Imagination

August 10, 2012

Today, in a reflective mood about the artist’s work, I’m only quoting others…

‘… the making of art has nothing at all to do with knowledge, education, craft, technique, sophistication, style, concept, subject, process, praise, the judgment of others, who you know, where you live, your age, your background. The single most important attribute of art, all art – literature, music, cinema, photography – is to make people feel.

Herman Melville wrote in Moby Dick (1851): ‘Had Ahab time to think; but Ahab never thinks: he only feels, that’s tingling enough for mortal man!’ Reality, I have come to believe, lies in the realm of sensation, of emotion, of belief, of self. In particular, reality lies in memory. To make people feel, artists must transcend their chosen subject matter: who believes that Moby Dick is merely a tale about a whale?’

Alistair Crawford. Mario Giacomelli. Phaidon

Private garden in the Netherlands