Self-portrait. Fuji FP-3000B instant film.

“Music makes its appearance as the last plant among all the arts which grow on the soil of a particular culture—perhaps because it is the most inward and hence arrives last, in the fall, when the culture which belongs to it is fading. Only in the art of the Dutch masters did the soul of the Christian Middle Ages attain its last vibrations: their tone architecture is the posthumous, but legitmate and equal sister of the Gothic. Only in Handel’s music did there resound what was best in the souls of Luther and those related to him, the Jewish-heroic trait that gave the Reformation a trait of greatness—the Old Testament become music, not the New. Only Mozart transformed the age of Louis XIV and the art of Racine and Claude Lorrain into ringing gold; only in the music of Beethoven and Rossini did the eighteenth century sing itself out—the century of enthusiasm, of broken ideals, and of evanescent happiness. All true, all original music, is a swan song.”
(Nietzsche, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, “A Music Without a Future”).

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“The responsibility of officers engaged in small wars and the training necessary are of a very different order from their responsibilities and training in ordinary military duties. In the later case, they simply strive to attain a method of producing the maximum physical effect with the force at their disposal. In small wars, caution must be exercised, and instead of striving to generate the maximum power with forces available, the goal is to gain decisive results with the least application of force and the consequent minimum loss of life…. In major warfare, hatred of the enemy is developed among troops to arouse courage. In small wars, tolerance, sympathy, and kindness should be the keynote of our relationship with the mass of the population.”
(US Marine Corps, Small Wars Manual, 1940).

Every work of art is offered to the viewer as unfinished and incomplete; upon reception the viewers themselves create; they fill in the blanks left by the artist.

Beauty is not something that exists in things, but something that is perceived from them. The property of beauty does not belong to things, but is bestowed upon them. It is perception, in other words, that creates beauty– it is not found in the world, but only inspired by it. No sunset or landscape is beautiful in and of itself. We could only assume that other animals are awe-struck by the colors of a sunset, and certainly a stone would have nothing to say of a starry night’s sky. Flowers do not know or feel themselves beautiful, and the only reason they become so is through a viewer’s perceptions and judgment.

What is considered beautiful depends to a great extent on taste. Since perception is what makes a thing beautiful, though, one can say that those with finer perceptions and greater sensibilities have access to realms of beauty invisible to others.

“Of course. What I know bores me. You know, you get into the business of commercial photography, and that’s all you do is photograph what you know. That’s what you’re hired for. And it’s very easy to make successful photographs—-it’s very easy. I’m a good craftsman and I can have this particular intention: let’s say, I want a photograph that’s going to push a certain button in an audience, to make them laugh or love, feel warm or hate or what—I know how to do this. It’s the easiest thing in the world to do that, to make successful photographs. It’s a bore. I certainly never wanted to be a photographer to bore myself. It’s no fun– life is too short.” (Gary Winogrand, ASX, INTERVIEW: “Monkeys Make the Problem More Difficult – A Collective Interview with Garry Winogrand” (1970))