Marsden Hartley Quote

I learned this bit of wisdom from a principle of William Blake's which I discovered early and followed far too assiduously the first half of my aesthetic life, and from which I have happily released myself and this axiom was: "Put off intellect and put on imagination; the imagination is the man." From this doctrinal assertion evolved the theoretical axiom that you don't see a thing until you look away from it which was an excellent truism as long as the principles of the imaginative life were believed in and followed. I no longer believe in the imagination.


'Art and the Personal Life', Marsden Hartley, 1928


I learned this bit of wisdom from a principle of William Blake's which I discovered early and followed far too assiduously the first half of my...

I learned this bit of wisdom from a principle of William Blake's which I discovered early and followed far too assiduously the first half of my...

I learned this bit of wisdom from a principle of William Blake's which I discovered early and followed far too assiduously the first half of my...

I learned this bit of wisdom from a principle of William Blake's which I discovered early and followed far too assiduously the first half of my...