What I demand in all things is life, the potentiality of existence, and that’s that; we need not then ask whether it be beautiful or ugly, the feeling that whatever’s been created possesses life outweighs these two and should be the sole criterion in matters of art.-
Georg Buchner
The engagement of subject, I’m absolutely convinced, that the engagement with a subject, with forms, with tangibility and the pressures together; with the plastic pressures; the demands of painting; where’s what and what’s over what; the rhythmic distribution; well that engagement which is the most hair-raising and serious and impossible and anxiety ridden engagement you can think of, produces the most unpredictable structures.
That’s why so-called abstract; flat painting; is ridiculous, because the limitations; the rules of the game are drawn too quickly; and they begin with where you should finish up. You can end up with one line, but you can’t begin that way.
Philip Guston (via ricdragon)
