If there’s a thing, a scene, maybe, an image that you want to see real bad, that you need to see but it doesn’t exist in the world around you, at least not in the form that you envision, then you create it so that you can look at it and have it around, or show it to other people who wouldn’t have imagined it because they perceive reality in a more narrow, predictable way. And that’s it. That’s all an artist does.
It is sometimes said that the tragedy of an artist's life is that he cannot realize his ideal. But the true tragedy that dogs the steps of most artists is that they realize their ideal too absolutely. For, when the ideal is realized, it is robbed of its wonder and its mystery, and becomes simply a new starting point for an ideal that is other than itself. This is why music is the perfect type of art. Music can never reveal its ultimate secret.
What makes an amazing artist? It's not his ability to impress but his skill in touching people's lives through his craft. When he does even a simple piece of work with not much adornment (fanciful words, colors) and it moves the hearts of his audience, it is considered to be a masterpiece! A true artist lets people enter a different kind of sanctuary out of the conventional. What makes his work standout is its uniqueness -if it has a HEART.
I think he is the ornament of society! Oh, there is not just one role for the artist in society. He has many roles and he has a different role as society changes, and in different societies . . . He can be a seer at times, and in the eighteenth century he was the satirist, the artist stepping back and holding up the mirror to society. Moreover, I don’t think the same kind of person is necessarily an artist or a poet in one century as another.
... because one day, maybe one day, if I learned how to write clear enough, sing loud enough, be strong enough, I could explain myself in a way that made sense and then maybe one day, one day, someone out there would hear and recognise her or himself and I could let them know that they are not alone. Just like that song I had on repeat for several nights as I walked lonely on empty streets, let me know that I was notaloneand that’s how it starts.
My hands are flowing like sunlight. The shapes and colors are astounding. I don't understand these images that are empowering me. My brush touches the canvas like photons to the earth, and a new world develops, free from my control, yet intrinsically dependent upon me. I am sweating with elation. I have no idea what I am doing, or what it is my hands are trying to see. There is so much strength in this clarity I am overpowered by the independence of it.
Inspiration comes unawares, from unaccountable sources that have nothing to do with planning or intelligence. Let it cool ever so slightly, and you are left, pen or brush in hand, with no inspiration at all. Gifted people need not, therefore, make a song and dance about being or supposing themselves superior. They simply happened to be born with that fortunate, subconscious equipment of theirs, and the mystery exists independently of intelligence or ambition.
The real importance of automatism lay in the fact that it led to a different relation between the artist and the creative act. Where the artist had traditionally been seen as someone who invents a personal world, bringing into being something unique to his own 'genius', the surrealists conceived themselves as explorers and researchers rather than 'artist' in the traditional sense and it was discovery rather than invention that became crucial for them.
De kunstenaar is een arbeider lijk gij en ik. Hij maakt schoonheid, en hij wordt daar meestal niet voor betaald. De kunstenaar leeft en sterft met de arbeider mee. Al waar de arbeider naar verlangt, tracht de kunstenaar nu reeds gestalte te geven. Zo is de schrijver niet een dwaas die van sterren en maneschijn zingt, maar een ziener, een profeet over hoe het zou kunnen zijn. Dat is zijn plicht, zoals het de plicht van de arbeider is om de kunstenaar tegemoet te komen.
The artistic bend is a sell-out. It's all truth, or it's no good. EIther write what's in the heart, all of it, the good, the bad, the ugly, the uglier, the privat and even more private and it's a book worth reading. Not willing to go there? Do yourself and the world a favor: Don't write it until you're ready to do so. Only then is it your truest artist being heard. And only then will the world want to hear what you have to say."-Wendy K. Williamson 9/25/14
It is the poet and philosopher who provide the community of objectives in which the artist participates. Their chief preoccupation, like the artist, is the expression in concrete form of their notions of reality. Like him, they deal with the verities of time and space, life and death, and the heights of exaltation as well as the depths of despair. The preoccupation with these eternal problems creates a common ground which transcends the disparity in the means used to achieve them.
As a kid I never knew what I wanted to be when I grow up, but the only thing I knew was that I wanted to create things. And then I wanted to be an astronaut. I would paint stars and the atmosphere and then frame and hang the universe up on my bedroom wall. A few years down the line while I was still stargazing, I came to realize that I’m halfway around the world chasing something and the whole time it’s in my backyard. From the very beginning I was who I always wanted to be.
هنر واقعی رسیدن به یک اثر زیبای بی نطیره به شرطی که هیچ اثری از خود هنرمند در کار دیده نشه!
The glory that is given to God by the works of his creation is what we call an “external glory.” It is something outside of God. It doesn’t actually add anything to God. It is very much like an artist who has a great talent for painting and a mind full of beautiful images. If the artist puts some of those images on canvas for people to look at and admire, it still hasn’t added anything to the artist himself. It hasn’t made him any better or more wonderful than he was before (p. 5).
There is nothing in the world which an artist cannot recreate into something poetic, ennobling. And why do we read these things? They are not facts, they do not improve our business skills, our techniques in manufacturing goods, the management of a home. That is what most of you will be doing anyway. We read these because they teach us about people, we can see ourselves in them, in their problems. And by seeing ourselves in them, we clarify ourselves, we explain ourselves to ourselves, so we can live with ourselves…
