![]() ![]() No sooner, however, does the artist transgress the law of his medium than we realize with a start that there is a medium to obey. For the time being, he, and we with him, move in the artistic medium as a fish moves in the water, oblivious of the existence of an alien atmosphere. ![]() 2 The material “disappears” precisely because there is nothing in the artist’s conception to indicate that any other material exists. The artist has intuitively surrendered to the inescapable tyranny of the material, made its brute nature fuse easily with his conception. The formal restraints imposed by the material-paint, black and white, marble, piano tones, or whatever it may be-are not perceived it is as though there were a limitless margin of elbow-room between the artist’s fullest utilization of form and the most that the material is innately capable of. In great art there is the illusion of absolute freedom. ![]() Yet some limitation there must be to this freedom, some resistance of the medium. The possibilities of individual expression are infinite, language in particular is the most fluid of mediums. 1 Art is so personal an expression that we do not like to feel that it is bound to predetermined form of any sort. ![]() When the expression is of unusual significance, we call it literature. They are invisible garments that drape themselves about our spirit and give a predetermined form to all its symbolic expression. LANGUAGES are more to us than systems of thought-transference. Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech. ![]()
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