Now, to execute

Posted on by Live & Learn

painting

 

Calm Down
what happens
happens mostly
without you.

~ Josef Albers

Josef Albers (1888 – 1976) was a German-born American artist and educator whose work, both in Europe and in the United States, formed the basis of some of the most influential and far-reaching art education programs of the twentieth century. In Poems and Drawings, first published in 1958, Josef Albers attempted to penetrate the meaning of art and life by the simplest, most disciplined means. This project was extremely important to Albers, who used its format to create complementary forms in both word and line that appear deceptively simple until they begin to disclose the author’s insights into nature, art, and life. Conceived as a kind of artist’s book, the publication features 22 of Albers’s refined line drawings alongside the same number of his original poems—each appearing in both English and German. (Source: Wiki & Google)

Credits: Art Source: Thank you Carol, Poem Source: Thank you Schonwieder

16 thoughts on “Now, to execute”

  1. That quote by Albers is succinct yet insightful. If more people would take the time to take a few deep breaths when things are not going as planned and then try to put the matter into perspective, the level of stress in society would diminish noticeably.

    Thanks for sharing, Dave.

  3. I second John Zimmer. This state (elusive as it may be), comes to those who experience the world “Inside-out”
    Standing in a field of astronomers(used to be sugarcane), I gazed at the stars and overheard some of the pros discussing about those heavenly bodies. At that moment, I lost all perspective. I felt so small and inconsequential. The question “Why me?” became obsolete and a million other questions began forming inside a microscopic ‘me’.
    Thank you David Kanigan

    1. Thank you for sharing. Beautiful thought. It reminds me of a passage I just read in Brainpickings featuring Susan Sontag on Beauty v Interestingness:

      The most beautiful Christmas I had ever seen, made entirely of disinterested emotion and stripped of all tawdry trimmings. I was all alone beneath an enormous starred sky, and I can remember a tear running down my frozen cheek, a tear neither of pain nor of joy but of emotion created by intense experience.

      ~ From a letter written by a German soldier standing guard in the Russian winter in late December 1942

  4. love this. time and again, i am drawn to simplicity and a distillation of words is moving and powerful for me.

    ties in nicely with my post today, the world is much bigger than ourselves, and we need to remember that. life will ebb and flow, good and bad. period.

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