… lend your ears to music, open your eyes to painting, and … stop thinking! Just ask yourself whether the work has enabled you to “walk about” into a hitherto unknown world. If the answer is yes, what more do you want?
Interpretation
Art invites us to explore new experiences and perspectives beyond our usual thoughts.
In this quote, Wassily Kandinsky suggests that art, in any form such as music or painting, has the unique ability to transport us into unfamiliar realms of experience. Rather than overthinking or analyzing, he encourages us to simply assess whether the art allows us to venture into a new world, affirming that this transformative experience is the essence of appreciating art.
In practice
In a discussion about the profound impact of art on our lives, this quote can remind us of the value of immersing ourselves in creative works.
The true work of art is born from the 'artist': a mysterious, enigmatic, and mystical creation. It detaches itself from him, it acquires an autonomous life, becomes a personality, an independent subject, animated with a spiritual breath, the living subject of a real existence of being.
The artist must have something to say, for mastery over form is not his goal but rather the adapting of form to its inner meaning.
With cold eyes and indifferent mind the spectators regard the work. Connoissers admire the "skill" (as one admires a tightrope walker), enjoy the "quality of painting" (as one enjoys a pasty). But hungry souls go hungry away. The vulgar herd stroll through the rooms and pronounce the pictures "nice" or "splendid." Those who could speak have said nothing, those who could hear have heard nothing.
The sound of colors is so definite that it would be hard to find anyone who would express bright yellow with bass notes or dark lake with treble.
The more abstract is form, the more clear and direct its appeal.
All methods are sacred if they are internally necessary. All methods are sins if they are not justified by internal necessity.
Is the 'black designer' label there to warn everyone not to have the same level of expectations for me, or is it some type of prize? I just want to work in an even playing field where I can get press for my work and not just my race and my personal views on it.
Science fiction, outside of poetry, is the only literary field which has no limits, no parameters whatsoever. You can go not only into the future, but into that wonderful place called other, which is simply another universe, another planet, another species.
That is one thing I am sure of amid my many uncertainties regarding the literary vocation: deep inside, a writer feels that writing is the best thing that ever happened to him, or could ever happen to him, because as far as he is concerned, writing is the best possible way of life, never mind the social, political, or financial rewards of what he might achieve through it.
Writing begins in the body, it is the music of the body, and even if the words have meaning, can sometimes have meaning, the music of the words is where the meanings begin....Writing as a lesser form of dance.
What I'm fighting for now in my work... for an expression relevant to all manner of blacks, poems I could take into a tavern, into the street, into the halls of a housing project.
If a poet is anybody, he is somebody to whom things made matter very little - somebody who is obsessed by Making.
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