To end up with a canvas that is no less beautiful than the empty canvas is to begin with.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of the journey of creation as equal to the beauty of the initial idea or potential.
Robert Motherwell suggests that the process of creating art is as valuable as the untouched canvas. This implies that the creative journey, filled with experimentation and risk, can lead to a fulfilling outcome that reflects the beauty and potential that existed at the start. The development of an artwork is integral to appreciating its final form, as both the beginning and the end possess intrinsic beauty.
In practice
During an art class, I shared this quote to inspire students about the value of their creative process.
A main part of the struggle of art has been to make an art that is direct, simple, humane, unconnected with powers that be in their essence... To the degree that it is connected with the bourgeoisie via the marketplace and so on is not necessarily an artist's problem.
It's not that the creative act and the critical act are simultaneous. It's more like you blurt something out and then analyze it.
Art is an experience, not an object.
Art is much less important than life, but what a poor life without it.
My position is that serious and good art has always existed to help, to serve, humanity. Not to indict. I don't see how art can be called art if its purpose is to frustrate humanity.
People expect things from art that are horrible for us who make it! They put the things we make in these restrictive places called 'museums,' then don't want to hear another word from us.
Speed is scarcely the noblest virtue of graphic composition, but it has its curious rewards. There is a sense of getting somewhere fast, which satisfies a native American urge.
It's just because I love the past that I want this house to look back on its glamourous moment of youth and beauty, and I want its stairs to creak as if to the footsteps of women with hoop skirts and men in boots and spurs. But they've made it into a blondined, rouged-up old woman of sixty.
There are no lines in nature, only areas of colour, one against another.
All things of beauty can speak to us of God, and I'm very happy to listen to and be inspired by people of every religious background.
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