april 04
What the masters take decades to achieve, I cannot achieve it in a year or two or shorter. There is no short cut to great art.‘…An artist is forced to be isolated…’ (66-year-old woman)
‘Experimentation at the cost of learning, for the sake of career advancement, is my criticism of younger artists. From what I see and hear, younger artists seem to carry a pathological reticence to emulate anyone who was considered great over 30 years ago. Their goals seem to be innovation and making money. Fools!’ (66-year-old man)
‘Younger artists, on the whole, are more daring and hurried. They want to attain recognition and wealth while still young. Older artists know the ways of the art world, and know that if they achieve recognition, it will interfere with their more profound feelings and they will not be able to develop to full maturity slowly and surely.’ (reported by an 83-year-old man)
‘With years a richer life begins
The spirit mellows,
Ripe age gives tone to violins,
Wine, and good fellows.’
(John Townsend Trowbridge, ‘Three Worlds’)
‘There is not, I think, a single example of a great painter – or sculptor – whose work has not gained in profundity and originally (originality?) as he grew older. Bellini, Michelangelo, Titian, Tintoretto, Poussin, Rembrandt, Goya, Turner, Degas, Cezanne, Monet, Matisse, Braque, all produced some of their very greatest works when they were over sixty-five. It is as though a lifetime is needed to master the medium, and only when that mastery has been achieved can an artist be simply himself, revealing the true nature of his imagination.’ (John Berger, ‘Success and failure of Picasso’, 1965)
‘For the past eight years I have started each day in the same manner. It is not a mechanical routine but something essential to my daily life. I go to the piano, and I play two preludes and fugues of Bach. I cannot think of doing otherwise. It is a sort of benediction on the house. But that is not its only meaning to me. It is a rediscovery of the world of which I have the joy of being a part. It fills me with the awareness of the wonders of life, and a feeling of the incredible marvel of being a human being.’ (Pablo Casals, ‘Joys and Sorrows’, written at age 93)
‘No wise man ever wished to be younger.’ (Swift, ‘Thoughts on Various Subjects)
The dry branch burns more fiercely than the green. (Elder Olsen, written in his mid-70s)
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