The body says what words cannot.
Martha GrahamRead
To me, a building - if it's beautiful - is the love of one man, he's made it out of his love for space, materials, things like that.
Interpretation
A beautiful building reflects the passion and love of its creator for design and space.
Martha Graham suggests that architecture is not just about functionality or aesthetics, but rather a deep expression of the creator's love and connection to their craft. The beauty of a building is rooted in the emotions and passions of the architect, showcasing a personal relationship with the materials and the environment.
In practice
In a discussion about modern architecture at a conference.
The body says what words cannot.
Nobody cares if you can't dance well.
Movement never lies. It is a barometer telling the state of the soul's weather to all who can read it.
What people in the world think of you is really none of your business.
No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a strange, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.
The body is your instrument in dance, but your art is outside that creature, the body.
I who once wrote songs with keen delight am now by sorrow driven to take up melancholy measures. Wounded Muses tell me what I must write, and elegiac verses bathe my face with real tears. Not even terror could drive from me these faithful companions of my long journey. Poetry, which was once the glory of my happy and flourishing youth, is still my comfort in this misery of my old age.
To express a marriage of two complementary colors, their mingling and their opposition, the mysterious vibrations of kindred tones.
I have to have a character worth caring about. I tend not to start writing books about people I don't have a lot of sympathy for because I'm just going to be with them too long.
You can say anything you want, yessir, but it's the words that sing, they soar and descend...I bow to them...I love them, I cling to them, I run them down, I bite into them, I melt them down...I love words so much...The unexpected ones...The ones I wait for greedily or stalk until, suddenly, they drop.
I personally made a decision many years ago that I wanted to crawl into portraiture because it had a lot of latitude.
So while our art cannot, as we wish it could, save us from wars, privation, envy, greed, old age, or death, it can revitalize us amidst it all.
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