View allAll Photos Tagged Metaphysical
I'm still at home, but today I feel much better: maybe it's because of the sun out of my window, my head this morning looks better fixed on my neck!!!!
So I took this shot looking outside at the house on the other side of the road where I live!
Have a great day you all!!!!
August 2004
This may be the only photo in my entire flickrstream to have recieved no photoshop treatment of any kind.
This large quartz crystal cluster was displayed for sale at the Globex International Gem & Mineral Show (G.I.G.M.) at Starr Pass and I-10. The pink sticker lists this at 1,910kg. This was our third stop after Tucson Convention Center and Kino Sports Complex.
I believe this is Rose Quartz. Any correction will be appreciated.
Globex International Gem & Mineral Show
Tucson Convention Center is indoors; the exhibits are nicely curated. It is mostly retail type sales. In contrast, the G.I.G.M is housed in the Quality Inn and Motel 6 rooms and parking lots at Starr Pass & I-10. There are some large tents and some smaller 10x10 and 20x10 tents. Many of the gems, minerals, and displays are brought in by forklift on pallets. In the tents, the specimens are in large rectangular plastic containers. At TCC the vendors are retail and many of the gems sell by the gram. At G.I.G.M the vendors are retail and wholesale. Gems and minerals are sold by the pound or by the piece. There is more of a metaphysical feeling at G.I.G.M.
www.rockngem.com/rose-quartz-vs-pink-quartz/
simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_quartz
Rose quartz is a translucent pink to rose-red variety of quartz.[1][2] It is rarely found as a crystal and is far more common in massive form.
Among gemstones, rose quartz is considered a semiprecious stone that may be used in jewelry. The earliest known use of rose quartz in civilisation was in 7000 BC, where in archaeological sites, researchers have found beads made from Rose Quartz in Egypt and other ancient civilisations. [3]
Rose quartz stones that are nearly transparent are sometimes cut to make flat surfaces called facets, to better reflect light. Rose quartz is also popular in the new age community for perceived metaphysical properties.[4]
www.visittucson.org/tucson-gem-mineral-fossil-showcase/
Every year the world-renowned Tucson Gem, Mineral & Fossil Showcase is like a time portal, a trip around the world, and a treasure hunt all rolled into one. Every winter, more than 65,000 guests from around the globe descend upon Tucson, AZ, to buy, sell, trade, and bear witness to rare and enchanting gems, minerals, and fossils at more than 50 gem show locations across the city. If you're planning a winter visit to Tucson, you won't want to miss this three-week-long event filled with shows, related events, a free day at the gem & mineral museum, and much, much more!
"Whether you’re looking for a $5 shimmering crystal necklace or a show-stopping $200,000 crystallized rock from an exotic location, the Tucson Gem, Mineral, & Fossil Shows have something for everyone.
Rotating photos is just one of those things I do now and again. Usually it just creates something visually confusing, but every once in a while it is confusing in an interesting way. It fits in with one of the things I like about photography: that it is an exercise in seeing. On a more metaphysical level, it is also a good reminder that often what we consider reality is merely a collection of definitions we have become accustomed to. It is easy to forget how much control we have over that reality in terms of molding it rather than being solely shaped by it.
And so I'll rotate things. It is an easy enough finger to poke in the eye of reality and sometimes I am impressed by how big a change such a simple tweak can achieve.
Anyhoo, this image initially popped up upside down in the preview window while scanning it and I was drawn to it in that orientation from that first sight. Spending some time editing and sitting with it hasn't changed that opinion. So here you go.
Hasselblad 500C
Kodak Portra 400
Black and white photo. Not double exposed. Photoshop used only for cropping and curves. The two girls walking past along the beach are a reflection on the glass that overlap with the subject's hair and ear. I too am reflected with my camera. The subject's eye, not a reflection, is positioned spot on the camera lense, giving the photo a surreal feeling. The subject's shadow cast on the sand is also reflected on the glass, extending a metaphysical image.
"Unh, look
I'm a real rare individual
I'm in the physical and the metaphysical (yeah)
I know you need your alone time, that's critical
But I need some of your time, is that hypocritical?
