“The difference between the arts arises because of the difference in the nature of the mediums of expression and the emphasis induced by the nature of each medium. Each means of expression has its own order of being, its own units.”

— Hans Hofmann

'Painting and Culture' p. 57
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

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Hans Hofmann 67

American artist 1880–1966

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“Each expression-medium has a life of its own. Regulated by certain laws, it can be mastered only by intuition during the act of creating. It is in the nature of the laws which govern every expression medium that two separate entities, related through empathy, always produce a higher third of a purely spiritual nature. This spiritual third manifests itself as a quality which carries emotional content. This quality is the opposite of illusion; it is the reality of the spirit.”

Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) American artist

'Excerpts from the Teaching of Hans Hofmann', p. 61
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“Every established order tends to produce (to very different degrees with different means) the naturalization of its own arbitrariness.”

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“The brain is the medium of expression of the human mind. Similarly the entire physical universe would be the medium of expression of the mind of a natural God.”

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Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) American artist

As quoted in Hans Hofmann (1963) by William Chapin Seitz, p. 15
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“The creative process lies not in imitating, but in paralleling nature — translating the impulse received from nature into the medium of expression, thus vitalizing this medium. The picture should be alive, the statue should be alive, and every work of art should be alive.”

Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) American artist

'Painting and Culture' p. 55
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

“The impulse of nature, fused through the personality of the artist by laws arising from the particular nature of the medium, produces the rhythm and the personal expression of a work. Then the life of the composition becomes a spiritual unity.”

Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) American artist

'Painting and Culture' p. 58
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

“All art is the expression of experience in some medium.”

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) Indian philosopher and statesman who was the first Vice President and the second President of India

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

“Feeling must have a medium in order to function at all; in the same way, thought must have symbols. It is the medium, or the specific configuration of the medium that we call a work of art that brings feeling into being, just as do responses tot the objects of the external world... The medium of painting is such changing and ordering on an ideal plane, ideal in that the medium is more tractable, subtle, and capable of emphasis (abstraction is a kind of emphasis) than everyday life.”

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Source: 1940's, Beyond the Aesthetics (1946), pp. 38-39

“Feeling must have a medium in order to function at all; in the same way, thought must have symbols. It is the medium, or the specific configuration of the medium that we call a work of art that brings feeling into being, just as do responses tot the objects of the external world... The medium of painting is such changing and ordering on an ideal plane, ideal in that the medium is more tractable, subtle, and capable of emphasis (abstraction is a kind of emphasis) than everyday life.”

Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) American artist

Source: 1940s, Beyond the Aesthetics' (1946), pp. 38-39

“Are there not many Arts which, though speechless, express their meanings with perfect adequacy, with satisfaction to the recipient, and serve at the same time as a medium of communication between soul and soul?”

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The Usurpation Of Language (1910)

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