It Is The Artistic Mission To Penetrate

First Of All, The Art Of Living; Then As My Ideal Profession, Poetry And Philosophy, And As My Real Profession, Plastic Arts; In The Last Resort, For Lack Of Income, Illustrations.

Light And The Rational Forms Are Locked In Combat; Light Sets Them Into Motion, Bends What Is Straight, Makes Parallels Oval, Inscribes Circles In The Intervals, Makes The Intervals Active.

The Beautiful, Which Is Perhaps Inseparable From Art, Is Not After All Tied To The Subject, But To The Pictorial Representation. In This Way And In No Other Does Art Overcome The Ugly Without Avoiding It.

In Earlier Days, Even As A Child, The Beauty Of Landscapes Was Quite Clear To Me. A Background For The Soul's Moods. Now Dangerous Moments Occur When Nature Tries To Devour Me; At Such Times I Am Annihilated, But At Peace. This Would Be Fine For Old People But I... I Am My Life's Debtor, For I Have Given Promises.

There Is Plenty Of Room Left For Exact Experiment In Art, And The Gate Has Been Opened For Some Time. What Had Been Accomplished In Music By The End Of The Eighteenth Century Has Only Begun In The Fine Arts. Mathematics And Physics Have Given Us A Clue In The Form Of Rules To Be Strictly Observed Or Departed From, As The Case May Be. Here Salutary Discipline Is Come To Grips First Of All With The Function Of Forms, And Not With Form As The Final Result … In This Way We Learn How To Look Beyond The Surface And Get To The Root Of Things.