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March 07, 2004
giorgio de chirico on mystery and creation
To become truly immortal a work of art must escape all human limits: logic and common sense will only interfere. But once these barriers are broken it will enter the regions of childhood vision and dream.
Profound statements must be drawn by the artist from the most secret recesses of his being; there no murmuring torrent, no birdsong, no rustle of leaves can distract him.
What I hear is valueless; only what I see is living, and when I close my eyes my vision is even more powerful.
It is most important that we should rid art of all that it has contained of recognisable material to date, all familiar subject matter, all traditional ideas, all popular symbols must be banished forthwith.
More important still, we must hold enormous faith in ourselves: it is essential that the revelation we receive, the conception of an image which embraces a certain thing which has no sense in itself, which has no subject, which means absolutely nothing from a logical point of view, I repeat, it is essential that such a revelation or conception should speak so strongly in us, evoke such agony or joy, that we feel compelled to paint, compelled by an impulse even more urgent than the hungry desperation which drives a man to tearing at a piece of bread like a savage beast.
Giorgio De Chirico, 1913
Posted by john at March 7, 2004 05:34 PM
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