Atdtda22: [43.4i] Nature's dictionary, 624

[Paul Nightingale]

[624.3-4] "... the tie's ultra-modern design, in which its disturbed artist
had failed to include much of anything encountered in the natural world."

Cf. the Fauvist Andre Derain, writing in 1905, on "the natural world" as
referent:

If one does not attempt decorative art, all one can do is increasingly to
purify the transposition of nature. We didn't do this on purpose, solely for
the sake of colour. The design runs parallel. Many things are lacking in our
idea of our art.

All in all I can see no future except in composition, because in working
from nature I am a slave to such stupid things that my emotions feel the
repercussions of it. I don't see the future as corresponding to our trends;
one the one hand, we are trying to disengage ourselves from objective
things, and on the other hand, we retain them as both origin and final aim.

Or again, in 1909:

What Delacroix said is true: 'Nature is a dictionary; one draws words from
it.' But more important than the dictionary is the will to write, the unity
of our own thought; this is nothing other than the translation in spatial
form of our virility, of our cowardice, of our sensitivity and of our
intelligence. All of this, amalgamated, constitutes this personality which
is realised in a shaped form.

From: Charles Harrison & Paul Wood eds, Art in Theory, 1900-1990, An
Anthology of Changing Ideas, Blackwell, 1992, 65, 66.