Drawing is the artist's most direct and spontaneous expression, a species of writing: it reveals, better than does painting, his true personality.
Edgar DegasRead
No art is less spontaneous than mine. What I do is the result of reflection and the study of the great masters.
Interpretation
Degas emphasizes the importance of thoughtful craftsmanship in art, rather than mere spontaneity.
In this quote, Edgar Degas reflects on his artistic process, asserting that his works are not born out of spontaneous inspiration but rather through careful reflection and an in-depth study of the great masters before him. This highlights the idea that great artistry requires dedication, critique, and an understanding of established techniques, suggesting that art is as much about learning and discipline as it is about instinct and emotion.
In practice
A critique session where students analyze their artistic influences.
Drawing is the artist's most direct and spontaneous expression, a species of writing: it reveals, better than does painting, his true personality.
Everyone has talent at twenty-five. The difficulty is to have it at fifty.
It is all very well to copy what one sees, but it is far better to draw what one now only sees in one's memory. That is a transformation in which imagination collaborates with memory.
The Dance instills in you something that sets you apart. Something heroic and remote.
You have to have a high conception, not of what you are doing, but of what you may do one day: without that, there's no point in working.
There is a kind of success that is indistinguishable from panic.
I started studying what the nature of a monument is and what a monument should be. And for the World War III memorial I designed a futile, almost terrifying passage that ends nowhere.
The beauty of jazz is that it can accommodate all styles. You can take jazz and put rock in it, and it's still jazz.
I find that kid actors are great reminders of the simplicity of acting. As you get older, you can sometimes complicate things a little more. You can become too aware of, 'Okay, this is the scene emotionally. This is where we need to be. We've got the climax coming up.' You can start to analyze it too much.
I've always believed that a dance evening energizes an audience, that an audience goes out feeling chemically stronger and more optimistic. This is what I understand about dance. And this is an important thing. We need this. Our culture needs it.
Every now and then I read a poem that does touch something in me, but I never turn to poetry for solace or pleasure in the way that I throw myself into prose.
Beauty? To me it is a word without sense because I do not know where its meaning comes from nor where it leads to.
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