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.
Aesthetics has become too important to be left to the aesthetes. To succeed, hard-nosed engineers, real estate developers, and MBAs must take aesthetic communication, and aesthetic pleasure, seriously. We, their customers, demand it.
I paint the way someone bites his fingernails; for me, painting is a bad habit because I don't know nor can I do anything else.
I start with no preconceived idea - discovery excites me to focus - then rediscovery through the lens - final form of presentation seen on ground glass, the finished print previsioned completely in every detail of texture, movement, proportion, before exposure - the shutter's release automatically and finally fixes my conception, allowing no after manipulation - the ultimate end, the print, is but a duplication of all that I saw and felt through my camera.
Not-writing is a good deal worse than writing.
Even if the world ends, the Music will still survive...
I am uncompromising to the point of huge dissension in the studio. And it's served me very well. My theory and my philosophy is, 'Compromise breeds mediocrity.' Obviously, you have to pick your battles, and the more success an artist has, the more they want to be involved in their own career, which is not necessarily a good thing.
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