Reflections

Sometimes it takes to reread something that stuck in your mind long time ago to understand it, to reflect on it, and to actually realise how much it affects ones process of creation. I look up to many artists, I study their lives, their work, I read stuff others have written about them however I always take it with the grain of salt. What I like most when you have exceptional artist, who is expressive who got shunned by the society around him after raising him to hights, to hear what he says about art itself, whilst reflecting upon his own work.

One of my favourite quotes is by Auguste Rodin.

"Comme c'est uniquement la puissance du caracatère qui fait la beauté de l'art, il arrive souvent que plus un être est laid dans la nature, plus il est beau dans l'art. Il n'y a de laid dans l'art que ce qui est sans caractère, c'est à dire ce qui n'offre aucune vérité extérieure ni intérieure. Est laid dans l'art ce qui est faux, ce qui est artificiel, ce qui cherche à être joli ou beau au lieu d'être expressif, ce qui est mièvre sans raison, ce qui se cambre et se cabre sans cause, tout ce qui est sans âme et sans vérité, tout ce qui n'est que parade de beauté ou de grâce, tout ce qui ment."

Auguste Rodin

"As it's only the strength of character that makes the beauty of art, it often happens that the more a being is ugly in nature, it is more beautiful in art. There is nothing ugly in art that is without character, ie which offers no outer or inner truth. Is ugly in art what is false, what is artificial, what seeks to be pretty or beautiful instead of being expressive, what is insipid without reason, that arches and reared without cause, all that is soulless and without truth, everything which is just a parade of beauty or grace, everything that lies. "

Auguste Rodin

To be honest everyone knows The Thinker sculpture, i mean one would have to be blind or ignorant not to have seen it, but to me my favourite work of his is one that he spent years developing and took unorthodox approach, where he managed to capture the darkness of character, its mystery, and creativity, that makes the viewer wonder. It is the work that lead to downfall from his popularity, for which people made fun of him, which was cast in bronze only decades after it was finished.