Realizing that our minds control our bodies while our bodies reflect our minds amounts to understanding the most fundamental aspects of ourselves. It further equals a comprehension of the relationship between our “tools.” And since the mind and body are interrelated, this understanding makes it easier to see why coordinating them is a practical way of using these tools to greatest effect—a way of using the mind and body to live our lives as art.
That little guy, said Boris in the car on the way to Antwerp. You know the painter saw him-he wasn't painting that bird from his mind, you know? That's a real little guy, chained up on the wall, there. If I saw him mixed up with dozen other birds all the same kind, I could pick him out, no problem.And he's right. So could I. And if I could go back in time I'd clip the chain in a heartbeat and never care a minute that the picture was never painted.
In one of the Upanishads it says, when the glow of a sunset holds you and you say 'Aha,' that is the recognition of the divinity. And when you say 'Aha' to an art object, that is a recognition of divinity. And what divinity is it? It is your divinity, which is the only divinity there is. We are all phenomenal manifestations of a divine will to live, and that will and the consciousness of life is one in all of us, and that is what artwork expresses.
Humans had built a world inside the world, which reflected it in pretty much the same way as a drop of water reflected the landscape. And yet ... and yet ...Inside this little world they had taken pains to put all the things you might think they would want to escape from — hatred, fear, tyranny, and so forth. Death was intrigued. They thought they wanted to be taken out of themselves, and every art humans dreamt up took them further in. He was fascinated.
In a way, her strangeness, her naivete, her craving for the other half of her equation was the consequence of idle imagination. Had she paints, or clay, or knew the discipline of the dance, or strings; had she anything to engage her tremendous curiosity and her gift for metaphor, she might have exchanged the restlessness and preoccupation with whim for an activity that provided her with all she yearned for. And like any artist with no art from, she became dangerous.
Transcendental artists are messengers. Their symbolic vocabulary originates from the infinite wisdom of higher spheres, in a non-referential time/space continuum... the way of the shaman. The presence of glyphs speaks a universal language of the soulthat transcends words. If one considers the notion of parallel realities and the plurality of dimensional realms, the premise of art as "consciousness-provoking vessel" can be viewed as an organic and natural occurrence.
One thing more, Leon. You say that life is meaningless, but I believe it's life that's sacred. I talk about art and sex because they're the most intense life experiences I know, so I feel they must be sacred too. They let us experience the values we've chosen for our lives in one exquisite not of pleasure exactly but of oneness with all of existence and with our own personal relationship to it. Art says: "This is Life." Sex says: "This is Living.
(The Mona Lisa), that really is the ugliest portrait I’ve seen, the only thing that supposedly makes it famous is the mystery behind it,” Katherine admitted as she remembered her trips to the Louvre and how she shook her head at the poor tourists crowding around to see a jaundiced, eyebrow-less lady that reminded her of tight-lipped Washington on the dollar bill. Surely, they could have chosen a better portrait of the First President for their currency?
She thought of all the people in all the paintings she had seen that day, not just Father's, in all the paintings of the world, in fact. Their eyes, the particular turn of a head, their loneliness or suffering or grief was borrowed by an artist to be seen by other people throughout the years who would never see them face to face. People who would be that close to her, she thought, a matter of a few arms' lengths, looking, looking, and they would never know her.
His whole being, his whole life was awakened in one instant, as if youth returned to him, as if the extinguished sparks of talent blazed up again. The blindfold suddenly fell from his eyes. God! to ruin the best years of his youth so mercilessly; to destroy, to extinguish the spark of fire that had perhaps flickered in his breast, that perhaps would have developed by now into greatness and beauty, that perhaps would also have elicited tears of amazement and gratitude!
Typical artist,' said Granny. 'He just painted the showy stuff in the front... And what about these cherubs? We're not going to get them too, are we? I don't like to see little babies flying through the air.''They turn up in a lot of old paintings,' said Nanny Ogg. 'They put them in to show it's Art and not just naughty pictures of ladies with not many clothes on.''Well, they're not fooling ME,' said Granny Weatherwax.
There is a LOT of bad news every day. The world seems to be getting more and more crazy. So every time you see some bad news, go do something nice for someone or go create something. Write a poem or a song, draw or paint a picture, do something nice for a stranger, even something as simple as complimenting a stranger's outfit or doling out extra smiles during your day. We have to balance out the evil of the world somehow. As artists we are most well equipped to do so!
I hated [the commercial art studio] because advertising is telling lies, basically, making crap goods look terrific, and I felt I was so privileged to be an artist anyway, why was I prostituting myself on doing this sort of rubbish? So when I left there, I suppose after about five or six years, I then went to the other extreme and started telling to me what seemed to me at the time the ultra-truth about the world around me - social life, and the politicians, and so forth.
There is a LOT of bad news every day. The world seems to be getting more and more crazy. So every time you see some bad news, go do something nice for someone or go create something. Write a poem or a song, draw or paint a picture, do something nice for a stranger, even something as simple as complimenting a stranger's outfit or doling out extra smiles during your day. We have to balance out the evil of the world somehow. As artists we are most well equipped to do so!
One thing more, Leon. You say that life is meaningless, but I believe it's life that's sacred. I talk about art and sex because they're the most intense life experiences I know, so I feel they must be sacred too. They let us experience the values we've chosen for our lives in one exquisite moment not of pleasure exactly but of oneness with all of existence and with our own personal relationship to it. Art says: "This is Life." Sex says: "This is Living.
