sandpc: Art

Showing posts with label Art. Show all posts

2/19/10

Practice requires questions

Shugen Sensei says, “All the practices that we engage in are directed back to the self.” Then it is fair to say that, as a gate of training, art practice is an exploration of the self through artistic expression. And as any other discipline, it requires that we not just passively accept what we see, but that we thoroughly and constantly question.

Why humans make art

Rainer Maria Rilke says in his Letters to Cézanne that a work of art is to the artist, “the ever-returning proof to himself of his unity and genuineness... existing merely as necessity, as reality, as being.” Art seen and created in this way is not merely art for art’s sake, but rather a continuation of humanity’s ongoing attempt to understand itself and the universe.