Hofmann Quotes & Sayings

And so artistic creation is the metamorphosis of the external physical aspects of a thing into a self-sustaining spiritual reality . — Hans Hofmann

Cicadas bury themselves in small mouths
of the tree's hollow, lie against the bark tongues like amulets,

though it is I who pray I might shake off this skin and be raised
from the ground again. I have nothing

to confess. I don't yet know that I possess
a body built for love. When the wind grazes

its way toward something colder,
you, too, will be changed. One life abrades

another, rough cloth, expostulation.
When I open my mouth, I am like an insect undressing itself. — Richie Hofmann

I can't understand how anyone is able to paint without optimism. — Hans Hofmann

Colors must fit together as pieces in a puzzle or cogs in a wheel. — Hans Hofmann

The difference between the arts arises because of the difference in the nature of the mediums of expression and the emphasis induced by the nature of each medium. Each means of expression has its own order of being, its own units. — Hans Hofmann

My aim in painting is to create pulsating, luminous, and open surfaces that emanate a mystic light, in accordance with my deepest insight into the experience of life and nature. — Hans Hofmann

I hope that in due time the chemists will justify their proceedings by some large generalisations deduced from the infinity of results which they have collected. For me I am left hopelessly behind and I will acknowledge to you that through my bad memory organic chemistry is to me a sealed book. Some of those here, Hofmann for instance, consider all this however as scaffolding, which will disappear when the structure is built. I hope the structure will be worthy of the labour. I should expect a better and a quicker result from the study of the powers of matter, but then I have a predilection that way and am probably prejudiced in judgment. — Michael Faraday

For after all, a poster does more than simply
supply information on the goods it advertises;
it also reveals a society's state of mind — Armin Hofmann

Consciousness is Gods' gift to mankind. — Albert Hofmann

It is not the form that dictates the color, but the color that brings out the form. — Hans Hofmann

Nature's purpose in relation to the visual arts is to provide stimulus not imitation ... From its ceaseless urge to create springs all Life all movement and rhythm time and light, color and mood in short, all reality in Form and Thought. — Hans Hofmann

Painting by Heinrich Hofmann The Prophet Joseph Smith — Joseph Smith Jr.

LSD is just a tool to turn us into what we are supposed to be. — Albert Hofmann

The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak. — Hans Hofmann

LSD wanted to tell me something ... It gave me an inner joy, an open mindedness, a gratefulness, open eyes and an internal sensitivity for the miracles of creation. — Albert Hofmann

God only speaks to those who understand the language — Albert Hofmann

Art is magic ... But how is it magic? In its metaphysical development? Or does some final transformation culminate in a magic reality? In truth, the latter is impossible without the former. If creation is not magic, the outcome cannot be magic. — Hans Hofmann

The creative process lies not in imitating, but in paralleling nature translating the impulse received from nature into the medium of expression, thus vitalizing this medium. The picture should be alive, the statue should be alive, and every work of art should be alive. — Hans Hofmann

Just as counterpoint and harmony follow their own laws, and differ in rhythm and movement, both formal tensions and color tensions have a development of their own in accordance with the inherent laws from which they are separately derived. Both, however, aim toward the realization of the same image. And both deal with the depth problem. — Hans Hofmann

The general misunderstanding of a work of art is often due to the fact that the key to its spiritual content and technical means is missed. Unless the observer is trained to a certain degree in the artistic idiom, he is apt to search for things which have little to do with the aesthetic content of a picture. He is likely to look for pure representational values when the emphasis is really upon music-like relationships. — Hans Hofmann

The child is really an artist, and the artist should be like a child, but he should not stay a child. He must become an artist. That means he cannot permit himself to become sentimental or something like that. He must know what he is doing — Hans Hofmann

Since light is best expressed through differences in color quality, color should not be handled as a tonal gradation, to produce the effect of light. — Hans Hofmann

It makes no difference whether a work is naturalistic or abstract; every visual expression follows the same fundamental laws. — Hans Hofmann

When life gives you lemons... chuck them at someone's head. You'll be surprised how good it feels. — Nicole Hofmann

The width of a line may present the idea of infinity. An epigram may contain a world. In the same way, a small picture format may be much more living, much more leavening, stirring, awakening, than square yards of wall space. — Hans Hofmann

