I find in all the artists that I admire most a disturbing element, a distortion, giving evidence of a struggle . . . . In great art, this conflict is hidden, it is unresolved. All that is bursting with energy is disturbing - not perfect.
Interpretation
Great art reflects the inner struggles of the artist, revealing energy and conflict rather than perfection.
Henry Moore's quote highlights the essence of true artistry, suggesting that the most admired artists carry a sense of struggle and distortion within their work. This inherent conflict, often hidden beneath the surface of their creations, adds energy and depth, illustrating that perfection is not the goal but rather the expression of human experience and emotion.
In practice
When discussing the beauty of abstract expressionism at an art gallery.
Recently I have been working in the country, where, carving in the open air, I find sculpture more natural than in a London studio, but it needs bigger dimensions. A large piece of stone or wood placed almost anywhere at random in a field, orchard, or garden, immediately looks right and inspiring.
Between beauty of expression and power of expression there is a difference of function. The first aims at pleasing the senses, the second has a spiritual vitality which for me is more moving and goes deeper than the senses.
A work can have in it a pent-up energy, an intense life of its own, independent of the subject it may represent.
I have always liked drawing, when you draw you see things more intensely.
The secret of life is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day for the rest of your life. And the most important thing is, it must be something you cannot possibly do.
All art is an abstraction to some degree.
Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.
A song has to take on character, shape, body and influence people to an extent that they use it for their own devices. It must affect them not just as a song, but as a lifestyle.
It is comforting that travel should have an architecture, and that it is possible to contribute a few stones to it, although the traveller is less like one who constructs landscapes -- for that is a sedentary task -- than like one who destroys them. . . . But even destruction is a form of architecture, a deconstruction that follows certain rules and calculations, an art of disassembling and reassembling, or of creating another and different order.
Styles come and go. Good design is a language, not a style.
People say to me, 'You seem to have made this conscious decision to do independent films'. In reality, I haven't. After each movie, I always think, 'how different can I possibly be? Is this going to challenge me, is this going to inspire me, and is this going to make me love my job more than I already do?'
Style ain't nothing but keeping the same idea from beginning to end. Everybody got it.
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