The
Hidden Sphere
(of
Artistic Concerns) Cecil Orion Touchon
Number
3
When
we place the mastercraftsmen
who
have preceded us upon a pedestal,
we
forget that we too
have
the same potential
and
therefore do not strive.(1)
When
we place too high of a value
on
the objects of art
collectors
begin to horde them for investment value,
museums
begin to protect them
for
their monetary value
and
start to seem like bank vaults.
Like
this, art loses its real value.
Therefore,
the mastercraftsman advocates
the
value of striving with humility and simplicity, (2)
The
value of working at one's craft
without
greedy ambition,
and
the value of avoiding the trap of trying
to
cleverly follow the fashionable.
footnotes
(1) Whoever the
master
is whom you prefer, this must only be a directive for you. Otherwise
you
will never be anything but an imitator. With any feeling for nature
whatever,
and some fortunate gifts - and you have some - you should be able to
dissociate
yourself; advice, the methods of another, must not make you change your
own manner of feeling. Should you at the moment be under the influence
of one who is older than you, believe me as soon as you begin to feel
yourself,
your own emotions will finally emerge and conquer their place in the
sun
- get the upper hand - confidence...
Paul
Cezanne,
from a letter to Charles Camoin, 1904
Your desire to find a
moral, an intellectual point of support in the works [of the old
Venetian
masters], which assuredly we shall never surpass, makes you continually
on the qui vive, searching incessantly for the way, [which ] you dimly
apprehend, [that] will lead you surely to the recognition, in front of
nature,
of what your means of expression are; and the day you will have found
them,
be convinced that you will find also, without effort, and in front of
nature,
the means employed by the four or five great ones of Venice.... During
this period [of experimentation] we turn towards the admirable works
that
have been handed down to us through-out the ages, where we find
comfort,
a support such as a plank is for a bather.
(2)
A certain pride in the conception of a work and extreme humility in its
realization. Extreme pride and extreme humility. But both an extreme
pride
in concieving it and an extreme humility in realizing it are necessary.
Joan
Miro, letter to S. Gasch, Montroig, Aug. 16, 1928
Humility
collects the soul into a sinle point by the power of silence. A truely
humble man has no desire to be known or admired by others, but wishes
to
plunge from himself into himself, to become nothing, as if he had never
been born. When he is completely hidden to himself in himself, he is
completely
with God.
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