The artist is the hand that, by touching this or that key, sets the soul vibrating automatically.
Interpretation
The artist has the ability to evoke deep emotions and reactions through their creative work.
This quote by Wassily Kandinsky highlights the transformative power of art, suggesting that an artist, through their skillful creation, can stir the emotions and feelings of their audience. The metaphor of an artist as a hand touching keys implies that art operates like music, where specific notes resonate and elicit responses from the soul, thus drawing out the inherent emotional qualities within each viewer or listener.
In practice
In a discussion about the impact of art in schools, this quote could illustrate the deep emotional connection art fosters.
The true work of art is born from the 'artist': a mysterious, enigmatic, and mystical creation. It detaches itself from him, it acquires an autonomous life, becomes a personality, an independent subject, animated with a spiritual breath, the living subject of a real existence of being.
The artist must have something to say, for mastery over form is not his goal but rather the adapting of form to its inner meaning.
With cold eyes and indifferent mind the spectators regard the work. Connoissers admire the "skill" (as one admires a tightrope walker), enjoy the "quality of painting" (as one enjoys a pasty). But hungry souls go hungry away. The vulgar herd stroll through the rooms and pronounce the pictures "nice" or "splendid." Those who could speak have said nothing, those who could hear have heard nothing.
The sound of colors is so definite that it would be hard to find anyone who would express bright yellow with bass notes or dark lake with treble.
The more abstract is form, the more clear and direct its appeal.
All methods are sacred if they are internally necessary. All methods are sins if they are not justified by internal necessity.
I try to remember that the job - as well as the plight, and the unexpected joy - of the artist is to embrace uncertainty, to be sharpened and honed by it.
I think what you're always looking for as artists is to be honest and to continue to be honestly driven by that which you are passionately engaged with. It should need not be forced.
That's what art is for me. It helps you maintain hope by giving you the ability to either create outside your reality, or to describe your reality.
Typography is the craft of endowing human language with a durable visual form, and thus with an independent existence. Its heartwood is calligraphy - the dance, on a tiny stage, of the living, speaking hand - and its roots reach into living soil, though its branches may be hung each year with new machines. So long as the root lives, typography remains a source of true delight, true knowledge, true surprise.
The essential is to excite the spectators. If that means playing Hamlet on a flying trapeze or in an aquarium, you do it.
Right now a moment of time is fleeting by! Capture its reality in paint! To do that we must put all else out of our minds. We must become that moment, make ourselves a sensitive recording plate...Give the image of what we actually see, forgetting everything that has been seen before our time.
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