A work can have in it a pent-up energy, an intense life of its own, independent of the subject it may represent.
Interpretation
Art can possess its own vitality and energy, irrespective of its subject matter.
Henry Moore suggests that a piece of art can embody a dynamic and vibrant essence that transcends its initial subject. This implies that the emotional and imaginative impact of a work of art is profound, allowing it to resonate with viewers in ways that go beyond mere representation.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the transformative power of art in a gallery opening.
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.
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.
All art is an abstraction to some degree.
If I were called upon to define briefly the word Art, I should call it the reproduction of what the senses preceive in nature, seen through the veil of the soul.
works of art feel towards human beings exactly as we do towards ghosts. The transparency of spectres, the diffuseness in space which lets them drift through doors and walls, and their smell of death, disgust us not more than we disgust works of art by our meaninglessness, our diffuseness in time which lets us drift through three score years and ten without a quarter as much significance as a picture establishes instantaneously.
It is only after years of preparation that the young artist should touch color - not color used descriptively, that is, but as a means of personal expression.
The thing I love about making movies is the peace of mind that I know I don't have to be perfect the first time. I can be perfect the second time or the third time.
I was pirouette and flourish, I was filigree and flame. How could I count my blessings when I didn't know their names?
When I was seven or eight years old, I began to read the science-fiction magazines that were brought by guests into my grandparents' boarding house in Waukegan, Illinois. Those were the years when Hugo Gernsback was publishing 'Amazing Stories,' with vivid, appallingly imaginative cover paintings that fed my hungry imagination.
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