Art is magic. So say the surrealists. But how is it magic? In its metaphysical development? Or does some final transformation culminate in a magic re… - Hans Hofmann

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Art is magic. So say the surrealists. But how is it magic? In its metaphysical development? Or does some final transformation culminate in a magic reality? In truth, the latter is impossible without the former. If creation is not magic, the outcome cannot be magic. To worship the product and ignore its development leads to dilettantism and reaction. Art cannot result from sophisticated, frivolous, or superficial effects.

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About Hans Hofmann

Hans Hofmann (21 March 1880 – 17 February 1966) was one of the older abstract expressionist painters working in New York. Hofmann originally came from Germany where he experienced the new art and so he connected European with modern American abstract art. He had strong influence as an art-teacher and writer on the younger American abstract artists after 1940.

Biography information from Wikiquote

Also Known As

Alternative Names: Hans Georg Albert Hofmann Johann Georg Albert Hofmann Johann Hofmann Hans Hoffman Hofmann
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Additional quotes by Hans Hofmann

The impressionistic method leads into a complete splitting and dissolution of all areas involved in the composition, and color is used to create an overall effect of light. The color is, through such a shading down from the highest light in the deepest shadows, sacrified an degraded to a (black-and-white) function. This leads to the destructions of the color as color.

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A line cannot control pictorial space absolutely. A line may flow freely in and out space, but cannot independently create the phenomenon of push and pull necessary to plastic creation. Push and pull are expanding and contracting forces which are activated by carriers in visual motion. Planes are the most important carriers, lines and points less so.. .the picture plane reacts automatically in the opposite direction to the stimulus received; thus action continues as long as it receives stimulus in the creative process. Push answers with pull and pull with push. ... At the end of his life and the height of his capacity Cézanne understood color as a force of push and pull. In his pictures he created an enormous sense of volume, breathing, pulsating, expanding, contracting through his use of colors.

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