The plastic artist may or may not be concerned with presenting a superficial appearance of reality, but he is always concerned with the presentation - if not the representation - of the plastic values of reality. — Hans Hofmann

The product of movement and counter-movement is tension. When tension working strength is expressed, it endows the work of art with the living effect of coordinated, though opposing, forces. — Hans Hofmann

To worship the product and ignore its development leads to dilettantism and reaction. — Hans Hofmann

I know LSD; I don't need to take it anymore. Maybe when I die, like Aldous Huxley. — Albert Hofmann

There is in reality no such thing as modern art. Art is carried on up and down in immense cycles through centuries and civilizations. — Hans Hofmann

An idea can only be materialized with the help of a medium of expression, the inherent qualities of which must be surely sensed and understood in order to become the carrier of an idea. — Hans Hofmann

One of the worst symptoms of HIV is secrecy...if you get HIV? You get secretive. Insular. Paranoid. Your life becomes a giant pretense so no one finds out you have this disease. You don't know what people will do for you because you are too afraid to tell them. — Regan Hofmann

It's very, very dangerous to lose contact with living nature. — Albert Hofmann

Art and science create a balance to material life and enlarge the world of living experience. Art leads to a more profound concept of life, because art itself is a profound expression of feeling. — Hans Hofmann

By observing natural scientific discoveries through a perception deepened by meditation, we can develop a new awareness of reality. This awareness could become the bedrock of a spirituality that is not based on the dogmas of a given religion, but on insights into a higher and deeper meaning. I am referring to the ability to recognize, to read, and to understand the firsthand revelations. — Albert Hofmann

What one commonly takes as 'the reality,' including the reality of one's own individual person, by no means signifies something fixed, but rather something that is ambiguous-that there is not only one, but that there are many realities, each comprising also a different consciousness of the ego. — Albert Hofmann

The impressionistic method leads into a complete splitting and dissolution of all areas involved in the composition, and color is used to create an overall effect of light. The color is, through such a shading down from the highest light in the deepest shadows, sacrified an degraded to a (black-and-white) function. This leads to the destructions of the color as color. — Hans Hofmann

Through my LSD experience and my new picture of reality, I became aware of the wonder of creation, the magnificence of nature and of the animal and plant kingdom. I became very sensitive to what will happen to all this and all of us. — Albert Hofmann

Art cannot result from sophisticated, frivolous, or superficial effects. — Hans Hofmann

Our entire being is nourished by color. — Hans Hofmann

I believe that if people would learn to use LSD's vision-inducing capability more wisely, under suitable conditions, in medical practice and in conjunction with meditation, then in the future this problem child could become a wonderchild. — Albert Hofmann

In a dreamlike state, with eyes closed (I found the daylight too unpleasantly glaring), I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors, — Albert Hofmann

I share the belief of many of my contemporaries that the spiritual crisis pervading all spheres of Western industrial society can be remedied only by a change in our world view. We shall have to shift from the materialistic, dualistic belief that people and their environment are separate, toward a new conciousness of an all-encompassing reality, which embraces the experiencing ego, a reality in which people feel their oneness with animate nature and all of creation. — Albert Hofmann

J. D. Salinger, the greatly loved author who "had elected to silence himself. He had freedom of speech but what he had ended up wanting more than anything else, it seemed, was the freedom to be silent. — Michael Hofmann

It takes intelligence and training, self-discipline and fine-sensibility, to gain renewed life through leisure occupation. America now suffers spiritual poverty, and art must become more fully American life before her leisure can become culture. — Hans Hofmann

The truly monumental can only come about by means of the most exact and refined relation between parts. Since each thing carries both a meaning of its own and an associated meaning in relation to something else - its essential value is relative. We speak of the mood we experience when looking at a landscape. This mood results from the relation of certain things rather than from their separate actualities. This is because objects do not in themselves possess the total effect they give when interrelated. — Hans Hofmann

From that day on I go to each door in turn and sing the three songs that I remember from school. Within a few days I'm overwhelmed how happy they appear to be when they hear or recognize me. — Corinne Hofmann

Art leads to a more profound concept of life, because art itself is a profound expression of feeling. The artist is born, and art is the expression of his overflowing soul. Because his soul is rich, he cares comparatively little about the superficial necessities of the material world; he sublimates the pressure of material affairs in an artistic experience. — Hans Hofmann

