A Quote by Friedrich Nietzsche
Without art we would be nothing but foreground and live entirely in the spell of that perspective which makes what is closest at hand and most vulgar appear as if it were vast, and reality itself.
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Naturalistic art, as we know it, is an art which imitates the appearance of things, not as they are in reality, but as they appear at one moment from the point of view of a single spectator. This is the effect of perspective. Nothing of this sort existed in prehistory.
It would be most wholesome if for at least twenty years art historians were forbidden to refer to any derivations. If they were not allowed to account for a work of art mainly by tracing where it comes from, they would have to deal with it in and by itself--which is what they are most needed for.
And do you know, do you know that mankind can live without the Englishman, it can live without Germany, it can live only too well without the Russian man, it can live without science, without bread, and it only cannot live without beauty, for then there would be nothing at all to do in the world! The whole secret is here, the whole of history is here. Science itself would not stand for a minute without beauty
It's forgiveness that makes us what we are. Without forgiveness, our species would've annihilated itself in endless retributions. Without forgiveness, there would be no history. Without that hope, there would be no art, for every work of art is in some way an act of forgiveness. Without that dream, there would be no love, for every act of love is in some way a promise to forgive. We live on because we can love, and we love because we can forgive.
We have as many planes of speech as does a painting planes of perspective which create perspective in a phrase. The most important word stands out most vividly defined in the very foreground of the sound plane. Less important words create a series of deeper planes.
The dramatic art would appear to be rather a feminine art; it contains in itself all the artifices which belong to the province ofwoman: the desire to please, facility to express emotions and hide defects, and the faculty of assimilation which is the real essence of woman.
It is the thing that is most remote from the world in which we ourselves live that attracts us most. We are under the spell of what is distant from us. It is not our nature to desire passionately what is near at hand.
I believe that magic is art, and that art, whether that be music, writing, sculpture, or any other form, is literally magic. Art is, like magic, the science of manipulating symbols, words or images, to achieve changes in consciousness… Indeed to cast a spell is simply to spell, to manipulate words, to change peoples consciousness, and this is why I believe that an artist or writer is the closest thing in the contemporary world to a shaman.
The human condition is such that pain and effort are not just symptoms which can be removed without changing life itself; they are the modes in which life itself, together with the necessity to which it is bound, makes itself felt. For mortals, the easy life of the gods would be a lifeless life.
The battle of life is, in most cases, fought uphill; and to win it without a struggle were perhaps to win it without honor. If there were no difficulties there would be no success; if there were nothing to struggle for, there would be nothing to be achieved.
What I need is perspective. The illusion of depth, created by a frame, the arrangement of shapes on a flat surface. Perspective is necessary. Otherwise there are only two dimensions. Otherwise you live with your face squashed up against a wall, everything a huge foreground, of details, close-ups, hairs, the weave of the bedsheet, the molecules of the face. Your own skin like a map, a diagram of futility, criscrossed with tiny roads that lead nowhere. Otherwise you live in the moment. Which is not where I want to be.
Without the letters of condolence, telegrams of congratulations and even occasional postcards, the friendship of a separated friend is not a social reality. It has no existence without the rites of friendship. Social rituals create a reality which would be nothing without them.
But the nature of our civilized minds is so detached from the senses, even in the vulgar, by abstractions corresponding to all theabstract terms our languages abound in, and so refined by the art of writing, and as it were spiritualized by the use of numbers, because even the vulgar know how to count and reckon, that it is naturally beyond our power to form the vast image of this mistress called "Sympathetic Nature.
Reality cannot be photographed or represented. We can only create a new reality. And my dilemma is how to make art out of a reality that most of us would rather ignore. How do you make art when the world is in such a state? My answer has been to make mistakes, but when I can, to choose them. We are all guilt victims choosing mistakes, and as Godard said, the very definition of the human condition is in the mise-en-scéne itself.
The work of art is a revelation of the innate goodness of matter. Matter narcissistically mirrors itself in art, with the artist's hidden hand that holds the mirror up, the impersonal mechanism by means of which matter makes its perfection manifest.
The first interviews I gave were entirely unpleasant. You have people trying to trip you up with impolite questions that have nothing to do with the books. It's simply vulgar curiosity, and I won't have it.
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