The process of translating comprises in its essence the whole secret of human understanding of the world and of social communication.
Hans-Georg GadamerRead
For both art and the historical sciences are ways of experiencing in which our own understanding of existence is immediately brought into play.
Interpretation
Art and historical sciences engage us personally, enhancing our understanding of existence.
This quote by Hans-Georg Gadamer suggests that both art and the historical sciences are not just passive mediums; they actively involve our personal experiences and interpretations. When we engage with these fields, our individual understanding and perception of existence come to the forefront, making the experience deeply personal and interactive.
In practice
In a lecture about the impact of art on society, one might quote Gadamer to illustrate how art shapes our understanding of existence.
The process of translating comprises in its essence the whole secret of human understanding of the world and of social communication.
The essence of the question is the opening up, and keeping open, of possibilities.
It is one of the primary motives of modern art that it wants to abolish the distance which the viewer, the consumer, the audience maintain vis-a-vis a work of art. There is no doubt that the leaders of the creative artists of the last 50 years concentrated their efforts mainly on eliminating that distance.
We cannot understand without wanting to understand, that is, without wanting to let something be said...Understanding does not occur when we try to intercept what someone wants to say to us by claiming we already know it.
It is the tyranny of hidden prejudices that makes us deaf to what speaks to us in tradition.
A cultured society that has fallen away from its religious traditions expects more from art than the aesthetic consciousness and the 'standpoint of art' can deliver. The Romantic desire for a new mythology... gives the artist and his task in the world the consciousness of a new consecration. He is something like a 'secular saviour' for his creations are expected to achieve on a small scale the propitiation of disaster for which an unsaved world hopes.
Today's photographers think differently. Many can't see real light anymore. They think only in terms of strobe - sure, it all looks beautiful but it's not really seeing. If you have the eyes to see it, the nuances of light are already there on the subject's face. If your thinking is confined to strobe light sources, your palette becomes very mean - which is the reason I photograph only in available light.
Experience was my only teacher; I knew little of the modern art movement. When I first saw the works of the Impressionists, van Gogh, van Dongen, and Fauves, I admired it. But I had to seek the true way alone.
An artist's concern is to capture beauty wherever he finds it.
Music has got to be useful for survival, or we would have gotten rid of it years ago.
In the early stages of creation of both art and science, everything in the mind is a story.
Why should the lamp or the house be an art object but not our life?
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