Art is both love and friendship, and understanding; the desire to give. It is not charity, which is the giving of Things, it is more than kindness which is the giving of self. It is both the taking and giving of beauty, the turning out to the light the inner folds of awareness of the spirit. It is the recreation on another plane of the realities of the world; the tragic and wonderful realities of earth and men, and of all the inner relations of these.
- Letter, Ansel Adams to Cedric Wright, June 10, 1937.There are pictures that manifest education and there are pictures that manifest love.
- Robert Henri, The Art SpiritEllen Stewart, director of the La Mama theater, in response to a question about creativity:
"Here you are waitin' to know about cree-a-tivity. Lemme tell you somethin', baby. Carin' is where it's at. Trust me now because I know what I'm talkin' `bout -- you got a love for what you're doin' and everythin' else, all the rest of this cree-a-tivity stuff you're wonderin' `bout, baby, it just comes."
- From an interview by Denise Shekerjian in the book Uncommon GeniusAll that matters is what you love
and what you love is who you are...
- John Squadra, This Ecstasy
. . .
Does your work manifest love?
. . .
These voices — Adams writing to Wright in 1937, Henri distilling a lifetime of looking, Stewart speaking from a theater built on care — circle the same ground. Art as a form of attention. Love as the condition that makes genuine work possible.
