A work of art may be understood as a conductor from the artist's mind to the viewer's. But it may never reach the viewer, or it may never leave the artist's mind.
Sol LewittRead
Artists are mystics rather than rationalists. They leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Artists connect with deeper truths through intuition rather than logic.
This quote by Sol Lewitt emphasizes the unique perspective of artists, portraying them as mystics who operate beyond the constraints of rational thought. Rather than relying solely on logical processes, artists engage in a form of intuitive creativity that allows them to explore and express complex ideas and emotions that may not be easily understood through conventional reasoning.
Themes
ArtistsMysticsIntuitionLogicCreativity
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the role of creativity in innovation.
More from Sol Lewitt
All quotes βOnce it is out of his hand the artist has no control over the way a viewer will perceive the work. Different people will understand the same thing in a different way.
Sol LewittRead
The system is the work of art; the visual work of art is the proof of the System. The visual aspect can't be understood without understanding the system. It isn't what it looks like but what it is that is of basic importance.
Sol LewittRead
Buying books was a way anyone could acquire a work of art for very little.
Sol LewittRead
Unless you're involved with thinking about what you're doing, you end up doing the same thing over and over, and that becomes tedious and, in the end, defeating.
Sol LewittRead
Every generation renews itself in its own way; there's always a reaction against whatever is standard.
Sol LewittRead
Similar quotes
When I have to score a film, I watch the movie first and then start thinking about it. And from that moment on, it is as if I were pregnant. I then have to deliver the child, so from that moment on, I think always about the music - even when I go to the grocery store, I think about it.
Ennio MorriconeRead
A picture lives by companionship, expanding and quickening in the eyes of the sensitive observer. It dies by the same token. It is therefore risky to send it out into the world. How often it must be impaired by the eyes of the unfeeling and the cruelty of the impotent.
Mark RothkoRead
I don't start a film with the heroine but with the cinema subject. If there is a woman in the story, she has to be of a particular type. It's not as if I start with Madhuri Dixit and then think what kind of film.
Satyajit RayRead
For me, there is a paradox in poetry, which is like the paradox in tragedy. You have the most terrible subject, but it's in a form that is so sensually gratifying that it connects the surviving heart to the despairing intellect.
Tony HarrisonRead
I hate that aesthetic game of the eye and the mind, played by these connoisseurs, these mandarins who "appreciate" beauty. What is beauty, anyway? There's no such thing. I never "appreciate," any more than I "like." I love it or I hate.
Pablo PicassoRead
Because music, like color, or a cloud, is neither intelligent nor unintelligent - it just is. The chord, the simplest building block for even the tritest, silliest chart song, is a beautiful, perfect, mysterious thing, and when an ill-read, uneducated, uncultured, emotionally illiterate boor puts a couple of them together, he has every chance of creating something wonderful and powerful. All I ask of music is that is sounds good.
Nick HornbyRead