If Man Is Not Ready To Risk

The Great Christian Art Did Not Die Because All Possible Forms Had Been Used Up; It Died Because Faith Was Being Transformed Into Piety. Now, The Same Conquest Of The Outside World That Brought In Our Modern Individualism, So Different From That Of The Renaissance, Is By Way Of Relativizing The Individual. It Is Plain To See That Man's Faculty Of Transformation, Which Began By A Remaking Of The Natural World, Has Ended By Calling Man Himself Into Question.

The Ordinary Man Puts Up A Struggle Against All That Is Not Himself, Whereas It Is Against Himself, In A Limited But All-essential Field, That The Artist Has To Battle.

A Large Share Of Our Art Heritage Is Now Derived From Peoples Whose Idea Of Art Was Quite Other Than Ours, And Even From Peoples To Whom The Very Idea Of Art Meant Nothing.

Just As A Musician Loves Music And Not Nightingales, And A Poet Loves Poetry And Not Sunsets, A Painter Is Not Primarily A Person Who Responds To Figures And Landscapes. He Is Primarily One Who Loves Pictures.

Often The Difference Between A Successful Person And A Failure Is Not One Has Better Abilities Or Ideas, But The Courage That One Has To Bet On One's Ideas, To Take A Calculated Risk - And To Act.