The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 12 (of 12): Dresden Edition—MiscellanyIngersoll, Robert Green
Religion
The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 12 (of 12): Dresden Edition—Miscellany
Ingersoll, Robert Green
Free thought
I believe that all arts have the same father and the same mother, and no
matter whether you express what happens in these unseen worlds in mere
words--because nearly all pictures have been made with words--or whether
you express it in marble, or form and color in what we call painting, it
is to carry on that commerce between these invisible worlds, and he is
the greatest artist who expresses the tenderest, noblest thoughts to
the unseen worlds about him. So that all art consists in this commerce,
every soul being an artist and every brain that is worth talking about
being an art gallery, and there is no gallery in this world, not in the
Vatican or the Louvre or any other place, comparable with the gallery
in every great brain. The millions of pictures that are in every
brain to-night; the landscapes, the faces, the groups, the millions of
millions of millions of things that are now living here in every brain,
all unseen, all invisible forever! Yet we communicate with each other by
showing each other these pictures, these studies, and by inviting others
into our galleries and showing them what we have, and the greatest
artist is he who has the most pictures to show to other artists.
I love anything in art that suggests the tender, the beautiful. What is
beauty? Of course there is no absolute beauty. All beauty is relative.
Probably the most beautiful thing to a frog is the speckled belly of
another frog, or to a snake the markings of another snake. So there
is no such thing as absolute beauty. But what I call beauty is what
suggests to me the highest and the tenderest thought; something that
answers to something in my world. So every work of art has to be born in
some brain, and it must be made by the unseen artist we call the soul.
Now, if a man simply copies what he sees, he is nothing but a copyist.
That does not require genius. That requires industry and the habit of
observation. But it is not genius; it is not art. Those little daubs and
shreds and patches we get by copying, are pieces of iron that need to be
put into the flame of genius to be molten and then cast in noble forms;
otherwise there is no genius.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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