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.
I think that were beginning to remember that the first poets didn't come out of a classroom, that poetry began when somebody walked off of a savanna or out of a cave and looked up at the sky with wonder and said, "Ahhh." That was the first poem.
My introduction to art history was like everybody else's. You see an art history book that has works by Rembrandt and Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. Yes, these things are great. But I don't see a reflection of myself in any of these things I'm looking at.
To design is to communicate clearly by whatever means you can control or master.
I have wanted . . . to commit a murder myself. I recognized this as the desire of the artist to express himself! . . . But-incongruous as it may seem to some-I was restrained and hampered by my innate sense of justice. The innocent must not suffer.
Not hammer-strokes, but dance of the water, sings the pebbles into perfection.
Beauty's where you find it; not just where you bump and grind it.
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