The Man With the Blue Guitar (1937)
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 164
Original: Original in Dutch: Kunst lijkt me nooit volledig of zuiver te maken. Het is of ik altijd verwikkeld ben in het melodrama van de alledaagsheid. [...]
Source: Quote of De Kooning from Beyond the Aesthetic, Robert Motherwell, Design 47, April 1946, as quoted in Abstract Expressionist Painting in America, W.C, Seitz, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1983, p. 101.
“I don't think about art when I'm working. I try to think about life.”
On his artistic process in “Jean-Michel Basquiat on How to Be an Artist” https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-artist-jean-michel-basquiat in Artsy (2019 Jun 6)
“That man should think of God as nothingness must at first sight seem astonishing”
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, Lectures on the philosophy of religion, together with a work on the proofs of the existence of God. Vol 2 Translated from the 2d German ed. 1895 Ebenezer Brown Speirs 1854-1900, and J Burdon Sanderson p. 51
Lectures on Philosophy of Religion, Volume 2
Context: That man should think of God as nothingness must at first sight seem astonishing, must appear to us a most peculiar idea. But, considered more closely, this determination means that God is absolutely nothing determined. He is the Undetermined; no determinateness of any kind pertains to God; He is the Infinite. This is equivalent to saying that God is the negation of all particularity.
Source: Elizabeth Day Damien Hirst: 'Art is childish and childlike' http://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2010/sep/26/damien-hirst-art, The Guardian, 26 September 2010
“When men feel happy, they think of men who love; when they feel sad they think and pray to God.”
Gli uomini quando si sentono felici pensano agli uomini che amano, quando si sentono tristi pensano e pregano Dio.
Section 165
Reflections on the Human Condition (1973)
Context: The end comes when we no longer talk with ourselves. It is the end of genuine thinking and the beginning of the final loneliness. The remarkable thing is that the cessation of the inner dialogue marks also the end of our concern with the world around us. It is as if we noted the world and think about it only when we have to report it to ourselves.
