no much

A few lines of text, a glance at an artwork, several bars of music, is all it takes to determine if you’re in the presence of a real artist.

art resists

An artist must live in a constant state of resistance.

handling details

…for we must bear in mind that, when we look at a landscape, or any other extensive object, the eye in fact embraces exactly only one thing, or point, at a time. Every object, but the particular one upon which our eyes are fixed at the moment, is noticed only in part….In a good picture, therefore, this rule is observed; and, and while the one object on which the eyes are intended to dwell in particular is worked out fully, surrounding objects and details are left much elaborate; witness Murillo’s best pictures.
[…]
Let it not be supposed, however, that I disclaim all details in drawing; I only beg for them in their proper place; for, according to the very true Turkish proverb:
“He who knows not the details knows not the whole.”
[…]
It is, therefore, a mistake to try and acquire at once a bold and rapid style; it can only come by study and by practice, since it is the result of being familiar with details. These need not always be told in the drawing, but there can be no good drawing without a thorough knowledge of them.

—S. C. Malan, Aphorisms on Drawing (Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans & Roberts, 1856)

[n.b.: Quite an interesting biography of a clergyman, polyglot, and largely self-taught painter, Solomon Caesar Malan.]

trainwreck artist

Did the poet really think that making his life a disaster would make him a great artist, or knowing that he was making a disaster of his life, did he justify his actions as being for the sake of his art?

[Thinking of John Berryman]

go for a walk

Paul Klee’s suggestion to ‘go for a walk with a line’, applies to poetry as well.

end work

Sometimes an artist will write or sing or paint something they know they can never exceed, and their creative life ends right there.

turn heads

The artist should develop a turn of mind that tends to turn things on their heads.

you walk out

Studio Ghosts

When you’re in the studio painting, there are a lot of people in there with you. Your teachers, friends, painters from history, critics…and one by one, if you’re really painting, they walk out. And if you’re really painting, you walk out.
                  --From a talk with Philip Guston

—Audrey Flack, Art & Soul: Notes on Creating (ARKANA/Penguin Group, 1986)

now new

Any artist will tell you he's really only interested in the stuff he's doing now. He will, always. It's true, and it should be like that.

—David Hockney, interview with Mark Feeney, "David Hockney keeps seeking new avenues of exploration," Boston Globe (26 February 2006)

coterminus

A work of art that had no afterlife beyond the death of its creator.

much greater thing

Almost every artist overestimates the impact and the influence of his/her art.

epigram

His favorite artist is KAWS,
doesn’t that say it all?

tooth and nail

An artist and a writer lived together harmoniously while their books and artwork battled for every inch of wall space.

critical making

All artists are critics by means of their making certain things rather than others, and by making those things in certain ways rather than others.

something that happens to you

[Alice] Neel liked quoting, with amusement, a strange remark made to her by Malcolm Cowley: “The trouble with you Alice, is you’re not romantic.” In truth, she was capital R Romantic in a very late, modern way: starched by experience. Art was not a refuge for her—she had no refuges, only respites. It was her life lived by other means, in which she enjoyed some moment-to-moment control. Rather than reflect on the preemptory realities of other people, she took them head-on, turning their force around and sending it back out. At times, every brushstroke can feel like a victory, against tall odds, of high humor fringed with deadly seriousness. Lots of celebrated twentieth-century art has seemed dated and tame lately. Not Neel’s, which, beyond being something to look at, is something that happens to you.

—Peter Schjeldahl, “Alice Neel,” Hold, Cold, Heavy, Light: 100 Art Writings, 1998-2018 (Abrams Press, 2019)

your one life

The audacious courage by which one lives a life wholly as an artist.

art of time and place

The true work of art...is not the work of the individual artist. It is time and it is place, as these perfect themselves.

—Wallace Stevens, Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination (Vintage, 1965).

[Last evening was the twenty-third annual Wallace Stevens Birthday Bash. Cole Swensen was the speaker and her presentation was titled, "Perhaps the Truth Depends." She took us on a journey of quotes and pictures related to Stevens' habit of walking, plus some related history of walking poets.]

art is

It is changing.

It has order.

It has variety.

It affects other things.

It is affected by other things.

It doesn’t have a specific place.

It doesn’t have a specific time.

Its boundaries are not fixed.

It may go unnoticed.

Part of it may also be part of something else.

Some of it is familiar.

Some of it is strange.

Some of it is unknown.

Knowing of it changes it.

To know of it is to be part of it.

Robert Barry 1970

[Robert Barry: An artist book (Karl Kerber Verlag – Bielfeld, 1986), edited by Erich Franz. Image: a typewritten single sheet of paper.]

words as medium

Not so much a poet as a text artist.

speck or flash

I begin my pictures under the effect of a shock that makes me escape from reality. The cause of this shock may be a tiny thread sticking up from the canvas, a falling drop of water, or print made by my finger on the shining surface of a table.

In any case, I need a point of departure, even if only a speck of dust or flash of light. This form produces a series of things, one giving birth to another.

And so a single thread can set a world in motion. I come to a world from something considered dead. And when I give it a title, it becomes even more alive.

Joan Miró, I Work Like a Gardener (Princeton Architectural Press, 2017), compiled by Yvon Taillandier, preface by Robert Lubar.