What is art? It is not just nature, it is nurtured nature. It is intelligence applied to what physical ability you have.
Interpretation
Art is a combination of natural inspiration and the skill developed through practice and intelligence.
In this quote, Rudolf Nureyev defines art as an extension of the natural world that is enhanced and shaped by human intelligence and effort. It emphasizes that while nature provides the raw material for artistic expression, it is the nurturing through creativity and skill that transforms these elements into art, highlighting the importance of both innate ability and learned technique in the creative process.
In practice
In a discussion about the nature of creativity in an art class.
I don't care if Margot is a Dame of the British Empire or older than myself. For me she represents eternal youth; there is an absolute musical quality in her beautiful body and phrasing. Because we are sincere and gifted, an intense abstract love is born between us every time we dance together.
For me, purity of movement wasn't enough. I needed expression, more intensity, more mind.
The main thing is dancing, and before it withers away from my body, I will keep dancing till the last moment, the last drop.
I approach dancing from a different angle than those who begin dancing at 8 or 9. Those who have studied from the beginning never question anything.
Technique is what you fall back on when you run out of inspiration.
When I miss class for one day, I know it. When I miss class for two days, my teacher knows it. When I miss class for three days, the audience knows it.
A playwright lives in an occupied country. And if you can't live that way you don't stay.
Freaks was a thing I photographed a lot. It was one of the first things I photographed and it had a terrific kind of excitement for me. I just used to adore them. I still do adore some of them. I don't quite mean they're my best friends but they made me feel a mixture of shame and awe.
When you rehearse a play, you spend four weeks with one goal in mind - to wean the actor away from you. You want the actor to become completely independent and to understand all the emotional and psychological moves within the character.
But I really resist categories β that naming is a closing down of meaning. Women's art, political art β those categorisations perpetuate a certain kind of marginality which I'm resistant to. But I absolutely define myself as a feminist.
Fiction cannot recite the numbing numbers, but it can be that witness, that memory. A storyteller can attempt to tell the human tale, can make a galaxy out of the chaos, can point to the fact that some people survived even as most people died. And can remind us that the swallows still sing around the smokestacks.
A good artist is willing to die many times over. What's funny is, I've died so many times.
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