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An artist's initial broad stroke is always most impactful, and obsessively adding layer upon layer of paint to fill in details often diminishes the painting's aura. When an aura is lost, it is impossible to get back.
Ryuichi Sakamoto
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Artistic expression should focus on impactful simplicity rather than excessive detail.

Ryuichi Sakamoto emphasizes that the initial bold strokes of an artist's work carry the most emotional weight and impact. As layers of detail are added to the artwork, the original aura or essence can be diminished, making it challenging to recover the initial vibrancy and spirit that captivated viewers in the first place.

Themes

ArtImpactSimplicityExpressionAura

In practice

Example use cases

In a speech about creativity at an art gala.

More from Ryuichi Sakamoto

In the old days, people shared music; they didn't care who made it. A song would be owned by a village, and anyone could sing it, change the words, whatever. That is how humans treated music until the late 19th century. Now, with the Internet, we are going back to having tribal attitudes towards music.
Ryuichi SakamotoRead
The majority of the people think that noise is not music. I want to accept noise and even errors and glitches. I enjoy them.
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I'm just delighted to be living, to be able to have a simple conversation, to feel a ray of sunlight on my skin and listen to the breeze move through the leaves of a tree.
Ryuichi SakamotoRead
Conceptually, I am open to mistakes - errors, actually. I do play lots of wrong notes while I am making some music, and a mistake or a wrong note is like a gift for me: 'Oh, wow, an unknown sound or an unknown harmony. I didn't know about this.'
Ryuichi SakamotoRead

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