Art

Art is a substitute for acting or living. If life is the wilful expression of emotion, art is the intellectual expression of that same emotion. Whatever we don’t have, don’t attempt or don’t achieve can be possessed through dreams, and these are what we use to make art. At other times our emotion is so strong that, although reduced to action, this action doesn’t completely satisfy it; the leftover emotion, unexpressed in life, is used to produce the work of art. There are thus two types of artist: the one who expresses what he doesn’t have, and the one who expresses the surplus of what he did have.

@fernandopessoa

IAN WILLIAMS