What goes on in abstract art is the proclaiming of aesthetic principles... It is in our own time that we have become aware of pure aesthetic considerations. Art never can be imitation.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that art is about expressing aesthetic principles rather than merely imitating reality.
Hans Hofmann's quote highlights the essence of abstract art, suggesting that it focuses on conveying aesthetic principles rather than depicting the physical world. In contemporary times, there is an increased recognition of the importance of these pure aesthetic considerations, indicating a shift in how we perceive and value art. Hofmann asserts that true art transcends direct imitation, suggesting that its purpose lies in the expression of beauty and concept rather than representation.
In practice
During an art lecture, I referenced Hofmann's quote to illustrate the principles of abstract expressionism.
Color is a plastic means of creating intervals... color harmonics produced by special relationships, or tensions. We differentiate now between formal tensions and color tensions, just as we differentiate in music between counterpoint and harmony.
In nature, light creates the color. In the picture, color creates the light.
The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.
The whole world, as we experience it visually, comes to us through the mystic realm of color.
Colors must fit together as pieces in a puzzle or cogs in a wheel.
A work of art is a world in itself reflecting senses and emotions of the artist's world.
In 'Hamilton,' we're telling the stories of old, dead white men, but we're using actors of color, and that makes the story more immediate and more accessible to a contemporary audience.
Painting is a nail to which I fasten my ideas.
I can't stand directors who try to micro-manage everything. When it happens these days I just walk off set, saying if they don't like the way I'm doing it they can get someone else.
Playing a violin is, after all, only scraping a cat's entrails with horsehair.
An artist wears his work in place of wounds.
An essential portion of any artist’s labor is not creation so much as invocation. Part of the work cannot be made, it must be received; and we cannot have this gift except, perhaps, by supplication, by courting, by creating within ourselves that ‘begging bowl’ to which the gift is drawn.
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