| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Hidden Masterpiece by Honore de Balzac: not of the same texture as their tones of light. They are wood, brass,
iron, anything you please except flesh in shadow. We feel that if the
figures changed position the shady places would not be wiped off, and
would remain dark spots which never could be made luminous. I have
avoided that blunder, though many of our most illustrious painters
have fallen into it. In my work you will see whiteness beneath the
opacity of the broadest shadow. Unlike the crowd of ignoramuses, who
fancy they draw correctly because they can paint one good vanishing
line, I have not dryly outlined my figures, nor brought out
superstitiously minute anatomical details; for, let me tell you, the
human body does not end off with a line. In that respect sculptors get
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad: and admired the calm, self-contained character of her daughter
Winnie, whose displeasure was made redoubtable by a diversity of
dreadful silences. But she did not allow her inward apprehensions
to rob her of the advantage of venerable placidity conferred upon
her outward person by her triple chin, the floating ampleness of
her ancient form, and the impotent condition of her legs.
The shock of the information was so unexpected that Mrs Verloc,
against her usual practice when addressed, interrupted the domestic
occupation she was engaged upon. It was the dusting of the
furniture in the parlour behind the shop. She turned her head
towards her mother.
The Secret Agent |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe: which should lie within the compass of merely written words. By
the utter simplicity, by the nakedness of his designs, he
arrested and overawed attention. If ever mortal painted an idea,
that mortal was Roderick Usher. For me at least--in the
circumstances then surrounding me--there arose out of the pure
abstractions which the hypochondriac contrived to throw upon his
canvas, an intensity of intolerable awe, no shadow of which felt
I ever yet in the contemplation of the certainly glowing yet too
concrete reveries of Fuseli.
One of the phantasmagoric conceptions of my friend,
partaking not so rigidly of the spirit of abstraction, may be
The Fall of the House of Usher |