Damn, you know I relate to you more than fam
So I won't sit around and let you sink in quicksand
Look, I know you got million dollar plans
And you tryna build a brand, live a life in high demand
Swerving big b's, your bag got little G's
Gucci down to the socks like Biggie and Little Ceas'
Let's hit the Maldives and hide behind palm trees
Little red wine, weed, and a calm breeze
Cause baby, you been living life inside a bubble
When the last time you had somebody hug you?
Hold up, when the last time you had somebody love you?
Hold up, when the last time you love someone who love you?"
Strictly speaking doctrinal knowledge is independent of the individual. But its actualization is not independent of the human capacity to act as a vehicle for it. He who possesses truth must none the less merit it although it is a free gift. Truth is immutable in itself, but in us it lives, because we live.
If we want truth to live in us we must live in it.
Knowledge only saves us on condition that it enlists all that we are, only when it is a way and when it works and transforms and wounds our nature even as the plough wounds the soil.
To say this is to say that intelligence and metaphysical certainty alone do not save; of themselves they do not prevent titans from falling. This is what explains the psychological and other precautions with which every tradition surrounds the gift of the doctrine.
When metaphysical knowledge is effective it produces love and destroys presumption. It produces love, that is to say the spontaneous directing of the will towards God and the perception of "myself" - and of God - in one's neighbour. It destroys presumption, for knowledge does not allow a man to overestimate himself or to underestimate others. By reducing to ashes all that is not God it orders all things.
All St. Paul says of charity concerns effective knowledge, for the latter is love, and he opposes it to theory inasmuch as theory is human concept. The Apostle desires that truth should be contemplated with our whole being and he calls this totality of contemplation "love".
Metaphysical knowledge is sacred. It is the right of sacred things to require of man all that he is.
Intelligence, since it distinguishes, perceives, as one might put
it, proportions. The spiritual man integrates these proportions into his will, into his soul and into his life.
All defects are defects of proportion; they are errors that are lived. To be spiritual means not denying at any point with one's "being" what one affirms with one's knowledge, that is, what one accepts with the intelligence.
Truth lived: incorruptibility and generosity. Since ignorance is all that we are and not merely our thinking, knowledge will also be all that we are to the extent to which our existential modalities are by their nature able to participate in truth.
Human nature contains dark elements which no intellectual
certainty could, ipso facto, eliminate...
Pure intellectuality is as serene as a summer sky - serene with a serenity that is at once infinitely incorruptible and infinitely generous.
Intellectualism which "dries up the heart" has no connection
with intellectuality.
The incorruptibility - or inviolability - of truth is bound up neither with contempt nor with avarice.
What is man's certainty? On the level of ideas it may be perfect, but on the level of life it but rarely pierces through illusion.
Everything is ephemeral and every man must die. No man is
ignorant of this and no one knows it.
Man does not always accept truth because he understands it; often he believes he understands it because he is anxious to accept it.
People often discuss truths whereas they should limit themselves to discussing tastes and tendencies ...
Acuteness of intelligence is only a blessing when it is compensated by greatness and sweetness of the soul. It should not appear as a rupture of the equilibrium or as an excess which splits man in two. A gift of nature requires complementary qualities which allow of its harmonious manifestation; otherwise there is a risk of the lights becoming mingled with darkness.
---
Frithjof Schuon: Spiritual Perspectives and Human Facts
---
Quoted in: The Essential Frithjof Schuon (edited by Seyyed Hossein Nasr)
---
Image: The Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins - William Blake
All that is beautiful comes from the Beauty of God; says a hadith.
Moslems readily affirm the link between beauty and love and show little inclination to dissociate these two elements which for them are but the two faces of one and the same reality; whoever says beauty, says love, and conversely, whereas for Christians mystical love is almost exclusively associated with sacrifice, except in chivalric esoterism and its prolongations.
The hadith just quoted really contains the whole doctrine of the earthly concomitances of the love of God, in conjunction with the following hadith: 'God is beautiful, and He loves beauty'; this is the doctrine of the metaphysical transparency of phenomena. This notion of beauty or harmony, with all the subtle rhythms and symmetries which it implies, has in Islam the widest possible significance: 'to God belong the most beautiful Names; says the Quran more than once, and the virtues are called 'beautiful things'. 'Women and perfumes': spiritually speaking these are forms and qualities, that is to say, they are truths that are both dilating and fruitful, and they are also the virtues which these truths exhale and which correspond to them within us.
