Moving towards a Ghost

"What would we be without the succor of what does not exist? (…) The myths are the souls of our actions and of our loves. We may only act while moving towards a ghost. We may only love what we have created.”

Paul Valery, Petite lettre sur les mythes, 1928

Attributed to Michelangelo - Detail from the 

unfinished Manchester Madonna - ca. 1497

Henri Matisse - Blue Nude IV - 1952

Theo van Doesburg - Archer (design for poster) - 1919

Stretching his Hand to the Master of Things

“In place of a romantic, an idealist, an aristocratic dreamer about pure symbol, about abstract aesthetics of the word, in place of symbolism, futurism and imaginism, arrived a living poetry of the word-object, and its creator is not an idealist-dreamer Mozart, but a rigorous and severe artist-master Salieri, stretching his hand to the master of things and materialistic values, to the builder and producer of the material (reified) world.“ 
Ossip Mandelstam, O prirode slovaб 1922, 
quoted and translated in Edward Możejko, “Tracing the Modernist Paradigm” 
in Modernism, ed. Astradur Eysteinsson, 2007 vol.1

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy - Unnown Photographer - 1937

via moholy-nagy.org

The Will to a System

"The will to a system is a lack of integrity.”

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Twilight of the Idols, 1889

 Harry Holtzman - Sculpture - 1942

Mick Haggerty - Mickey Mondrian - 1978

Nicolas Saint Grégoire - Mondrian Light Dress - 2009