humanized science.

Egon Schiele

Art cannot be modern, art is timeless.

George Santayana

Art is delayed echo.

Hap Hagood

Art - Inspired by nature, born of the soul.

Suzanne Langer

Art is the objectification of feeling, and the subjectification of nature.

Federico Fellini

All art is autobiographical; the pearl is the oyster's autobiography.

John Fowles

Science disembodies; art embodies.

Zoltan Galos

This continuous monologue that seeks to become a dialogue...

Ron Gang

Art is a language that can transcend words. It can convey some of the non-verbal consciousness of the artist to the viewer.

7. G.W. Hegel (1770 - 11831)
   

8. H.on the Philosophy of Fine Art
   

There are 3 factors determining a work of art;

1. A work of art is not produced by Nature; it is brought into being by the agency of man.

2. It is created essentially for man,and it is addressed to his senses

3. It contains an end bound up with it.

With regard to the first factor; a work of art cannot be imitated by mere dexterity, art is an activity of the soul, constrained to work out of its own wealth, and to bring before the mind's eye a wholly other and far richer content; a unique creation.

The essential point to maintain is that although talent and genius imply natural power, yet it is indispensable that

(a.) this power be thoughtfully cultivated

(b.) reflection should be brought to bear on the particular way it is exercised

(c.) it should be kept alive with use and practice in actual work.

A work of art possesses a purely technical side- that of craft. This is most obvious in architecture and sculpture, less so in painting and music, least in poetry. Added to this the more exalted the rank of the artist the more profoundly he ought to portray depths of soul and mind. Study is the means by which the artist brings to consciousness such a content.

Is art inferior to Nature?

Art originates in the human spirit, it has received the baptism of the hman mind and soul of man. The spiritual values are siezed in the work of art and emphasized with greater purity and clarity than is possible in ordinary reality, therefore the work of art is greater.

What is the human need that stimulates art production?

Man is a thinking consciousness,; he makes explicit to himself all that exists. He has a need to bring himself in his own inner life to consciousness. He needs to assert himself in that which is presented him in immediacy, external to himself,and by doing so at the same time to recognize himself therein.This purpose he achieves by the alteration he effects in external objects, upon which he imprints the seal of his inner life.He does this in order that he may divest the world of its alienation from himself.

A boy throws stones into a stream, and then looks with wonder at the circles which follow in the water,seeing there something of hs own doing. This need runs through everything up to the level of art.

Man satisfies his spirit by making explicit to his inner life all that exists, as well as further giving a realized external embodiment to the self thus made explicit. And by this reduplication of what is his own he places before the vision and within the cognition of himself and others what is within him.

The second factor ; art is addressed to man's senses. Writers have asked what feelings art ought to excite, But feelings are subjective and passing, although powerful at the time, which is why people are so proud of having emotions. The trouble is that they do not attempt to study their emotions, which would help by creating thereby a distance from them. Art can give this distance, because by depicting emotions, it helps the onlooker towards the study of his own emotions.

Is art there to excite a feeling for beauty? To appreciate beauty people have cultivated taste, but taste is superficial, and cannot grasp the real profoundity of art.Art scholarship is too often concerned only with externals. Art therefore is not just for the senses. The mind is intended to be affected as well and to receive some kind of satisfaction in it. The creative imagination of a true artist is the imagination of a great mind and a big heart, it grasps the profoundest and most embracing human interests in the wholly definite presentation of imagery borrowed from objective experience.

The third factor; What is the end or aim of art?

Art is not meant to be a mere imitation of Nature-if it attempts a mere copy it will always lag a long way behind.Nevertheless the artist must learn the laws of Nature; of colour and chiaroscuro; of line and form.So what is the true content of art, and what is its aim? One opinion is that it is the the task of art to bring before us everything that the spirit of man can concieve. Is it the task of art to enflame man's passions and set them staggering about in a Bacchantic riot?

Sensual desire is more brutal and domineering the more it appropriates the entire man, so that he does not retain the power to separate himself, and loses touch with his universal capacity. Sometimes art showing such passions can awake man to the horror of his condition, he can see them outside himself, they come before him as objects rather than part of himself- he begins to be free from them as aliens.

In the same way, wailing women were hired at funerals, to create an external expression of grief, so that the sufferer can see his sorrow in an objective form and in reflecting on it, his sorrow is made lighter.So art, while still remaining in the sphere of the senses, faces man from the might of his sensitive experience by means of its representations.

It has been said that art's aim is the purification of passions, that it is its duty to instruct.Is this true? We have seen how art instructs by revealing to man the contents of his nature, but if art tries to bluntly teach,it becomes merely a maxim, with the art added on as bait. Thereby the very nature of art is abused. For a work of art ought not to bring before the creative imagination a content in its universality as such, but rather this universality under the mode of individual concreteness and distinctive sensuous particularity.

An external morality would limit the subject matter of art,but art, unlike history and the sciences,which have their subject matter determined, has a free choice in the selection of its subjects.So when we ask what is the end of art, we must be careful that we are not saying in effect , what is the use of art, as if art had to have a reason for existing other than for itself.

On the other hand we must maintain that it is art's function to reveal Truth under the mode of art's sensuous or material configuration. to display reconciled differences and therefore prove that it possesses its final aim in itself. For other ends such as instruction,purification, improvement, riches, fame and honour have nothing to do with a work of art as such, still less with the concept of art.

Karl Marx

Les oeuvres d'art representant le degre le plus eleve de la production spirituelle ne trouvent misericorde aux yeux du bourgeois que si elles sont presentees comme susceptibles de produire directement de la richesse materielle.

Ghyka

Nombre d'or

"Lorsque la puissance (divine) se fait un centre, elle crée un nouvel univers, microcosme, et tous les autres se déplacent pour gravier autour de lui".

"La forme est la loi en vertu de laquelle le motif se répete."

Johanes Itten

"..la contemplation de l'art ne (peut) s'appuyer sur des criteres rationels, qu'exigerait l'intersubjectivite, mais (doit) viser un noyau de réligiosité, qu'il s agit de fair vibrer.

L'essentiel n'est pas sa forme occasionelle comme nous la voyons, mais la vivacité même qui y sommeille.

Tout ce qui est vivant, se manifeste dans la forme. Les formes sont les receptacles des mouvements et le mouvement et l'essence même de la forme.

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Design and Form

I had studied oriental philosophy and concerned myself with Persian Mazdaism and Early Christianity. Thus I realised that our outward-directed scientific research and technology must be balanced by inward-directed thought and forces of the soul...

Copyright Jan Machalek