WHAT FROM the clay, from stone did first emerge so
humbly,
Creative Art, encompasses with quiet vict’ry
The mind’s unmeasured, vast domain.
What in the knowledge land discov’rers conquer only,
Discover they, for you the conquest gain.
The treasures, which the thinker has collected,
Will only in your arms first joy impart,
When first his science, into beauty ripe perfected,
Will be ennobled to a work of art—
When he does to the hilltop with you sally,
And to his eye, in evening’s mildly shining part,
Is suddenly revealed—the vivid valley.
MORE RICHLY you do satisfy his fleeting vision,
More beaut’ous, higher are the orders which the mind
Can fly through in one magic union,
Can circumscribe in one enjoyment blind,
The wider ope are thoughts and feelings staying
To harmonies’ more sumpt’ous interplaying
To stream of Beauty’s richer, fuller span—
More beaut’ous members of the universal plan,
Which, mutilated, spoil now his creation,
He sees the high Forms then bring to perfection,
More beaut’ous step the riddles from the night,
The richer will the world be he embraces,
The broader streams the sea in which he chases,
The weaker grows the Destiny’s blind might,
The higher are his urges striving,
The smaller he becomes, the greater grows his loving.

From “The Artist” by Friedrich Schiller, translated by Marianna Wertz

https://archive.schillerinstitute.com/fidelio_archive/1995/fidv04n01-1995Sp/fidv04n01-1995Sp_053-friedrich_schiller_the_artists.pdf

Su Ai_from _Fieldwork

The Association Chaîne de Papier has announced the upcoming
2021/22 Edition of the Paper Fibre Art Biennial event in the exhibition
halls at the NTCRI Campus, in Nantou County, Taiwan.

The programme includes two exhibitions, KOZO CONTEMPORARY and CHANGE.

Su Ai’s Triptych has been selected to be presented as part of this event.

To see all selected artists and for details, please go to https://biennialartpaperfibre.com/blog/

Robert Craft: What is technique?

Igor Stravinsky: The whole man. We learn how to use it but we cannot acquire it in the first place; or perhaps I should say that we are born with the ability to acquire it. At present it has come to mean the opposite of “heart,” though, of course, “heart” is technique too. A single blot on a paper by my friend Eugene Berman I instantly recognize as a Berman blot. What have I recognized – a style or a technique? Are they the same signature of the whole man? Stendhal ( in The Roman Promenades) believed that style is “the manner that each one has of saying the same thing.” But, obviously, no one says the same thing because the saying is also the thing. A technique or a style for saying something original does not exist a priori, it is created by the original saying itself. We sometimes say of a composer that he lacks technique. We say of Schumann, for example, that he did not have enough orchestral technique. But we do not believe that more technique would change the composer. “Thought” is not one thing and “technique” another, namely, the ability to transfer, “express,” or develop thoughts. We cannot say “the technique of Bach” (I never say it), yet in every sense he had more of it than anyone; our extraneous meaning becomes ridiculous when we try to imagine the separation of Bach’s musical substance and the making of it. Technique is not a teachable science, neither is learning, nor scholarship, nor even the knowledge of how to do something. It is creation and, being creation, it is new every time.

[p. 25, Conversations with Igor Stravinsky. Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft, 1959 Doubleday, Garden City, NY.]

Su Ai, Double concerto