¶ Artist
Index Entry
“I don’t think of art as modern art or classic art. I just think of the artist as someone who speaks to me. Not as a painter or as a sculptor. For the artist it is just not an expression of his ego. I see in the artist the deeper or mysterious urge of another individual feeling deeply of the great mysterious wonderment-- with a feeling of awe, even ominous. And I wonder how this artist could be so extraordinarily sensitive and articulate. Art is always inspired. It is very different from ambition. Inspiration comes from outside: we don’t know where, or exactly where. Ambition has nothing to do with art: we do know where ambition comes from. . . . Amongst the present painters I feel that Dali is an artist, truly inspired-- like Frank Lloyd Wright, loving and thoughtful with his own wife and family, not being ambitious. Wright had all the Dali-like histrionics, and he had great confidence in his own insights, but he had great humility too. Their public appearance seems to be very remote from their beautiful private worlds. And Poe was an artist; of course he drank, and F. Hopkinson Smith’s ‘Kennet Square’ tells how he passed out, but when he came to he recited the Lord’s Prayer and said it beautifully.”
¶ Citations
- RBF to EJA, 3200 Idaho, Washington DC, 24 Jan '72
