“Thus it is with all pictures, there are many layers, and with good reason an analysis nearly always deals with the last [layer]. The last layer in a superficial sense. But how then can one talk of what one cannot see, the overpainted or wiped-off layers, how to go about for example, photographs that are like slates with layers which no longer exist. The answer is that they exists nevertheless, taken up into the visible layer by a rubbing-off, but the problem, on the whole, is how one deals with the visible layer. The angle-sure, viewpoint seeking and in the worse sense 'analytic' intercourse with the picture.”

—  Per Kirkeby

1965 - 1995, Bravura', Per Kirkeby, (1982)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 14, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Thus it is with all pictures, there are many layers, and with good reason an analysis nearly always deals with the last…" by Per Kirkeby?
Per Kirkeby photo
Per Kirkeby 14
Danish artist 1938–2018

Related quotes

“Painting is laying layer upon layer. Without exception it is fundamental to all painted pictures even if they look as if they were done in one movement. The movement has always crossed its own track somewhere. It is easy to understand that a picture is layer upon layer when it comes to Picabia's puzzle pictures or my own material works, but it is difficult with the 'synchronos'. By the 'synchronous' I mean all those pictures where all the layers aim at the same picture, where the under-painting and following layers – glazed or not – fall on top of each other. The 'unsynchronous' are the ones where each new layer is a new picture. It is like geological strata with cracks and discordances. But each new layer, however furious, is always infected and coloured by the underlying one. Even when it is slates where the previous payer is completely removed physically, wiped off.”

Per Kirkeby (1938–2018) Danish artist

Source: 1965 - 1995, Bravura', Per Kirkeby, (1982), chapter 'Caption', pp. 83-84

C.G. Jung photo

“A more or less superficial layer of the unconscious is undoubtedly personal. I call it the "personal unconscious". But this personal layer rests upon a deeper layer, which does not derive from personal experience and is not a personal acquisition but is inborn. This deeper layer I call the "collective unconscious".”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

Source: The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (1934), p. 3-4
Context: A more or less superficial layer of the unconscious is undoubtedly personal. I call it the "personal unconscious". But this personal layer rests upon a deeper layer, which does not derive from personal experience and is not a personal acquisition but is inborn. This deeper layer I call the "collective unconscious". I have chosen the term "collective" because this part of the unconscious is not individual but universal; in contrast to the personal psyche, it has contents and modes of behaviour that are more or less the same everywhere and in all individuals.

Carl Sandburg photo

“Life is like an onion; you peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep.”

Carl Sandburg book Remembrance Rock

Variant: Life is an onion - you peel it year by year and sometimes cry.
Source: Remembrance Rock

Bob Dylan photo

“Shedding off one more layer of skin, keeping one step ahead of the persecutor within.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Infidels (1983), Jokerman

Han-shan photo

“There is a Precious Mountain
Even the Seven Treasures cannot compare
A cold moon rises through the pines
Layer upon layer of bright clouds
How many towering peaks?
How many wandering miles?
The valley streams run clear
Happiness forever!”

Han-shan Chinese monk and poet

Cold Mountain Transcendental Poetry

Thornton Wilder photo

“Wherever you come near the human race there's layers and layers of nonsense.”

Thornton Wilder Our Town

"Stage Manager"
Source: Our Town (1938)

Kamala Surayya photo

“If wrappings of cloth can impart respectability, the most respectable persons are the Egyptian mummies, all wrapped in layers and layers of gauze.”

Kamala Surayya (1934–2009) Indian author

Kamala Suraiyya Das (Wages of Love)

Frank Wilczek photo

“Once helium burning has occurred… the next possible reaction—carbon burning—is not necessarily slow… This reaction involves …a strong as opposed to a weak interaction. …Carbon burning results in magnesium. …Taking a cross section of a highly evolved star would reveal a system of many layers. The inner layers have been subjected to the largest pressures, thereby forced to the highest temperatures, and burned the furthest; the outermost layers, by contrast, have not burned at all. Thus, as we proceed from outside in, there will be an outermost layer with the initial mix of hydrogen and helium, a layer of mostly helium, a layer of carbon, a layer of magnesium, and so on. …So we arrive at the picture of a star, in the latest stages of its evolution… now composed of mostly carbon nuclei and other explosive material.”

Frank Wilczek (1951) physicist

Longing for the Harmonies: Themes and Variations from Modern Physics (1987)

David Allen photo

“Cool how many layers of my mind there are to clear, each time I do it…& how different my world is then.”

David Allen (1945) American productivity consultant and author

12 February 2011 https://twitter.com/gtdguy/status/36269718428073984
Official Twitter profile (@gtdguy) https://twitter.com/gtdguy

Related topics