“This is the miracle of abstract painting: it constructs the unlimited monumentality of a work that no longer has a foothold in the visible world, that ignores its rules and does not seek anything from it, neither aid nor sanction, and that emerges with the pure force and infinite certainty of life. Withdrawn from the weight of things and from the inertial systems in which things are held and have their limited possibilities circumscribed, the work of art proceeds from the imagination. To imagine is to posit something other than what is and what is there right in front of us -- something other than the world. To imagine is to posit life.”

— Michel Henry

Books on Culture and Barbarism, Seeing the Invisible: On Kandinsky (1988)
Source: Michel Henry, Seeing the invisible: On Kandinsky, Continuum, 2009, p. 107

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Michel Henry 45

French writer 1922–2002

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“Religion has no limits, and no bounds;—
The vast, the infinite, and the eternal.,
Never from her may Genius separate.
Imagination from its earliest flight,
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Is the reflection of divinity.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Translations, From the French

“The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination. Few media of creation are so flexible, so easy to polish and rework, so readily capable of realizing grand conceptual structures….
Yet the program construct, unlike the poet's words, is real in the sense that it moves and works, producing visible outputs separate from the construct itself. [… ] The magic of myth and legend has come true in our time. One types the correct incantation on a keyboard, and a display screen comes to life, showing things that never were nor could be.”

Fred Brooks (1931) American computer scientist

Page 7.
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“There is something ridiculous and miserly in the myth we inherit from abstract art: That painting is autonomous, pure and for itself, and therefore we habitually analyze its ingredients and define its limits. But painting is 'impure'. It is the adjustment of 'impurities', which forces painting’s continuity. We are image-makers and image-ridden. There are no 'wiggly or straight lines' or any other elements. You work until you vanish. The picture isn’t finished if they are seen.”

Phillip Guston (1913–1980) American artist

transcript of the panel, March 1960, held at the Philadelphia Museum School of Art, as quoted in Abstract Expressionism Creators and Critics, edited by Clifford Ross, Abrams Publishers New York 1990, p.61
1950 - 1960

“The general conception here maintained is not new; it is one already familiar from the works of Coleridge, Croce and many others; it is the view that art is at bottom neither more nor less than imagination.”

R. G. Collingwood (1889–1943) British historian and philosopher

Source: Outlines of a Philosophy of Art, 1925, p. 3

“We know from many experiences that this is what the work of art does: its life — in which we have shared the alien existences both of this world and of that different world to which the work of art alone gives us access — unwillingly accuses our lives.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

"The Profession of Poetry," Partisan Review (September/October 1950) [p. 166]
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

“A very weighty argument is this — namely, that neither does the light which descends from thence, chiefly upon the world, mix itself with anything, nor admit of dirtiness or pollution, but remains entirely, and in all things that are, free from defilement, admixture, and suffering.”

Julian (emperor) (331–363) Roman Emperor, philosopher and writer

Upon the Sovereign Sun (362)
Context: A very weighty argument is this — namely, that neither does the light which descends from thence, chiefly upon the world, mix itself with anything, nor admit of dirtiness or pollution, but remains entirely, and in all things that are, free from defilement, admixture, and suffering. Besides, we must pay attention to the other kinds of phenomena, both to the Intelligible, and yet more to the Sensible — whatever are connected with matter, or will manifest themselves in relation to our subject. <!-- Here, again, the Intelligible is the centre of the species that lie around the mighty Sun, through whose means the species connected with Matter are benefited, inasmuch as they would be unable either to exist, or to subsist, unless they be helped by him as regards their existence. Besides, is not he the author of the separation of Species and of the combination of Matter? He not merely allows himself to be mentally conceived, but to be an object of the sight, for the distribution of his rays over the whole world, and the unity of his light, demonstrate the creative and separating powers of his mode of action. And as there are still numerous visible benefits connected with the essence of this deity, which surround that which is intermediate between the Intelligible and the Sensible powers, let. us pass on to his final and visible conclusion. The first degree of his, contains as it were the model and the substance for a pattern to the Solar Angels who are stationed around the lowest world. After this comes that which is generative of things perceptible to Sense: of which the more refined part contains the source of heaven and the stars, whilst the inferior part superintends generation, containing from all eternity within itself the ungenerated essence of generation.

“Many will think they may reasonably blame me by alleging that my proofs are opposed to the authority of certain men held in the highest reverence by their inexperienced judgments; not considering that my works are the issue of pure and simple experience, who is the one true mistress. These rules are sufficient to enable you to know the true from the false — and this aids men to look only for things that are possible and with due moderation — and not to wrap yourself in ignorance, a thing which can have no good result, so that in despair you would give yourself up to melancholy.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), I Prolegomena and General Introduction to the Book on Painting

“When the creative imagination sees new dreams rising above from imitation and maneuvers its works in its own manner, there Art springs.”

Laxmi Prasad Devkota (1909–1959) Nepali poet

कला र जीवन (Art and Life)
Art and Life

“I learned this bit of wisdom from a principle of William Blake's which I discovered early and followed far too assiduously the first half of my aesthetic life, and from which I have happily released myself and this axiom was: "Put off intellect and put on imagination; the imagination is the man." From this doctrinal assertion evolved the theoretical axiom that you don't see a thing until you look away from it which was an excellent truism as long as the principles of the imaginative life were believed in and followed. I no longer believe in the imagination.”

Marsden Hartley (1877–1943) American artist

n.p.
1921 - 1930, Art and the Personal Life', Marsden Hartley, 1928

“I have painted like an ape. The ape phase is in all my work. My first lick of paint is the ape phase, from that I grow towards a more intellectual phase, involving the lines, the rhythm. From that phase I grow towards mankind, for that is where the power of my imagination lies. It no longer has anything to do with reality, even though the world is present in it - for we recognize people, animals, plants, you name it.”

Karel Appel (1921–2006) Dutch painter, sculptor, and poet

quote of Karel Appel: from the conversation with Rudy Fuchs in 1990; as quoted in 'The Low Countries', Jaargang 12(2004) on DBNL (Dutch Librairy online) http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/_low001200401_01/_low001200401_01_0027.php

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Michel Henry 45

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