Cubism demonstrated in its constructions its modernity in relation to scale, but in painting and contre-relief we have in front of us an absolute scale which is this - forms in their natural size in the ratio 1 : 1. If however we wish to transform the contre-relief into an architectural structure and therefore enlarge it by one hundred times, then the scale ceases to be absolute and becomes relative in the ratio of 1 : 100. Then we get the American statue of liberty in whose head there is room for four men and from whose hand the light streams out.
El LissitskyRelated topics
absolute american four front hand head hundred men liberty light modernity natural painting ratio relation relative room scale size statue structure times transform wish 100 cubismRelated quotes
No, the parallels are between modernism, late modernism, and socialist realism, of course. That's two sides of one coin. Both came of this idea of aristocrats, of people in power, imposing the culture on the people. A totally inhuman art. Modern art, and Pollock is the best example, is totally inhuman. Huge pictures for museums--now we call them museums; in Stalin times they were called palaces, but basically the same thing--which we rarely see and rarely visit. The sheer size of this painting, it's a totally inhuman scale. And there it can be typified...
Alexander Melamid
The Impressionists were the first [painters] to reject the absolute value of the subject and to consider its value to be merely relative.. .In Paul Cezanne's letters I notice ideas like these: 'Objects must turn, recede, and live. I wish to make something lasting from impressionism, like the art in the museums'.. ..'For an impressionist, to paint after nature is not to paint the object, but to express sensations'.. ..'After having looked at the old masters, one must take haste to leave them and to verify in one's self the instincts, the sensations that dwell in us.'
Fernand Léger
When Jackson talked about painting he didn't usurp anything that wasn't himself. He didn't want to change anything, he wasn't using any outworn attitude about it, he was always himself. He just wanted to be in it because he loved it. The response in the person's mind to that mysterious thing that has happened before has nothing to do with 'who did it first'. Tomlin however, did hear these voices and in reference to his early work and its relation to Braque, I like him for that. He was not an academician of Cubism even then; he was an extremely personal and sensitive artist.
Franz Kline
You have never expressed any decided political opinions, and indeed I do not know if or how far you assent to the proposition that almost unlimited sacrifices of individual life and happiness are worth while to preserve the unique structure of power of which the keystone (the only conceivable and indispensable keystone) is the English Crown. I for my part find it the nearest thing in the world to an absolute (as opposed to a relative) value: it is like the outer circle that bound my universe, so that I cannot conceive anything beyond it.
Enoch Powell
What we really need the poet's and orator's I help to keep alive in us is not, then, the common and gregarious courage which Robert Shaw showed when he marched with you, men of the Seventh Regiment. It is that more lonely courage which he showed when he dropped his warm commission in the glorious Second to head your dubious fortunes, negroes of the Fifty-fourth. That lonely kind of courage (civic courage as we call it in times of peace) is the kind of valor to which the monuments of nations should most of all be reared.
William James
