54. Eurythmy Performance

We can see, however, that when we are presented with these new artistic endeavors in the fields of painting or sculpture, for example, the artists are still struggling with the fact that the means still seem unusable today, or that the forms of expression cannot be created immediately. It is important to realize that in every such period, when a new direction is being sought in the field of art in particular, there is a tendency to fall back on what must underlie all art, all real art, but what is somewhat lost to artistic creation when the epigone-like, the imitation in art compared to the epochs of genius, comes to the fore too strongly. All real art-making is based on our relationship to the world – whether we are aesthetic connoisseurs or artistic creators – all art-making is based on our perception, on our entire imagination. The conceptual, the ideational actually snatches art away; the ideational actually has a killing, paralyzing effect on everything artistic. If we want to look at nature artistically or recreate nature, for example, we have to turn our attention to nature in such a way that we do not yet progress from contemplation to comprehension in our thinking, but that we remain with our whole devotion to nature in contemplation, but look at the sensual forms so purely, as if they themselves were already thoughts.