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Hans
Hofmann Artist's
Statement, 1959 Hans
Hofmann From the It Is magazine, Winter-Spring 1959
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America
is at present in a state of cultural blossoming.
I am supposed to have contributed
my share as teacher
and artist by the offering of a multiple awareness. This
awareness I consider to constitute a visual experience
and a pictorial
creation."Seeing" without awareness, as a
visual act, is just short
of blindness. "Seeing" with awareness
is a visual experience; it
is an art. We must learn to see.
The interpretation in pictorial terms of
what we see is "another"
art. Every act of pictorial creation has,
therefore, a dual
conceptual approach.The origin of creation is, therefore,
a
reflection of nature on a creative mind:
We
are nature.
What surrounds us is nature Our creative means are nature
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Nothing,
however, will happen without the creative faculties of our conscious
and
unconscious mind. One of these faculties is an awareness of space
in every
form of manifestation:
Either
a) In the form of movement
and counter-movement, with the
consequence of rhythm and counter-rhythm;
or b) In the form of force and
counter-force in a two-dimensional
In
the form of tension as a result of these forces. The pictorial life as a pictorial
reality results from the aggregate of two- and three-dimensional tensions:
a
combination of the effect of simultaneous expansion and contraction with
that of
push and pull. The nature of the light-and-color problem in the plastic
arts cannot
be fully understood without an awareness of the foregoing considerations.
Color and light are to a very great extent subjected to the formal problems
of the
picture surface. The color problem follows a development that makes
it a life- and
light-emanating plastic means of first order. Like the picture
surface, color has
an inherent life of its own. A picture comes into existence
on the basis of the
interplay of this dual life. In the act of predominance
and assimilation,
colors love or hate each other, thereby helping to make
the creative intention
of the artist possible. Talent is, in general, common
original talent is rare. A teacher
can only accompany a talent over a certain
period of time; he can never make one.
As a teacher I approach my students
purely with the human desire to free them from
all scholarly inhibitions.
And I tell them,
"Painters must speak through paint - not through words." |
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A work of art is finished, from the point of view of
the artist, when feeling and perception have resulted in a spiritual synthesis.
- Hans Hoffman. |
Self-Portrait
with Brushes,1942 | IN
1966, A MONTH BEFORE HIS DEATH, HANS HOFMANN DESCRIBED HIS PROCESS OF PAINTING
IN THESE WORDS:
When I paint,
I paint under the dictate of feeling or sensing, and the outcome all the time
is supposed to say something. And that is most often my sense of nature. . . it
might suggest landscape and might only suggest certain moods, and so on but this
must be expressed in pictorial means, according to the inner laws of these means.
Only this is acceptable as art. |
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A work
of art is a world in itself reflecting senses and emotions of the artist's world.
The aim of art, so far as one can speak of an aim at all, has always been the
same: the blending of experience gained in life with the natural qualities
of the art medium.
Every creative act requires elimination and simplification. Simplification results
from a realization of what is essential.
A
painting must have form and light unity. It must light up from the inside through
the intrinsic qualities which color relations offer. . . When it lights
up from the inside, the painted surface breathes, because the interval
relations which dominate the whole cause it to oscillate and to vibrate.
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