Every artist is linked to a mistake with which he has a particular intimate relation. There is the mistake of Homer, of Shakespeare — which is perhaps, for both, the fact of not existing. Every art draws its origin from an exceptional fault, every work is the implementation of this original fault, from which come to us a new light and a risky conception of plenitude.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that mistakes are integral to the artistic process and can lead to profound creativity.
Maurice Blanchot emphasizes the idea that every artist has a deep connection to their mistakes, which can often serve as the source of their creative work. He argues that art emerges from these 'original faults,' suggesting that rather than seeing mistakes as setbacks, they should be recognized as essential components that contribute to the development of new ideas and artistic expressions. This perspective invites a re-evaluation of failure and imperfection as vital to the richness of artistic creation.
In practice
An artist could use this quote to express how their creative process involves learning from past errors.
I lean over you, your equal, offering you a mirror for your perfect nothingness, for your shadows which are neither light nor absence of light, for this void which contemplates. To all that which you are, and, for our language, are not, I add a consciousness. I make you experience your supreme identity as a relationship, I name you and define you. You become a delicious passivity.
To see was terrifying, and to stop seeing tore me apart from my forehead to my throat.
If nothing were substituted for everything, it would still be too much and too little.
A writer who writes, ''I am alone''... can be considered rather comical. It is comical for a man to recognize his solitude by addressing a reader and by using methods that prevent the individual from being alone. The word alone is just as general as the word bread. To pronounce it is to summon to oneself the presence of everything the word excludes.
It's evening, one of those gray water-color washes, like liquid dust.
Playing 'bop' is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.
I'm a failed poet. Maybe every novelist wants to write poetry first, finds he can't, and then tries the short story, which is the most demanding form after poetry. And, failing at that, only then does he take up novel writing.
A dancer, if she is great, can give to the people something that they can carry with them forever. They can never forget it, and it has changed them, though they may never know it.
My hope is that witnessing the beautiful harmony created by merging different musical melodies will help people realize the beauty in our own differences.
You don't always have to show art in what's called a white box; you can have a kind of complexity within an exhibit which actually respects the art as well.
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