Drawing is still basically the same as it has been since prehistoric times. It brings together man and the world. It lives through magic.
Interpretation
Drawing connects humans with their surroundings and has a timeless quality.
In this quote, Keith Haring emphasizes the enduring nature of drawing as a fundamental form of expression that links humanity to the world around us. He suggests that drawing not only serves as a means of representation but also contains an element of magic, capturing the essence of life and creativity through its simplicity and historical significance.
In practice
In an art class, to inspire students about the value of drawing.
I am intrigued with the shapes people choose as their symbols to create a language. There is within all forms a basic structure, an indication of the entire object with a minimum of lines that becomes a symbol. This is common to all languages, all people, all times.
The act of creation is a kind of ritual. The origins of art and human existence lie hidden in this mystery of creation. Human creativity reaffirms and mystifies the power of 'life.
When it is working, you completely go into another place, you're tapping into things that are totally universal, completely beyond your ego and your own self. That's what it's all about.
I don't think art is propaganda; it should be something that liberates the soul, provokes the imagination and encourages people to go further. It celebrates humanity instead of manipulating it.
I think you have to control the materials to an extent, but it's important to let the materials have a kind of power for themselves; like the natural power of gravity, if you are painting on a wall, it makes the paint trickle and it drips; there is no reason to fight that.
My contribution to the world is my ability to draw. I will draw as much as I can for as many people as I can for as long as I can.
So it's joyful to me, in my 71st year, to be able to be in a play that is absolutely right for my age and my experience, and that is a popular success. What more could you ask as an actor?
In the modern world, all literary art is necessarily political -- especially that which pretends not to be.
I don't want the reader to be aware of me as the writer.
When you look back on a lifetime and think of what has been given to the world by your presence, your fugitive presence, inevitably you think of your art, whatever it may be, as the gift you have made to the world in acknowledgment of the gift you have been given, which is the life itself... That work is not an expression of the desire for praise or recognition, or prizes, but the deepest manifestation of your gratitiude for the gift of life.
I'm one of those people who says, 'yes, cinema died when they invented sound.'
Beauty is a form of Genius--is higher, indeed, than Genius, as it needs no explanation. It is one of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in the dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has divine right of sovereignty. It makes princes of those who have it.
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