The Least Touchable Object In The World

Nothing Is More Humbling Than To Look With A Strong Magnifying Glass At An Insect So Tiny That The Naked Eye Sees Only The Barest Speck And To Discover That Nevertheless It Is Sculpted And Articulated And Striped With The Same Care And Imagination.

When The Thing Observed... Is Seen As An Agglomeration Of Pieces, The Details Lose Their Meaning And The Whole Becomes Unrecognizable. This Is Often True Of Snapshots In Which No Pattern Of Salient Shapes Organizes The Mass Of Vague And Complex Nuances.

Just As A Chemist "isolates" A Substance From Contaminations That Distort His View Of Its Nature And Effects, So The Work Of Art Purifies Significant Appearance. It Presents Abstract Themes In Their Generality, But Not Reduced To Diagrams.

Good Art Theory Must Smell Of The Studio, Although Its Language Should Differ From The Household Talk Of Painters And Sculptors.

Seeing Consists Of The Grasping Of Structural Features Rather Than The Indiscriminate Recording Of Detail.