What goes on in abstract art is the proclaiming of aesthetic principles... It is in our own time that we have become aware of pure aesthetic considerations. Art never can be imitation.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that art is about expressing aesthetic principles rather than merely imitating reality.
Hans Hofmann's quote highlights the essence of abstract art, suggesting that it focuses on conveying aesthetic principles rather than depicting the physical world. In contemporary times, there is an increased recognition of the importance of these pure aesthetic considerations, indicating a shift in how we perceive and value art. Hofmann asserts that true art transcends direct imitation, suggesting that its purpose lies in the expression of beauty and concept rather than representation.
In practice
During an art lecture, I referenced Hofmann's quote to illustrate the principles of abstract expressionism.
Color is a plastic means of creating intervals... color harmonics produced by special relationships, or tensions. We differentiate now between formal tensions and color tensions, just as we differentiate in music between counterpoint and harmony.
In nature, light creates the color. In the picture, color creates the light.
The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.
The whole world, as we experience it visually, comes to us through the mystic realm of color.
Colors must fit together as pieces in a puzzle or cogs in a wheel.
A work of art is a world in itself reflecting senses and emotions of the artist's world.
We find things beautiful because we recognize them and contrariwise we find things beautiful because their novelty surprises us.
The artist is the lover of nature; therefore he is her slave and her master.
The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless.
Nothing in art should seem accidental, not even movement
When a documentary filmmaker, working in the style that I do, suggests that there has been a shooting ratio of 40 hours to every one hour of finished film, that doesn't mean that the other 39 are bad.
With this mistake I deprived myself of the possibility to make a contribution to the treasury of chess art.
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