“My aim in painting is to create pulsating, luminous, and open surfaces that emanate a mystic light, in accordance with my deepest insight into the experience of life and nature.”

— Hans Hofmann

As quoted in The Artist's Voice : Talks With Seventeen Modern Artists (1962) by Katharine Kuh, p. 128
1960s

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Hans Hofmann 67

American artist 1880–1966

Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) American artist

As quoted in Readings in American art, 1900 -1975 (1975) by Barbara Rose, p. 117
1970s and later
Variant: In nature, light creates the color. In the picture, color creates the light.

“I paint my pictures with all the considerations which are natural to my intelligence, and according as my intelligence understands them.”

Paolo Veronese (1523–1588) Italian painter of the Renaissance

Unsourced variant translation: I paint my pictures with such judgment as I have and as seems fitting.
Testimony to the Inquisition, (1573)

“My aim in painting has always been the most exact transcription possible of my most intimate impressions of nature.”

Edward Hopper (1882–1967) prominent American realist painter and printmaker

1911 - 1940, Notes on Painting - Edward Hopper (1933)

“It is not my aim and object to paint a cow for the cow's sake or a tree for the tree's, but by means of the whole to create a beautiful and huge impression which nature sometimes creates, also with most simple means. (translation from the Dutch original: Fons Heijnsbroek)”

Gerard Bilders (1838–1865) painter from the Netherlands

version in original Dutch / citaat van Bilders' brief, in het Nederlands: Het is mijn doel niet eene koe te schilderen om de koe, noch een boom om den boom; het is om door het geheel een indruk te weeg te brengen, dien de natuur somtijds maakt, een grootschen, schoonen indruk, ook door de eenvoudigste middelen.
Quote of Gerard Bilders in his letter c. 1861-1864; as cited in Dutch Art in the Nineteenth Century – 'The Hague School; Introduction' https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dutch_Art_in_the_Nineteenth_Century/The_Hague_School:_Introduction, by G. Hermine Marius, transl. A. Teixera de Mattos; publish: The la More Press, London, 1908
1860's

“My aim? Simply to inspire people and give them the most complete freedom to live their own life. No glamour, no fame, no institution - nothing. To live simply and die luminously.”

Anirvan (1896–1978) Indian Hindu philosopher

Inner yoga (antaryoga): Anirvan. (1988). New Delhi: Voice of India. From the Introduction by Ram Swarup.

“Your eyes, accustomed to semi-darkness, will soon open to more radiant visions of light. The shadows which we shall paint shall be more luminous than the high-lights of our predecessors, and our pictures, next to those of the museums, will shine like blinding daylight, compared with deepest night. We conclude that painting cannot exist today without divisionism... w:Divisionism - [ Paul Signac initiated divisionism slightly earlier, together with Seurat ] - for the modern painter, must be an innate complementariness which we declare to be essential and necessary.”

Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916) Italian painter and sculptor

As quoted in Futurism, ed. Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 92.
1910, Manifesto of Futurist Painters,' April 1910

“I see the true importance of LSD in the possibility of providing material aid to meditation aimed at the mystical experience of a deeper, comprehensive reality. Such a use accords entirely with the essence and working character of LSD as a sacred drug.”

Albert Hofmann (1906–2008) Swiss chemist

Source: LSD : My Problem Child (1980), Ch. 11 : LSD Experience and Reality
Context: The characteristic property of hallucinogens, to suspend the boundaries between the experiencing self and the outer world in an ecstatic, emotional experience, makes it possible with their help, and after suitable internal and external preparation, as it was accomplished in a perfect way at Eleusis, to evoke a mystical experience according to plan, so to speak.
Meditation is a preparation for the same goal that was aspired to and was attained in the Eleusinian Mysteries. Accordingly it seems feasible that in the future, with the help of LSD, the mystical vision, crowning meditation, could be made accessible to an increasing number of practitioners of meditation
I see the true importance of LSD in the possibility of providing material aid to meditation aimed at the mystical experience of a deeper, comprehensive reality. Such a use accords entirely with the essence and working character of LSD as a sacred drug.

“According to my theory, a dark spot in the sun is a place in its atmosphere which happens to be free from luminous decompositions”

William Herschel (1738–1822) German-born British astronomer, technical expert, and composer

above it
Source: Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works (1880), Ch.4 "Life and Works" quote from his paper "Nature and Construction of the Sun and Fixed Stars" (1795).

“The mystics aim (Union with Reality) is not the suppression of life but it's intensification”

Evelyn Underhill (1875–1941) British saint, poet, novelist

PART II, CHAPTER I.
Mysticism. A Study of the Nature and Development of Man's Spiritual Consciousness (1911)

“Self-painting is a further development of the art of painting. The surface of an image has lost its function as the sole means of conveying expression. It was taken back to its roots, to the wall, to the object, to the living being, to the human body. By using my body as a means of conveying expression, the result created is a happening captured by a camera as it progresses, and an experience which viewers can share.”

Günter Brus (1938) Austrian artist

Source: Nervous Stillness on the Horizon (2006), P. 140 (1985)

“My aim in painting is to create pulsating, luminous, and open surfaces that emanate a mystic light, in accordance with my deepest insight into the experience of life and nature.”

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Hans Hofmann 67

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