A created thing is never invented and it is never true: it is always and ever itself.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes that creativity is a unique expression rather than a mere reproduction of reality.
Fellini's quote suggests that every act of creation is inherently original and self-referential. It implies that while creators draw from experiences and realities, what they produce transcends mere imitation to become its own entity, embodying the essence of its creation. Rather than aiming to be 'true' to life or to a concept, art and created things should be appreciated for their individuality and the distinct perspective they offer.
In practice
During a lecture on the nature of art, one might use this quote to illustrate the concept of originality.
I’m just a storyteller, and the cinema happens to be my medium. I like it because it recreates life in movement, enlarges it, enhances it, distills it. For me, it’s far closer to the miraculous creation of life than, say, a painting or music or even literature. It’s not just an art form; it’s actually a new form of life, with its own rhythms, cadences, perspectives and transparencies. It’s my way of telling a story.
Talking about dreams is like talking about movies, since the cinema uses the language of dreams; years can pass in a second, and you can hop from one place to another. It's a language made of image. And in the real cinema, every object and every light means something, as in a dream.
No critic writing about a film could say more than the film itself, although they do their best to make us think the oppposite.
What's important is the way we say it. Art is all about craftsmanship. Others can interpret craftsmanship as style if they wish. Style is what unites memory or recollection, ideology, sentiment, nostalgia, presentiment, to the way we express all that. It's not what we say but how we say it that matters.
We can all pretend to be cynical and scheming, but when we’re faced with purity and innocence, the cynical mask drops off.
What is an artist? A provincial who finds himself somewhere between a physical reality and a metaphysical one... It’s this in-between that I’m calling a province, this frontier country between the tangible world and the intangible one - which is really the realm of the artist.
Filmmakers are going to make films, just like painters are going to paint.
What are our conductors giving us year after year? Only fresh corpses. Over these beautifully embalmed sonatas, toccatas, symphonies and operas the public dance the jitterbug. Night and day without let the radio drowns us in a hog-wash of the most nauseating, sentimental ditties. From the churches comes the melancholy dirge of the dead Christ, a music which is no more sacred than a rotten turnip.
I really only take roles that I love and that I have some kind of innate compulsion or need to tell that story. Although it's almost like I have no control over it. It's like they choose me.
It dawned on me that comics were not an intrinsically limited medium. There was a tremendous amount of things you could do in comics that you couldn't do in other art forms - but no one was doing it. I figured if I'd make a try at it, I'd at least be a footnote in history.
What is it precisely, that feeling of 'returning' from a poem? Something is lighter, softer, larger - then it fades, but never completely.
Asymmetric balance creates greater reader interest. Pleasure derived from observing asymmetrical arrangements lies partly in overcoming resistances, which, consciously or not, the spectator adjusts in his own mind.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.