After some time, with my eyes closed, I began to enjoy this wonderful play of colors and forms, which it really was a pleasure to observe. Then I went to sleep and the next day I was fine. I felt quite fresh, like a newborn. — Albert Hofmann

I was completely astonished by the beauty of nature. Our eyes see just a small fraction of the light in the world. It is a trick to make a colored world, which does not exist outside of human beings. — Albert Hofmann

The characteristic property of hallucinogens, to suspend the boundaries between the experiencing self and the outer world in an ecstatic, emotional experience, makes it posible with their help, and after suitable internal and external perparation ... to evoke a mystical experience according to plan, so to speak ... I see the true importance of LSD in the possibility of providing material aid to meditation aimed at the mystical experience of a deeper, comprehensive reality. Such a use accords entirely with the essence and working character of LSD as a sacred drug. — Albert Hofmann

It is true that my discovery of LSD was a chance discovery, but it was the outcome of planned experiments and these experiments took place in the framework of systematic pharmaceutical, chemical research. It could better be described as serendipity. — Albert Hofmann

Muslims all over the world are looking with high expectations toward the ummah community in the United States and Canada. Its dynamism, fresh approach, enlightened scholarship and sheer growth is their hope for an Islamic renaissance worldwide. — Murad Wilfried Hofmann

I would trade all my experimental works for the single idea of the benzene theory. — August Wilhelm Von Hofmann

I will listen to any hypothesis but on one condition-that you show me a method by which it can be tested. — August Wilhelm Von Hofmann

The whole world, as we experience it visually, comes to us through the mystic realm of color. — Hans Hofmann

Space expands or contracts in the tensions and functions through which it exists. Space is not a static, inert thing. Space is alive; space is dynamic; space is imbued with movement expressed by forces and counterforces; space vibrates and resounds with color, light and form in the rhythm of life. — Hans Hofmann

My father ran the gamut: a favorite of his was Josef Hofmann, but there was also Friedman, Rachmaninoff, Godowsky, Lhevinne, Moiseiwitsch, Paderewski, etc. — Marc-Andre Hamelin

It isn't necessary to make things large to make them monumental; a head by Giacometti one inch high would be able to vitalize this whole space. — Hans Hofmann

A work of art is finished, from the point of view of the artist, when feeling and perception have resulted in a spiritual synthesis. — Hans Hofmann

To sense the invisible and to be able to create it, that is art. — Hans Hofmann

Art is something absolute, something positive, which gives power just as food gives power. While creative science is a mental food, art is the satisfaction of the soul. — Hans Hofmann

Go to the meadows, go to the garden, go to the woods. Open your eyes! — Albert Hofmann

To me, art is the glorification of the human spirit. — Hans Hofmann

We are connected with our own age if we recognize ourselves in relation to outside events; and we have grasped its spirit when we influence the future. — Hans Hofmann

Being inexhaustible, life and nature are a constant stimulus for a creative mind. — Hans Hofmann

Depth, in a pictorial, plastic sense, is not created by the arrangement of objects one after another toward a vanishing point, in the sense of the Renaissance perspective, but on the contrary (and in absolute denial of this doctrine) by the creation of forces in the sense of push and pull . Nor is depth created by tonal gradation (another doctrine of the academician which, at its culmination, degraded the use of color to a mere function of expressing dark and light). — Hans Hofmann

It used to be that a novel would put you among people, tell you a story or stories, give you some sense of what it might be like to see a different cut-out and perspective of the world: as a schoolteacher, an adulteress, the wife of a member of Parliament, an officer, a cockroach. — Michael Hofmann

Away in the distance, a train appeared behind the trees, all its compartments were lit, the windows were sure to be open. One of us started singing a ballad, but we all wanted to sing. We sang far quicker than the speed of the train, we swung our arms because our voices weren't enough, our voices got into a tangle where we felt happy. If you mix your voice with others' voices, you feel as though you're caught on a hook. (trans. Michael Hofmann) — Franz Kafka

In nature, light creates the color. In the picture, color creates the light. — Hans Hofmann

What goes on in abstract art is the proclaiming of aesthetic principles ... It is in our own time that we have become aware of pure aesthetic considerations. Art never can be imitation. — Hans Hofmann

You just have to remember that little person inside of you that wanted to take over the world; then, listen to them. — Chad Hofmann

