For me, the subject is of secondary importance: I want to convey what is alive between me and the subject.
Interpretation
The essence of art lies in the emotional connection between the artist and the subject rather than the subject itself.
Claude Monet emphasizes that the relationship and emotional engagement the artist feels with their subject is more significant than the subject's inherent qualities. This perspective shifts the focus of art from mere representation to the dynamic interaction and feelings that arise during the creative process, highlighting the importance of personal expression in artistic endeavors.
In practice
During an art exhibition, an artist might express this quote to explain their approach to viewers.
When you go out to paint, try to forget what objects you have before you - a tree, house, a field....Merely think, here is a little square of blue, here an oblong of pink, here a streak of yellow, and paint it just as it looks to you, the exact color and shape, until it gives your own naive impression of the scene before you.
Zaandam has enough to paint for a lifetime.
The effect of sincerity is to give one's work the character of a protest. The painter, being concerned only with conveying his impression, simply seeks to be himself and no one else.
The light constantly changes, and that alters the atmosphere and beauty of things every minute.
Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment. To such an extent indeed that one day, finding myself at the deathbed of a woman who had been and still was very dear to me, I caught myself in the act of focusing on her temples and automatically analyzing the succession of appropriately graded colors which death was imposing on her motionless face.
I am following Nature without being able to grasp her, I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.
When you hear Bach or Mozart, you hear perfection. Remember that Bach, Mozart and Beethoven were great improvisers. I can hear that in their music.
To be a film-maker, you are almost forced to be surrounded by contradictions... You must have talents of so many different kinds - talents that are contradictory.
When it all comes together, a creative life has the nourishing power we normally associate with food, love and faith.
You don't enter the theater and pay your money to be afraid. You enter the theater and pay your money to have the fears that are already in you when you go into a theater dealt with and put into a narrative.
Black storytelling can be about anything, absolutely anything, and within that it can be as enriching, as complex, beautiful, ugly as anything else. We are not seeing enough of those complexities on our stages.
Some couture collections have everything including the kitchen sink! Everything gets thrown on to make it look expensive. I find it grotesque when clothes hit you in the face and there's no room for fault. But I don't expect to turn things around all by myself. I'm not a saint.
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