References

Ending space - dr. Tomaž Brejc
The time which I belong to - Mateja Sever
The sublime and romanticism in contemporary Slovene painting - Andrej Medved
A hole in time - Barbara Sterle Vurnik
Somewhere in time - Maja Megla
Artists about art : Lee Krassner
Artists about art : Georgia O'Keefe
Artists about art : Agnes Martin
Artists about art : Louise Nevelson
Artists about art : Auguste Rodin

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Artists about art: Louise Nevelson

My theory is that when we come on this earth, many of us are ready-made. Some of us- most of us – have genes that are ready for certain performances. Nature gives you these gifts. There's no denying that Caruso came with a voice, there's no denying that Beethoven came with music in his soul. Picasso was drawing like an angel in the crib. You're born with it.
I claim for myself I was born this way. From earliest, earliest childhood I knew I was going to be an artist. I felt like an artist. You feel it – just like feel you're a singer if you have a voice. So I have that blessing, and there was never a time that I questioned it or doubted it.
I had a blueprint all my life from childhood and I knew exactly what I demanded of this world. Now, some people may not demand of life as much as I did. But I wanted one thing that I thought belonged to me. I wanted a whole show. For me, that is living.
I don't say life was easy. For forty years, I wanted to jump out of windows. But I did feel I had the strength and the creative ability. There was never any doubt about that. No one could move me till I got what I wanted, on my terms, on earth.  And it did take, maybe not the greatest mind, but it did take courage. And it did take despair. And the hardship gave me total freedom.

Everyone is entitled to recognize their full being. Male or female, the human being is entitled to that total heritage, no matter what.

We underestimate what humans are, you see. When I hear people say »the common man«… I hate that phrase. You know, we hear it, writers have used it, poets have used it. I think it's a great mistake. There's no such thing. There's nobody that's common. I think in every human being there is greatness.

The tragedy on earth is that people are born into a certain environment. Think of this. When you're born, you have two parents, usually. Those parents are in a position to control every move you make, so already you've got a ton of  this on your  head. As you move on, until you're grown, you have superiors. You're educated  in the strange way that you have to be humble to inherit the earth. You're taught to be subservient to religion, subservient to the older people, subservient…God knows…down the line.
You see, sometimes you have to turn about the things you are taught.. You have to stand on your two feet and claim your true heritage. What does that mean? That means you belong to yourself. The fact that we can breathe is really kind of a miracle, and so if you see that and work for that, you finally find yourself claiming who you are, and you can only be a total human being and be a human being to others when you know who you are… and you have every right to that.

Now people might say, oh, aren't you selfish? Well, I don't know what they mean. Who is more important in life than oneself? Your own life is all lives.
I  feel that if we're self-centered – I don't mean in a bad sense – it's a very healthy thing. Because if you're not self-aware you cannot give. You have to have within you to give.
Now if you want to give somebody your life, that's fine because that comes from you. As long as it is your choice and you understand it, that's great. But if someone wants to take your life, you don't let them have it. Or any part of it. If it's superimposed on you then you are not recognizing your total being.

The one thing you have to remember as long as you live: your mother, your father, your sister, your brother, nobody, nobody on earth is your center. Your center is your center. We humans can't encompass everything. We can only encompass a radius around us. If a human being permits anything to take him out of his center – which is the eye, third eye within – he is giving up true human inheritance. And that is the only thing there is. The minute you give it up, you're not in command of yourself. You're not a total being.
That doesn't mean you have to be stubborn, that you don't have to do certain things in order to survive, to do certain things for other people. But it's YOU are the center. YOU are the moving person. When you have a center, you can help everybody. From that place you throw the ball of generosity. That is where I move from. Everything that I do, more or less, comes from that place.

When people lose their center, they go in for material things. But they can come back to it, sometimes with a difference, and sometimes they blossom more. I think we all fall, but some of us have something that we pick ourselves up and go on, to greater things. And I think the difference between not going on and going on is where life really fullfills itself. Life isn't one straight line. Never. Most of us have to be transplanted, like a tree, before we blossom.
The core of my being, from the earliest days, is this: that I have a great search within me. I'm seventyeight and I'm still on the track of understanding what this so-called living world is about. And it's only through projecting myself beyond myself, out into the visual world, that I have a concept of what the world might be.

What is common to the esthetic and religious nature is the capacity for a heightened nervous sensation many call »ecstasy«, that alights such an apetite for its repetition, that no single sight or insight, achievement or technical procedure satisfies but the artist, like the religious devotee, must be back working the lever tomorrow.
No matter what one does in life, it hasn't got the vitality or the excitement of really living as much as when you're really working… When you're creating there's an added energy that surpasses anything else.

I feel my work is both highly sophisticated and highly primitive. In the work, there is the meeting place of genius and isanity. Insanity has something to do with the primal, and I don't make much distinction between primal and sophisticated.

I lay down my tools and my supplies in a ritually purist manner each night, so that when I come into the studio next morning, it's like kneading bread or doing anything. I start working. Everything is clean and nice. I'm  very happy.

I've lived alone for years, and I slowly cut out a social life. I just do my work. I like to work.
It's clearly easier to achieve harmony – that harmony that is beyond all things, if one dispenses with them.

I can't afford to look back. Because I have destroyed so much. If I had looked back, I would destroy myself.

Links

www.ljnovice.com/galerija/sever-mateja
www.dlul-drustvo.si
www.equrna.si
www.plesnicar.si
www.zigaokorn.info
www.arven.org
www.kiki.si
www.ljudmila.org/stripcore/damjan
www.kapelica.org
www.galerija.skuc-drustvo.si
www.aluo.uni-lj.si
www.zveza-dslu.si
www.ljubljana.si
www.katrin-gruentzig.ch


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