'Everything on earth is accursed except the remembrance of God; said the Prophet, a saying which must be interpreted not only from the standpoint of abstraction but also from that of analogy; that is to say, the remembrance of God is not only an inwardness free from images and flavours, but also a perception of the Divine in the symbols (ayat) of the world. To put it another way: things are accursed (or perishable) in so far as they are purely outward and externalizing, but not in so far as they actualize the remembrance of God and manifest the archetypes contained in the Inward and Divine Reality.
And everything in the world that surrounds us which gives rise to a concomitance of our love of God or of our choice of the 'inward dimension; is at the same time a concomitance of the love which God shows towards us, or a message of hope from the 'Kingdom of Heaven which is within you.'
---
Frithjof Schuon
---
Quoted in: The Essential Frithjof Schuon (edited by Seyyed Hossein Nasr)
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Image: Kano Eitoku - Cypress Trees
Persimmon Vase
Esercitazione metafisica nella serie delle tazze
Exercise of metaphysics in the set of cups
Copyright Corrado Riccòmini
Well, I had no idea until flickr contact Dylan Coleman told me, "The best faux Caspar David Freidrich ever".
"Who?", I thought, and then I googled it. It's an interesting read, particularly if you are a landscape photographer. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caspar_David_Friedrich
My photo might be something like "Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (1818). 94.8 × 74.8 cm, Kunsthalle Hamburg painting or one of his many others. This well-known and especially Romantic masterpiece was described by the historian John Lewis Gaddis as leaving a contradictory impression, "suggesting at once mastery over a landscape and the insignificance of the individual within it. We see no face, so it's impossible to know whether the prospect facing the young man is exhilarating, or terrifying, or both."
It was painted by Caspar David Friedrich (5 September 1774 – 7 May 1840) who was a 19th-century German Romantic landscape painter, generally considered the most important German artist of his generation. He is best known for his mid-period allegorical landscapes which typically feature contemplative figures silhouetted against night skies, morning mists, barren trees or Gothic or megalithic ruins. His primary interest as an artist was the contemplation of nature, and his often symbolic and anti-classical work seeks to convey a subjective, emotional response to the natural world. Friedrich's paintings characteristically set a human presence in diminished perspective amid expansive landscapes, reducing the figures to a scale that, according to the art historian Christopher John Murray, directs "the viewer's gaze towards their metaphysical dimension".
Friedrich was born in the town of Greifswald on the Baltic Sea in what was at the time Swedish Pomerania. He studied in Copenhagen until 1798, before settling in Dresden. He came of age during a period when, across Europe, a growing disillusionment with materialistic society was giving rise to a new appreciation of spirituality. This shift in ideals was often expressed through a re-evaluation of the natural world, as artists such as Friedrich, J. M. W. Turner and John Constable sought to depict nature as a "divine creation, to be set against the artifice of human civilization".
Friedrich's work brought him renown early in his career, and contemporaries such as the French sculptor David d'Angers spoke of him as a man who had discovered "the tragedy of landscape"
Waterfalls beneath a very old arched bridge at Palaeokaryá, near Trikala, Greece.
There is a dreamy, emotive element emerging from the scenery, despite the winter weather. The clear waters of Portaïkós river can inspire and cleanse…
The scenery reminds us of a poem written by the romantic as well as metaphysical poet of the 17th century:
“With what deep murmurs through time's silent stealth
Doth thy transparent, cool, and wat'ry wealth
Here flowing fall,
And chide, and call,
As if his liquid, loose retinue stay'd
Ling'ring, and were of this steep place afraid;…”
—Henry Vaughan (The Waterfall)
“Art is the fatal net which catches these strange moments on the wing like mysterious butterflies, fleeing the innocence and distraction of common men.” * Giorgio de Chirico – Artist.
I love this quote, and you’ll now see why I borrowed part of this title from the self-designated Metaphysical Italian painter Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978). Even the most mundane of scenes may well have something of a revelation in it for the sensitive soul. Surely that’s what makes YOU choose YOUR favourite subjects: nature, landscape, wildlife, city streets, rural life. It’s a genre you connect with PERSONALLY. It resonates with YOU. This is what makes us want to pick up a camera. Take the photos YOU want (not what you think others will like or might get Explored) and you’ll find the kind of people who really will connect with you.
