Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Henry Miller
Henry Miller, with words that jump off the page,
I had all the vices of the educated man. I had to learn to think, feel and see in a totally new fashion, in an uneducated way, in my own way, which is the hardest thing in the world. I had to throw myself into the current, knowing that I would probably sink. The great majority of artists are throwing themselves in with life-preservers around their necks and more often than not it is the life-preserver which sinks them.
Brilliantly said. It is surprising how many artists are joiners. How easily influenced by fashion. How much many artists desire support from theory and consensus rather than developing and sticking by personal conviction.
Miller's clarity and simplicity recommend him and lends his work an oddly classical feel stylistically. His honesty, by which I mean a true-ness to his imaginative flow, is the hallmark of art, and provides a tremendously grounded quality to his writing.
Miller also said,
We are dealing with crystalline elements of the dispersed and shattered soul. The modern painters express this state or condition perhaps even more forcibly than the writer: Picasso is the perfect example of what I mean.
Since writing that Picasso has waned in public esteem and Matisse has emerged as a far reaching influence — both conceptually and graphically — but principally through his sensibility. The two artists represent the inescapable antipodes of body/mind and spirit/heart — like Michelangelo and Raphael; a preference for one over the other is a preference derived from local circumstance; both artists work to an equally high level, the only true judgment that can be applied to the ineffable image.