A piece of sculpture can have a hole through it and not be weakened if the hole is of a studied size, shape, and direction.
Interpretation
Art can incorporate imperfections and still retain its strength and value.
Henry Moore's quote suggests that an intentional imperfection in art, such as a hole in a sculpture, can enhance its character rather than detract from it. The key lies in the careful consideration of the size, shape, and direction of that imperfection, which can contribute to the overall aesthetic and message of the artwork.
In practice
A motivational speech about embracing flaws in the creative process.
Recently I have been working in the country, where, carving in the open air, I find sculpture more natural than in a London studio, but it needs bigger dimensions. A large piece of stone or wood placed almost anywhere at random in a field, orchard, or garden, immediately looks right and inspiring.
I find in all the artists that I admire most a disturbing element, a distortion, giving evidence of a struggle . . . . In great art, this conflict is hidden, it is unresolved. All that is bursting with energy is disturbing - not perfect.
Between beauty of expression and power of expression there is a difference of function. The first aims at pleasing the senses, the second has a spiritual vitality which for me is more moving and goes deeper than the senses.
A work can have in it a pent-up energy, an intense life of its own, independent of the subject it may represent.
I have always liked drawing, when you draw you see things more intensely.
The secret of life is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day for the rest of your life. And the most important thing is, it must be something you cannot possibly do.
Art made tongue-tied by authority.
Fiction, with its preference for what is small and might elsewhere seem irrelevant; its facility for smuggling us into another skin and allowing us to live a new life there; its painstaking devotion to what without it might go unnoticed and unseen; its respect for contingency, and the unlikely and odd; its willingness to expose itself to moments of low, almost animal being and make them nobly illuminating, can deliver truths we might not otherwise stumble on.
Silent night, holy night. All is calm, all is bright. Round yon Virgin Mother and Child. Holy Infant so tender and mild. Sleep in heavenly peace. Sleep in heavenly peace.
Calligraphy of geese_x000D_ against the sky-_x000D_ the moon seals it.
Because I write fiction, I don't write autobiography, and to me they are very different things. The first-person narrative is a very intimate thing, but you are not addressing other people as 'I' - you are inhabiting that 'I.'
For me, being a director is about watching, not about telling people what to do. Or maybe it's like being a mirror; if they didn't have me to look at, they wouldn't be able to put the make-up on.
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