Learning from artists

— How can we make things
beautiful, attractive, and desirable for us when they are not?
And I rather think that in themselves they never are.

… from artists who
are really continually trying
to bring off such inventions and feats.

Moving away
from things until
there is a good deal that one no longer sees
and there is much that our eye has to add
if we are still to see them at all;
or seeing things around a corner
and as cut out and
framed;

or looking at them
through tinted glass
or in the light of the sunset;
or giving them a surface and skin
that is not fully transparent –

all this we should learn from artists
while being wiser than they are in other matters.
For with them this subtle power usually comes to an end
where art ends and life begins;

but we
want to be the poets of our life
–first of all in the smallest,
     most everyday matters.

–excerpt The Gay Science, Book 4, Section 299 by Friedrich Nietzsche

This summary of Nietzsche’s angle of view reveals his intention, how life itself, the one life that one has been given is one’s magnum opus.

A camera has been close at hand since I was sixteen years old.  What is decisive in making a beautiful photograph are such techniques as are mentioned here.  What does art require?  Mastery of perspective, depth of field, framing, angle of illumination, hue, and more.  One never achieves complete mastery, discipline of eye, mind and body.  One is addressed by new forms and color; more is always to be learned.

Need art end where life begins?

Not at all.

And that is the point.

It is the first weekend of summer!  Here is a fine Sam Cooke tune to enjoy!  Be kind to yourself!  And never forget that you are the point-of-the-spear for everyone who has come before you.