Nearer to the surface If in the following I overemphasize the Orient, this is simply because in the Far East the properties of materials are a little nearer to the surface, a little more consciously a part of what the artist is trying to show. The naturalistic aspects of Oriental philosophy encourage a sensitivity to the quality of materials — or is it the inverse, that an early enjoyment of stone, wood, clay, and fiber gave rise to the philosopher’s perception of the soul in all natural things comparable to man himself? Westerners tend to override materials, usually in ignorance, but sometimes proudly as a tour de force. Cyril Stanley Smith, A Search for Structure materialsoul
In the world of sunlight And here we come back to that forgotten, outcast word, the soul. Indeed, the soul possesses an inner light, the light that an inner vision knows and expresses in the world of brilliant colors, in the world of sunlight. Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space soullight
Tiny robots A Quote "Yes, we have a soul. But it’s made of lots of tiny robots.” — Giulio Giorello Rationality: From AI to Zombies soulconsciousness
What the painting was not about That is why for many years Irwin declined to allow his work to be photographed, because the image of the canvas was precisely what the painting was not about. Indeed, the problem is even more complicated than that. For in a very real sense the achievement of these paintings was in their making, and the finished canvas at one level is only an incidental relic, a fossil of that original process of discovery: not only do you have to be present before these paintings in order to experience them, it may be that you have to have made them as well. Lawrence Wechler & Robert Irwin, Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees Only a mind opened to the quality of things photographyimages