Mystery and Awe

“I have a friend who's an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don't agree with very well. He'll hold up a flower and say "look how beautiful it is," and I'll agree. Then he says "I as an artist can see how beautiful this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing," and I think that he's kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe. Although I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is ... I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it's not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there's also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes. The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts.” 

- Richard Feynman

(1918-1988)

Continuity in Space

"We go all the way back to the first universal sensation that our spirit can already perceive thanks to the extremely intense synthesis of all the senses in a universal whole which will make us return through and beyond our millennial complexity, to primordial simplicity."

"It is achieved through

the intuitive search

for the one single form

which produces continuity in space."

- Umberto Boccioni

(1882 - 1916)

Pictures of the Soul

"At different moments you 

see with different eyes. 

You see differently in the morning 

than you do in the evening. 

In addition, how you see is also 

dependent on your emotional state. 

Because of this, a motif can be seen 

in many different ways,

 and this is what makes art interesting." 

"Nature is not only all that is visible to the eye —

it also includes the inner pictures of the soul."

- Edvard Munch

(1863 - 1944)

Your Own Self

"Whether you are going or staying

or sitting or lying down, 

the whole world is your own self. 

You must find out

whether the mountains, rivers,

grass, and forests 

exist in your own mind

or exist outside it. 

Analyze the ten thousand things, 

dissect them minutely, 

and when you take this to the limit 

you will come to the limitless, 

when you search into it you come

to the end of search, 

where thinking goes no further

and distinctions vanish. 

When you smash the citadel of doubt, 

then the Buddha is simply yourself." 

- Lanxi Daolong 

(c. 1213-1278)

Nothing is as it Appears

"Know all things to be like this:

A mirage, a cloud castle,

A dream, an apparition,

Without essence, but with

qualities that can be seen.

Know all things to be like this:

As the moon in a bright sky

In some clear lake reflected,

Though to that lake

the moon has never moved.

Know all things to be like this:

As an echo that derives

From music, sounds, and weeping,

Yet in that echo is no melody.

Know all things to be like this:

As a magician makes illusions

Of horses, oxen,

carts and other things,

Nothing is as it appears." 

- Samadhiraja Sutra

(2nd century CE)

Spiritual Wings

 

"... thus music brings into view the form of movement of celestial bodies, the pure form, freed from object and matter, as its very rhythm and harmony. Music is that art which has shed physicalness the most, by presenting pure movement as such, removed from any object, and by being carried by invisible, almost spiritual wings." 

– F. W. J. Schelling (1775 - 1854)

Philosophy of Art

Sometimes the Image is the Thing

“Abstraction is idea

without body.

The object photographed may

have nothing to do with

the subject though the

object may be subject.

The photograph may be an

objective document of pure subjectivity.

There are things in the world

that are unseen to the unaided.

There are seens that are not.

If all language is ultimately metaphor,

then don't talk to me of first principles.

It is wrong to assume that in a

photograph there must always have been

something - some thing.

Sometimes the image is the thing.” 

- Roger Newton (1960 - )

Op Tics