The Moment of Artistic Freedom

No one is as free as an artist. He is a bird among humans, flying off to foreign skies when the rest of stay behind. We can only watch him as he soars wishing that we dared to follow; but we don’t.

Being an artist is to dare. An artist is no longer safe. He goes where no one has gone before. Every step leads into the unknown.

He must be brave. He must be fearless, for if he is afraid, he is not free, and if he is not free, he is not an artist.

There are very few true artists.

An artist creates, and he who creates makes something out of nothing. Before there was nothing, and now there is something. What now is, has never been before, and what has not been, is unknown. The artist steps into the unknown.

An artist is not always an artist. He spends most of his time being normal: a prisoner like the rest of us. He must also make copies, walk that beaten path that life makes us walk. He too must use those ready-mades and place them in predetermined order. He must toil for his bread.

But there are moments: instants when art is born, when something rises out of nothing, when he takes off and flies.

The artistic moment happens when the human becomes an artist, that is, when he becomes himself. At all other times, he is half himself, a quarter himself, a tenth himself, or not himself at all. We are never ourselves.

At the moment of creation, he grabs what has come into being only within himself, and therefore he is himself, and therefore he is free.

Freedom is to do what no one tells you to do, what you truly want to do, what comes from yourself. Only an artist is free.