![We analyzed the first stage of our construction, confined to two-dimensional space, and found it to be as durable and resistant as the earth itself. We build in this space just as we would on the ground, and therefore must take as our point of departure the concepts of gravity and force of attraction, as the foundation of everything built on the land. In PROUN the reciprocity of the effects of gravity [Newton, 'for every action an equal and opposite reaction'] manifests itself in a new capacity. We see that on the surface (plane) of the picture, the PROUN ceases to exist as such and becomes a building surveyed from every direction - considered from above or examined from below. The result of this turns out to be the destruction of the single axis that leads to the horizon. (El Lissitsky)](https://cdn.quotesdtb.com/img/quotes_images_webp/97/el-lissitsky-above-action-300297.webp)
We analyzed the first stage of our construction, confined to two-dimensional space, and found it to be as durable and resistant as the earth itself. We build in this space just as we would on the ground, and therefore must take as our point of departure the concepts of gravity and force of attraction, as the foundation of everything built on the land. In PROUN the reciprocity of the effects of gravity [Newton, 'for every action an equal and opposite reaction'] manifests itself in a new capacity. We see that on the surface (plane) of the picture, the PROUN ceases to exist as such and becomes a building surveyed from every direction - considered from above or examined from below. The result of this turns out to be the destruction of the single axis that leads to the horizon.
El LissitskyRelated topics
above action attraction axis built building build capacity construction departure destruction direction durable earth equal everything found force foundation gravity ground horizon land opposite picture plane point reaction reciprocity resistant result see single space stage surface take newton effectsRelated quotes
What is seen and called the picture is what remains – an evidence. Even as one travels in painting towards a state of 'unfreedom' where only certain things can happen, unaccountably the unknown and free must appear. Usually I am on a work for a long stretch, until a moment arrives when the air of the arbitrary vanished and the paint falls into positions that feel destined. The very matter of painting – its pigment and space – is so resistant to the will, so disinclined to assert its plane and remain still. Painting seems like impossibility, with only a sign now and then of its own light. Which must be because of the narrow passage from a diagramming to that other state – corporeality. In this sense, to paint is a possessing rather than a picturing.
Phillip Guston
You please me much by saying that no other fault [in the portrait Gainsborough recently made and sent] is to be found in your picture than the roughness of the surface; for that part being of use in giving force to the effect at a proper distance.... I urn [earn? ] much better pleased that they should spy out things of that kind than to see an eye half an inch out of its place or a nose out of drawing when view'd at a proper distance. I don't think it would be more ridiculous for a person to put his nose close to the canvas and say the colours smell offensive than to say how rough the paint lies; for one is just as material as the other with regard to hurting the effect and drawing of a picture. For Sir Godfrey Kneller used to tell them that pictures were not made to smell of..
Thomas Gainsborough
What the structure of Rawls's argument indicates is a more fundamental feature of his thought. This is an amphibious world, which contains just enough land of real social reference to avoid the tricky deeps of first philosophy (the gesture is roughly: let's start out from where we're at – in other words, Bush–Clinton country), while floating carefully enough on the waters of abstraction to avoid contact with the ground of actual political change (for example: what has happened in the US since the 1970s). The result is a kind of political cabotage, a critique of existing society that clings nervously to its shores. Readers of Rawls might well ask: where is the actual justice in the United States that corresponds to the ideal construct he offers us, if it is based on ‘plain truths widely accepted by citizens'?
Perry Anderson
To be sure, the moment the study passes beyond bare description the student must leave the landscape itself, must go beneath it, even to state what its form represents - to translate the outer foliage of a forest into the forest, the outer surface of buildings into different kinds of buildings, etc.... Our interest in houses, factories, and forests cannot be confined to their surface form; only in the limited field of aesthetic geography could such a restriction be justified. Our very use of such words as house, barn, factory, office building, etc., indicates that we are primarily concerned with the internal functions within these structures, the external form is a secondary aspect which we use simply as a handy means to detect the internal function - and should use only insofar as it is a reliable means for that purpose.
Richard Hartshorne
I cannot exist entirely except when somehow I go beyond the stage of action. Otherwise I'm a soldier, a professional, a man of learning, not a "total human being.” The fragmentary state of humanity is basically the same as the choice of an object. When you limit your desires to possessing political power, for instance, you act and know what you have to do. ... You insert your existence advantageously into time. Each of your moments becomes useful. With each moment, the possibility is given you to advance to some chosen goal, and your time becomes a march toward that goal-what's normally called living. ... Every action makes you a fragmentary existence. I hold on to my nature as an entirety only by refusing to act-or at least by denying the superiority of time, which is reserved for action.
Georges Bataille
