« April 2006 | Main | June 2006 »
May 31, 2006
nachtwey on photographs
A photograph can enter the mind and reach the heart with the power of immediacy. It affects that part of the psyche where meaning is less dependent upon words and makes an impact more visceral, more elemental, close to raw experience.
James Nachtwey
Posted by amin at 12:25 AM
May 24, 2006
one thing is needful...
One thing is needful-to "give style" to one's character-a great an rare art! It is practiced by those who survey all the strengths and weaknesses of their nature and then fit them into an artistic plan until every one of them appears as art and reason and even weaknesses delight the eye. Here a large mass of second nature has been added: there a piece of original nature has been removed-both times through long practice and daily work at it. Here the ugly that could not be removed is concealed; there it has been reinterpreted and made sublime.
Nietzsche - The Gay Science
Posted by amin at 12:27 AM
May 16, 2006
i wish i could play the recorder
I wish I could play the recorder better. I'd like to play so that everyone would be enchanted by it. Beautifully. slowly-with feeling, so that the listeners would cry over it. I wish I could. I would play most beautifully for her, I would play my whole soul into it, so that she would cry either of joy or sadness. I would conquer her family with my playing, all the relatives, I would be a beloved boy, and they would not regard me as such a good-for-nothing. I can't help that I have this kind of temperament. I really can't.
Andre Kertesz
Posted by amin at 4:42 PM
May 14, 2006
guaguin on the great artist
For a long time the philosophers have been reasoning about phenomena which seem supernatural to us and which we nonetheless feel. That word is the key to everything. The Raphaels and others, people in whom feeling was formulated long before thought, were unable, even while studying, to destroy that feeling and so could remain artists. In my opinion the great artist is the embodiment of the greatest intelligence. The sentiments and renderings which occur to him are the most delicate and, consequently, the most invisible products of the human brain.
Paul Guaguin - The Writings of a Savage
Posted by amin at 11:44 PM
May 12, 2006
gauguin on van gogh
One of the miners, a terribly mutilated man, his face burned, was taken in by Vincent. "And yet he's done for," said the company doctor, "unless a miracle happens or he receives the most intensive motherly care. No, it's folly to look after him."
Vincent believed in miracles, in motherliness.
The madman watched for frothy days at the dying man’s bedside; he vigilantly prevented air from reaching the man's wounds and paid for medicines. A person bringing consolation, he talked. His mad enterprise made a dead man, a Christian, live again.
Paul Gauguin
Posted by amin at 4:14 PM
May 3, 2006
happy endings
My pictures never end. They never have a simple solution…Because there are no “solutions” in the audience’s lives…By giving happy endings to films, you goad your audience into going on living in a trite, bland manner, because they are now sure that sometime, somewhere, something happy is going to happen to them, too, and without them having to do anything about it. Conversely, by not serving them the happy ending on a platter, you can make them think; you can remove some of the smug security. Then they will have to find their own answers.
Federico Fellini
Posted by amin at 9:51 PM
May 2, 2006
the artist’s task
The artist’s task is not to make people moved or indignant at metaphorical situations, but to make them reflect on what they and others are doing, on the real things, as they are.
The world goes on getting worse because we are not truly aware of reality. The most authentic or moral position anyone can take up today is to engage himself in tracing the roots of this problem. The keenest necessity of our time is ‘social attention’.
Cesar Zavattini
Posted by amin at 1:01 AM