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.
If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn't matter a damn how you write.
Her beauty climbed the rolling slope, it came into the room, rustling ghost-like through the curtains.
I cook more theoretically than I do practically. My job is creative, and in the kitchen, the biggest part of my creativity is theoretical.
When I decided to write 'The God of Small Things', I had been working in cinema. It was almost a decision to downshift from there. I thought that 300 people would read it. But it created a platform of trust.
The problem was to sustain at any cost the feeling you had in the theater that you were watching a real person, yes, but an intense condensation of his experience, not simply a realistic series of episodes.
On the floor I am more at ease. I feel nearer, more part of the painting, since this way I can walk around it, work from the four sides and literally be in the painting.
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