Is there a story in this photograph of a darkening alley, a light in the window, no other person around except the observer (photographer)? Does the colour create a mood? Is it melancholic? It’s why some people look at a picture and will see nothing special, and others stand back and have an A-Ha moment. Of course the viewer needs to take more than two seconds to really look – not common on social media these days.
The quintessential Twentieth century American photographer Walker Evans (1903-1975), realist and promoter of “straight photography”, may not have been as mystically inclined as de Chirico, but he also believed he was an artist with something to say. What sets the artist apart in photography (or any art, including literature - because writers must be great observers too) was for Evans “the hungry eye”:
“Stare. It is the way to educate your eye, and more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.”
Evans may not have been the intellectual artist that di Chirico was, but he believed in photography’s power in a way not unlike this other quote from de Chirico:
“Although the dream is a very strange phenomenon and an inexplicable mystery, far more inexplicable is the mystery and aspect our minds confer on certain objects and aspects of life.”
Indeed. The fundamental reason why human beings create art (although Bower birds also create artful nests) is to discover meaning. But like life itself, the creation of art is a process, a journey and a pilgrimage. The danger in photography is to miss the forest for the trees. We are often such inveterate collectors of “things” (animate and inanimate) in our photos that we fail to see the connections BETWEEN our images.
One of the tasks I have been consciously working on in my Flickr page is to create real links between my images as a curator might in a museum. It takes me as much time to choose when and where to post a photo on my page as it does to process them. Nothing is random and certainly not chronological. Why? Because those links will very often reveal why it is we do the kind of photography we do. What we are trying to say, who it is we might be trying to communicate with through our pictures. Why bother? Well it’s every individual’s choice, but as Walker Evans rightly said, “(We) are not here long”.
“Only connect,” E.M Forster said in his novel “Howard’s End”. In that is the secret and mystery of this life and the reason why we all do photography and art (whether acknowledged or not). De Chirico and Walker Evans would have agreed on that.
John Donne (pronounced /ˈdʌn/ "dunn"; 1572 – 31 March 1631) was an English Jacobean poet, preacher and a major representative of the metaphysical poets of the period. His works are notable for their realistic and sensual style and include sonnets, love poetry, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs, satires and sermons. His poetry is noted for its vibrancy of language and inventiveness of metaphor, especially as compared to those of his contemporaries.
Despite his great education and poetic talents, he lived in poverty for several years, relying heavily on wealthy friends. In 1615 he became an Anglican priest and, in 1621, was appointed the Dean of St Paul's Cathedral in London.
John Donne was born on Bread Street in London, England, into a Catholic family at a time when Catholicism was illegal in England.[3] Donne was the third of six children. His father, also named John Donne, was of Welsh descent, and a warden of the Ironmongers Company in the City of London. Donne's father was a respected Catholic who avoided unwelcome government attention out of fear of being persecuted for his religious faith.[4][5] Donne's father died in 1576, leaving his wife, Elizabeth Heywood, the responsibility of raising their children.[5] Elizabeth Heywood, also from a noted Catholic family, was the daughter of John Heywood, the playwright, and sister of Jasper Heywood, the translator and Jesuit. She was a great-niece of the Catholic martyr Thomas More.[6] This tradition of martyrdom would continue among Donne’s closer relatives, many of whom were executed or exiled for religious reasons.[7] Despite the obvious dangers, Donne’s family arranged for his education by the Jesuits, which gave him a deep knowledge of his religion that equipped him for the ideological religious conflicts of his time.[6] Donne's mother married Dr. John Syminges, a wealthy widower with three children, a few months after Donne's father died. In 1577, his mother died, followed by two more of his sisters, Mary and Katherine, in 1581.
