after Mucha

after Mucha
Originally uploaded by n8_sfs.

so today i was in the library at school and i checkedd out a couple of books on one of my favorite artists, the father of the Art Nouveau, Alphonse Mucha- the book that i was most excited to see was a book about his lectures on art. and the opening to the lecture really caught my attention, and summed up a lot of things that guide my life and though process, so i'm gonna transcribe that part--- it hits a lot on the head about life and not only art, i hope you enjoy it-- the pic i posted is my own butchery of the mucha style, ya dig- n8

The aim of art is to glorify beauty. And what is beauty? Beauty is the projection of moral harmonies on material and physical planes. On the moral plane, beauty addresses itself to the refinement of the senses through which medium it reaches the soul.
The expression of beauty is by emotion. The person who can communicate his emotions to the souls of others is the artist.
To communicate with the souls of man the artist must address himself to the senses of the body.
To arouse the interest of the senses, to awaken them to speech, the artist must know how to charm. This charm consists in the perfect harmony which should reign between the media of communication employed and the faculties of senses which he addresses.
This harmony between the suggestion of the artist and the sense is memory, the first condition of beauty. The second condition is the perfect harmony between the suggestion of the artist and his emotion. The third and last is that this emotion should have for its inception a moral both virile and eternal. The work which fills these three conditions is awork of art. Its creator, the artist himself, was formed by the sentiment of altruism. It is impossible for him to enjoy egotistically an emotion; onthe contrary he will find no peace until he succeeds in communicating the emotions of his own soul to the souls of others, even at the price of laborious work, and his greatest joy will be that of seeing other souls also vibrating with the happiness of his emotion. The value of the emotion to the artist is proportional to his moral evolution. He who is enveloped in dust will inevitably see but dust, but to him who elevates himself to the mountain tops, immeasurable fine days are open.