“Nature's purpose in relation to the visual arts is to provide stimulus — not imitation... From its ceaseless urge to create springs all Life — all movement and rhythm — time and light, color and mood — in short, all reality in Form and Thought.”

— Hans Hofmann

As quoted in Hans Hofmann (2000) by James Yohe
1970s and later

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Nature's purpose in relation to the visual arts is to provide stimulus — not imitation... From its ceaseless urge to cr…" by Hans Hofmann?

Hans Hofmann 67

American artist 1880–1966

Related quotes

“Light in nature creates movement in color. The movement is provided by the relationships of uneven measures, of colors contrasts among themselves and constitutes Reality [In this quote Delaunay is referring to his series 'Window'-paintings', which he had started in 1912].”

Robert Delaunay (1885–1941) French painter

Quote in: 'Nous irons jusqu'au soleil', Delaunay; as cited in 'Futurism', ed. By Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 217
1915 - 1941

“The important task of all art is to destroy the static equilibrium by establishing a dynamic one. Non-figurative art demands an attempt of what is a consequence of this task, the destruction of particular form and the construction of a rhythm of mutual relations, of mutual forms, or free lines.... the law of the denaturalization of matter is of fundamental importance. In painting, the primary color that is as pure as possible realizes this abstraction of natural color.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

Quote in: 'Plastic Art and Pure Plastic Art', Piet Mondrian (1937); in 'Documents of modern Art' ed. Robert Motherwell for Wittenborn, Schulz, New York 1945
1930's

“All art is but imitation of nature.”
Omnis ars naturae imitatio est.

Seneca the Younger (-4–65 BC) Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist

Source: Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter LXV: On the first cause, Line 3.

“to study the nude, the foundation of all pictorial art, in total freedom and naturalness. From.... this basis there emerged the feeling, shared by all, of taking creative stimulus from life itself and submitting to the decisive experience.”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) German painter, sculptor, engraver and printmaker

Kirchner, in 'Chronik KG Brücke', 1913; a quoted by Wolf-Dieter Dube, Der Expressionismus in Wort und Bild (Genf and Stuttgart: Skira, Klett-Cotta, 1983), p. 34; as quoted in 'Portfolios', Alexander Dückers; in German Expressionist Prints and Drawings - Essays Vol 1.; published by Museum Associates, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California & Prestel-Verlag, Germany, 1986, p. 68
1905 - 1915

“If you seek just a little truth, as most, you should not ignore abstract forms, the basis from which all short-lived experiences we call reality springs.”

Eugene J. Martin (1938–2005) American artist

Direct Art Magazine, "In Memoriam - Eugene James Martin", Fall-Winter 2006, Vol. 13, p. 87; also http://www.artnet.com/awc/eugene-j-martin.html and http://morayeel.louisiana.edu/ejMARTIN/ejMARTIN-artist.html

“Art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature, placed alongside thereof for its conquest.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

“No form of Nature is inferior to Art; for the arts merely imitate natural forms.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Meditations. xi. 10.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“True Genius, like Armida’s wand,
Can raise the spring from barren land.
While all the art of Imitation,
Is pilf’ring from the first creation.”

Robert Lloyd (poet) (1733–1764) English poet and satirist

‘Shakespeare’ (1762)

“All right. I’m not opposed to reality imitating art if it doesn’t get in the way.”

Samuel R. Delany (1942) American author, professor and literary critic

Source: Lines of Power (1968), p. 26

“For it is always the reality of the particular that provides the occasion and the spring of art”

Patrick Swift (1927–1983) British artist

"The Painter in the Press", X magazine, Vol. I, No.4 (October 1960).
Context: Art on the other hand speaks to us of resignation and rejoicing in reality, and does so through a transformation of our experience of the world into an order wherein all facts become joyous; the more terrible the material the greater the artistic triumph. This has nothing at all to do with "a constant awareness of the problems of our time" or any other vague public concern. It is a transformation that is mysterious, personal and ethical. And the moral effect of art is only interesting when considered in the particular. For it is always the reality of the particular that provides the occasion and the spring of art — it is always "those particular trees/ that caught you in their mysteries" or the experience of some loved object. Not that the matter rests here. It is the transcendent imagination working on this material that releases the mysterious energies which move and speak of deepest existence.

“Nature's purpose in relation to the visual arts is to provide stimulus — not imitation... From its ceaseless urge to create springs all Life — all movement and rhythm — time and light, color and mood — in short, all reality in Form and Thought.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Hans Hofmann 67

Related quotes

Related topics