Donne was a student at Hart Hall, now Hertford College, Oxford, from the age of 11. After three years at Oxford he was admitted to the University of Cambridge, where he studied for another three years.[8] He was unable to obtain a degree from either institution because of his Catholicism, since he could not take the Oath of Supremacy required of graduates.[6] In 1591 he was accepted as a student at the Thavies Inn legal school, one of the Inns of Chancery in London. In 1592 he was admitted to Lincoln’s Inn, one of the Inns of Court[6], where he held the office of Master of the Revels.[3] His brother Henry was also a university student prior to his arrest in 1593 for harbouring a Catholic priest, William Harrington, whom Henry betrayed under torture.[3] Harrington was tortured on the rack, hanged until not quite dead, and then was subjected to live disembowelment.[3] Henry Donne died in Newgate prison of bubonic plague, leading John Donne to begin questioning his Catholic faith.[5]
During and after his education, Donne spent much of his considerable inheritance on women, literature, pastimes and travel.[4][6] Although there is no record detailing precisely where he traveled, it is known that he traveled across Europe and later fought with the Earl of Essex and Sir Walter Raleigh against the Spanish at Cádiz (1596) and the Azores (1597) and witnessed the loss of the Spanish flagship, the San Felipe.[1][5][9] According to Izaak Walton, who wrote a biography of Donne in 1640:
“ ... he returned not back into England till he had stayed some years, first in Italy, and then in Spain, where he made many useful observations of those countries, their laws and manner of government, and returned perfect in their languages. ”
By the age of 25 he was well prepared for the diplomatic career he appeared to be seeking.[9] He was appointed chief secretary to the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, Sir Thomas Egerton, and was established at Egerton’s London home, York House, Strand close to the Palace of Whitehall, then the most influential social centre in England.
During the next four years he fell in love with Egerton's niece Anne More, and they were married just before Christmas [3] in 1601 against the wishes of both Egerton and her father, George More, Lieutenant of the Tower. This ruined his career and earned him a short stay in Fleet Prison, along with the priest who married them and the man who acted as a witness to the wedding. Donne was released when the marriage was proven valid, and soon secured the release of the other two. Walton tells us that when he wrote to his wife to tell her about losing his post, he wrote after his name: John Donne, Anne Donne, Un-done. It was not until 1609 that Donne was reconciled with his father-in-law and received his wife's dowry.
Following his release, Donne had to accept a retired country life in Pyrford, Surrey.[6] Over the next few years he scraped a meagre living as a lawyer, depending on his wife’s cousin Sir Francis Wolly to house him, his wife, and their children. Since Anne Donne had a baby almost every year, this was a very generous gesture. Though he practiced law and worked as an assistant pamphleteer to Thomas Morton, he was in a state of constant financial insecurity, with a growing family to provide for.[6]
Anne bore him 12 children in 16 years of marriage (including two stillbirths - their eighth and then in 1617 their last child); indeed, she spent most of her married life either pregnant or nursing. The 10 surviving children were named Constance, John, George, Francis, Lucy (after Donne's patroness Lucy, Countess of Bedford, her godmother), Bridget, Mary, Nicholas, Margaret and Elizabeth. Francis, Nicholas and Mary died before they were ten. In a state of despair, Donne noted that the death of a child would mean one less mouth to feed, but he could not afford the burial expenses. During this time Donne wrote, but did not publish, Biathanatos, his defense of suicide.[7] His wife died on 15 August 1617, five days after giving birth to their twelfth child, a still-born baby. Donne mourned her deeply, including writing the 17th Holy Sonnet.[6] He never remarried; this was quite unusual for the time, especially as he had a large family to bring up.
Donne's earliest poems showed a developed knowledge of English society coupled with sharp criticism of its problems. His satires dealt with common Elizabethan topics, such as corruption in the legal system, mediocre poets, and pompous courtiers. His images of sickness, vomit, manure, and plague assisted in the creation of a strongly satiric world populated by all the fools and knaves of England. His third satire, however, deals with the problem of true religion, a matter of great importance to Donne. He argued that it was better to examine carefully one's religious convictions than blindly to follow any established tradition, for none would be saved at the Final Judgment, by claiming "A Harry, or a Martin taught [them] this."[7]
Donne's early career was also notable for his erotic poetry, especially his elegies, in which he employed unconventional metaphors, such as a flea biting two lovers being compared to sex.[9] In Elegy XIX: To His Mistress Going to Bed, he poetically undressed his mistress and compared the act of fondling to the exploration of America. In Elegy XVIII, he compared the gap between his lover's breasts to the Hellespont.[9] Donne did not publish these poems, although he did allow them to circulate widely in manuscript form.
