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.
Interpretation
Creativity involves spontaneous expression followed by critical reflection.
In this quote, Robert Motherwell emphasizes the dichotomy between the creative process and critical evaluation. He suggests that creativity often starts with a free-flowing expression or idea, which is then followed by a careful analysis and critique, highlighting the importance of both aspects in the artistic journey.
In practice
This quote can be used in a workshop on developing artistic skills to show the importance of balancing creativity and critique.
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.
To end up with a canvas that is no less beautiful than the empty canvas is to begin with.
Art is an experience, not an object.
Art is much less important than life, but what a poor life without it.
Living here on Earth, we breathe the rhythms of a universe that extends infinitely above us. When resonant harmonies arise between this vast outer cosmos and the inner human cosmos, poetry is born.
A word is not the same with one writer as with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket.
Art is our defense against hysteria and death.
I've loved every minute I've spent in television. And I've had much more failure, as traditionally measured, than success in television. I've done four shows, and only one of them was the 'West Wing.'
I don't want the reader to be aware of me as the writer.
I think if you're writing a play, it should be its own end game; you'll never get to do a good one unless you know it's not a blueprint for a film; you're not going to get the action right and the story right.
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