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The profanity of paint cover

The profanity of paint

Chapter 13: 12. The Tonic of Genius
By William Kiddier
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ArtPhilosophy & Ethics

About This Book

A collection of short, reflective essays by a painter that privilege romantic vision and intuition over technical realism, treating colour as a mutable, almost spiritual force beyond pigments. Through meditations on trees and the limits of representation, the author argues that literal training and excessive knowledge can stifle true artistic feeling, and he champions silence, poetic language, and personal temperament as essential to creation. Individual chapters address rhythm, relation, critics, the middle class, extravagance, tragedy, genius, and the idea of a masterpiece, concluding with moral reflections on the artist’s mission and the tension between perception and portrayal.

12. The Tonic of Genius

THERE never was a colourist without a keen sense of humour and never without a generous soul. When I say humour I do not mean satire or anything that leaves a bitter taste. Satire is permissible with the community, but should never be directed against a person.

Humour must always be buoyant, pleasant in every way, and have no other meaning than that which makes the person who happens to be the sport of it laugh with the rest. The one so honoured must, of course, be a genuine humorist, or he would be unworthy of special attention.

Humour is the tonic of genius. It is the healthy reaction of prolonged serious thought, the pleasant negative of stern reality, the divine intoxicant for the over-productive brain.

I have always felt that the past should be either forgotten or turned to humour. The only serious part of life is the present, but this should have its lighter side. When we have ceased to laugh we have done with all generous feeling, and, when this is dead, it is the end of all creative thought.