Donne was elected as Member of Parliament for the constituency of Brackley in 1602, but this was not a paid position and Donne struggled to provide for his family, relying heavily upon rich friends.[6] The fashion for coterie poetry of the period gave him a means to seek patronage and many of his poems were written for wealthy friends or patrons, especially Sir Robert Drury, who came to be Donne's chief patron in 1610.[9] Donne wrote the two Anniversaries, An Anatomy of the World (1611) and Of the Progress of the Soul, (1612), for Drury. While historians are not certain as to the precise reasons for which Donne left the Catholic Church, he was certainly in communication with the King, James I of England, and in 1610 and 1611 he wrote two anti-Catholic polemics: Pseudo-Martyr and Ignatius his Conclave.[6] Although James was pleased with Donne's work, he refused to reinstate him at court and instead urged him to take holy orders.[5] Although Donne was at first reluctant, feeling unworthy of a clerical career, he finally acceded to the King's wishes and in 1615 was ordained into the Church of England.[9]
Donne became a Royal Chaplain in late 1615, Reader of Divinity at Lincoln's Inn in 1616, and received a Doctor of Divinity degree from Cambridge University in 1618.[6] Later in 1618 he became chaplain to Viscount Doncaster, who was on an embassy to the princes of Germany. Donne did not return to England until 1620.[6] In 1621 Donne was made Dean of St Paul's, a leading (and well-paid) position in the Church of England and one he held until his death in 1631. During his period as Dean his daughter Lucy died, aged eighteen. It was in late November and early December of 1623 that he suffered a nearly fatal illness, thought to be either typhus or a combination of a cold followed by the seven-day relapsing fever. During his convalescence he wrote a series of meditations and prayers on health, pain, and sickness that were published as a book in 1624 under the title of Devotions upon Emergent Occasions. Meditation XVII later became well known for its phrase "for whom the bell tolls" and the statement that "no man is an island". In 1624 he became vicar of St Dunstan-in-the-West, and 1625 a Royal Chaplain to Charles I.[6] He earned a reputation as an eloquent preacher and 160 of his sermons have survived, including the famous Death’s Duel sermon delivered at the Palace of Whitehall before King Charles I in February 1631.
It is thought that his final illness was stomach cancer. He died on 31 March 1631 having published many poems in his lifetime; but having left a body of work fiercely engaged with the emotional and intellectual conflicts of his age. John Donne is buried in St Paul's, where a memorial statue of him was erected (carved from a drawing of him in his shroud), with a Latin epigraph probably composed by himself.
Surreal Portrait V2 Alice
Created with Midjourney
PP work in Adobe PS Elements 2024 Raw filters
Further PP work in Luminar Neo filters.
Alice in wonderland metaphysical paint by Marco Mazzoni and James Jean and Tamara de Lempicka and Rene Magritte
--chaos 10
--ar 3:4 --style raw --v 7 --stylize 250
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Update April 02, 2025. Now I only accept new group invitation that allows all media types including VIDEOS!
Thanks for 6,340,482 views 🙏 June 01 2025
,
Created for AIA group Surreal Portraits challenge here:
www.flickr.com/groups/recreatingmasters/discuss/721577219...
Frankie has it all figured out...
I decided to read this book after feeling quite out of my philosophical element while reading Marilynne Robinson's essays "The Givenness of Things"...
So after it appeared in several photos I started getting messages about about my Hammer pendant and why I wear it :-)
Its made by Kunst if anyone wants to find one inworld..
So far as "why I wear it"; I think anyone's religious beliefs are personal to them and personally I am a "many roads lead to the Truth" type.
What I can say is that for *me*, my personal belief is that its important to *do* things and not just believe in them; so I have a penchant for systems that embrace that outlook.
Belief systems that embrace *moral* courage are also - in my opinion - valuable; because without courage people never accomplish anything worthwhile.
Moral courage is not about exposing yourself to violence or loving violence and war; its about doing what you believe to be right - even if it costs you something.
I feel like the world gets better when we push back against the things that diminish our humanity :-)
..and yes, If I get to pick Valhalla, Nirvanna, the Afterfields or Heaven; I'm going where the Party is :-)
Believe in something that makes you a better person, whatever form that takes !
“There was something disquieting about the way an intimate object, seemingly withdrawn into its solemn steadfastness, could affect human emotions. Any old thing forgotten in a corner, if the eye dwelt on it, acquired an eloquence of its own, communicating its lyricism and magic to the kindred soul. If a neglected object of this kind were forcibly isolated, that is, divested of its warmth and of the protective coat of its environment, or even ironically combined with completely unrelated things, it would reassert its dignity in the new context and stand there, incomprehensible, weird, mysterious.”
—Werner Haftmann, Painting in the Twentieth Century (1982)