There is an angel imprisoned in it and I must set it free.
Interpretation
Michelangelo believed that artistic creations are about uncovering the beauty within rather than merely shaping material.
This quote by Michelangelo suggests that every block of stone contains a hidden beauty, such as an angel, waiting to be revealed through the artist's skill and vision. It emphasizes the idea that art is not just a product of creativity, but rather a process of discovery where the artist must liberate the inherent form within the medium.
In practice
In a presentation about the creative process, one could use this quote to illustrate the idea of revealing inner beauty through art.
The art of creation lies in the gift of perceiving the particular and generalizing it, thus creating the particular again. It is therefore a powerful transforming force and a generator of creative solutions in relation to a given problem.
The best artist has that thought alone Which is contained within the marble shell; The sculptor's hand can only break the spell To free the figures slumbering in the stone.
Art lives on constraint and dies of freedom.
If it be true that any beautiful thing raises the pure and just desire of man from earth to God, the eternal fount of all, such I believe my love.
Every beauty which is seen here by persons of perception resembles more than anything else that celestial source from which we all are come.
If in my youth I had realized that the sustaining splendour of beauty of with which I was in love would one day flood back into my heart, there to ignite a flame that would torture me without end, how gladly would I have put out the light in my eyes.
Any woodthrush shows it - he sings, not to fill the world, but because he is filled.
So long as I have questions to which there are no answers, I shall go on writing.
When the target audience is American teenage kids, you can have problems. My generation prized really fine acting and writing. Sometimes you have to go back to the basic principles which underpin great visual comedy.
Well, you know, with every character, if you're going to expose yourself, you've got to figure out every detail that you're going to play. So there's no character that you can just go put on his shirt and be fully prepared.
Poetry consists in a rhyming dictionary and things seen.
Television shows are not like cars or operating systems, and they are not best made by engineers or coders in the same assembly line manner as consumer products which need to be of uniform size, shape, and quality.
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