When we study human language, we are approaching what some might call the 'human essence,' the distinctive qualities of mind that ...are, so far as we know, unique to man and that are inseparable from any critical phase of human existence, personal or social. Hence the fascination of this study, and, no less, its frustration. The frustration arises from the coming to grips with the core problem of human language, which I take to be this: having mastered a language, one is able to understand an indefinite number of expressions that are new to one's experience, that bear no simply physical resemblance and are in no simple way analogous to the expressions that constitute one's linguistic experience; and one is able ... to produce such expressions on an appropriate occasion, despite their novelty.... The normal use of language is, in this sense, a creative activity. This creative aspect of normal language use is one fundamental factor that distinguishes human language from any known system of animal communication.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
He does not create his object in reality as does the painter, but he creates, before the camera begins to function, the irrevocabl...y ultimate aesthetic form. He carries the notion of the shape of an object in himself and he takes the object destined for that form, giving it a certain position or moving it into a certain situation of light, in a certain relation to space.... The photographer's artistic performance is thus displayed in pre-photographic and in post-photographic action; in the preparation for real photographic action and in the reproduction of the photograph. The painter recreates his object from beginning to end ... through his activity, through his painting. The photographer, it is true, changes his object, too, by his photographic action ... he gives the convincing shape, most clearly adequate to his perception, before, and he fixes this shape in a mechanistic way.... Whereas the painter remains creative from first to last, the creative activity of the photographer is confined and limited; whereas the artistic action of the painter is not interrupted, the artistic action of the photographer breaks off in the moment in which the apparatus is to fix and make visible its effect.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Nothing exists until or unless it is observed. An artist is making something exist by observing it. And his hope for other people ...is that they will also make it exist by observing it. I call it "creative observation." Creative viewing.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
All in all, the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external worl...d by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act. This becomes even more obvious when posterity gives its final verdict and sometimes rehabilitates forgotten artists.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The plant is not a mere product of the soil, but a living process centred in itself, the essence of which has nothing to do with t...he character of the soil. In the same way the art-work must be regarded as a creative formation, freely making use of every precondition. Its meaning and its own individual particularity rests in itself, and not in its preconditions. In fact one might also describe it as a being that uses man and his personal dispositions merely as a cultural medium or soil, disposing his powers according to his own laws, while shaping itself to the fulfillment of its own creative purpose.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
All the lies and evasions by which man has nourished himself--civilization, in a word--are the fruits of the creative artist. It i...s the creative nature of man which has refused to let him lapse back into that unconscious unity with life which charactizes the animal world from which he made his escape.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For the musician, before he has begun his work, all is in readiness so that the operation of his creative spirit may find, right f...rom the start, the appropriate matter and means, without any possibility of error. He will not have to make this matter and means submit to any modification; he need only assemble elements which are clearly defined and ready-made. But in how different a situation is the poet! Before him is ordinary language, this aggregate of means which are not suited to his purpose, not made for him. There have not been physicians to determine the relationships of these means for him; there have not been constructors of scales; no diapason, no metronome, no certitude of this kind. He has nothing but the coarse instrument of the dictionary and the grammar. Moreover, he must address himself not to a special and unique sense like hearing, which the musician bends to his will, and which is, besides, the organ par excellence of expectation and attention; but rather to a general and diffused expectation, and he does so through a language which is a very odd mixture of incoherent stimuli.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have often thought that if photography were difficult in the true sense of the term--meaning that the creation of a simple photo...graph would entail as much time and effort as the production of a good watercolor or etching--there would be a vast improvement in total output. The sheer ease with which we can produce a superficial image often leads to creative disaster.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »