gudrun-m

“The daily routine of most adults is so heavy and artificial that we are closed off to much of the world. We have to do this in order to get our work done. I think one purpose of art is to get us out of those routines. When we hear music or poetry or stories, the world opens up again. We’re drawn in — or out — and the windows of our perception are cleansed, as William Blake said. The same thing can happen when we’re around young children or adults who have unlearned those habits of shutting the world out.”

"It is something about the way art gets made out of not just the material stuff of everyday life, but its habitual rhythms. The very fact that Hesse’s living and working spaces intersected made this reciprocity all the keener. All this may not sound momentous enough to account for the kind of creative work that Hesse was involved in. But that would be precisely my point: that great outpourings of expressive feelings are not relevant to making art. Much more so is the both simple and complex fact of how you group things together… It is an intricate pattern of thought made visible in actions of handling, placing, removing and replacing. Sub-objects from this point of view, tend not to come singly. They are ruled by pure contingency, which makes it possible for a studio leftover to turn so readily into a new idea or even a new work."