Instead of disbursing her annual millions for these dye stuffs, England will, beyond question, at no distant day become herself the greatest coloring producing country in the world; nay, by the very strangest of revolutions she may ere long send her coal-derived blues to indigo-growing India, her tar-distilled crimson to cochineal-producing Mexico, and her fossil substitutes for quercitron and safflower to China, Japan and the other countries whence these articles are now derived. — August Wilhelm Von Hofmann

To experience visually, and to transform our visual experience into plastic terms, requires the faculty of empathy. — Hans Hofmann

Genius is gifted with a vitality which is expended in the enrichment of life through the discovery of new worlds of feeling. — Hans Hofmann

Anyone can do whatever they want in life, this is our world to play in. — Chad Hofmann

Every art expression is rooted fundamentally in the personality and temperament of the artist. — Hans Hofmann

Painters must speak through paint, not through words. — Hans Hofmann

Art is to me the glorification of the human spirit, and as such it is the cultural documentation of the time in which it is produced. — Hans Hofmann

Wrong and inappropriate use has caused LSD to become my problem child, — Albert Hofmann

I climb behind the steering wheel... I drive off immediately without once looking back; it's a long journey but it leads to freedom. — Corinne Hofmann

They do not know very good Latin, these botanists. — Albert Hofmann

Color is a plastic means of creating intervals ... color harmonics produced by special relationships, or tensions. We differentiate now between formal tensions and color tensions, just as we differentiate in music between counterpoint and harmony. — Hans Hofmann

Creation is dominated by three absolutely different factors: First, nature, which works upon us by its laws; second, the artist, who creates a spiritual contact with nature and his materials; third, the medium of expression through which the artist translates his inner world. — Hans Hofmann

Everyone has the potential to be great, because everyone has the potential to serve." Martin Luther King — Margaret A. Hofmann

I go back to where I came from, to where I was before I was born, that's all. — Albert Hofmann

When you study natural science and the miracles of creation, if you don't turn into a mystic you are not a natural scientist. — Albert Hofmann

You must break all the rules of painting, but you must also convince me you've had a reason to do so. — Hans Hofmann

A work of art is a world in itself reflecting senses and emotions of the artist's world. — Hans Hofmann

The first note in that octave [of our cultural transformation], the do, was the discovery of LSD by Albert Hofmann in 1943. — Ralph Metzner

A work based only on a line concept is scarcely more than a illustration; it fails to achieve pictorial structure. Pictorial structure is based on a plane concept. The line originates in the meeting of two planes ... we can lose ourselves in a multitude of lines, if through them we lose our senses for the planes. — Hans Hofmann

When the impulses which stir us to profound emotion are integrated with the medium of expression, every interview of the soul may become art. This is contingent upon mastery of the medium. — Hans Hofmann

I believe cooking can be fun, healthy, easy and tasty! I hope you find some recipes in here that are some nice healthy alternatives and become part of your weekly flow. — Angelika Angie Hofmann

Evolution of mankind is paralleled by the increase and expansion of consciousness. — Albert Hofmann

A thought functions only as a fragmentary part in the formulation of an idea. — Hans Hofmann

Through a painting we can see the whole world. — Hans Hofmann

The art of pictorial creation is so complicated - it is so astronomical in its possibilities of relation and combination that it would take an act of super-human concentration to explain the final realization. — Hans Hofmann

The creation of all those symbols and logotypes which are an ever more striking feature of the world in which we live calls for a new and fresh approach to lettering in the part of the designer. In these logotypes the combination of letters can be more or less obvious; but only deliberately contrived encounters of elements and confrontations of values can lead beyond the letters to new forms of expression. — Armin Hofmann

The impulse of nature, fused through the personality of the artist by laws arising from the particular nature of the medium, produces the rhythm and the personal expression of a work. Then the life of the composition becomes a spiritual unity. — Hans Hofmann

I suddenly became strangely inebriated. The external world
became changed as in a dream. Objects appeared to gain inrelief;
they assumed unusual dimensions; and colors became more glowing.
Even self-perception and the sense of time were changed. When the
eyes were closed, colored pictures flashed past in a quickly changing
kaleidoscope. After a few hours, the not unpleasant inebriation,
which had been experienced whilst I was fully conscious, disappeared.
what had caused this condition? — Albert Hofmann