I've always been intrigued by things that insinuate femininity, so in my designs, something like a flower is never about the fact that it's a flower. It's more about what that repetitive motif implies.
An artist is generally expected to stick to one motif, one persona. People get used to seeing someone put down a certain thing.
motif, n. You don’t love me as much as I love you. You don’t love me as much as I love you. You don’t love me as much as I love you.
the 'total overpaintings' developed. . . through incessant reworking. The original motif peeped through the edges. Gradually it vanished completely.
Obsession with self is the motif of our time.
On a motif such as was indicated by Reti one cannot build the plan of a whole well contested game; it is too meagre, too thin, too puny for such an end. Reti's explanations, wherever they are concerned with an analysis which covers a few moves, are correct and praiseworthy. But when he abandons the foundations of analysis in order to draw too bold, too general a conclusion, his arguments prove to be mistaken.
The motif of death plays an important role the human psyche in connection with archetypal and karmic material.
My art in the last period has all been in small format, but my paintings have become even deeper and more spiritual, speaking truly through colour. Feeling that because of my illness I would not be able to paint very much longer, I worked like a man obsessed on these little 'Meditations' (a long series of small paintings he made during the last years of his life, with as main motif the schema of a face, ed. ). And now I leave these small but, to me, important works to the future and to people who love art.
I have always known that there were spellbinding evil parts for women. For one thing, I was taken at an early age to see Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Never mind the Protestant work ethic of the dwarfs. Never mind the tedious housework-is-virtuous motif. Never mind the fact that Snow White is a vampire -- anyone who lies in a glass coffin without decaying and then comes to life again must be. The truth is that I was paralysed by the scene in which the evil queen drinks the magic potion and changes her shape. What power, what untold possibilities!
For me a work of art must be an elevated interpretation of nature. The search for the ideal has been the purpose of my life. In landscape or seascape, I love above all the poetic motif.
