Category: German

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Nietzsche: People with originality are the ones who name things

What is originality? It is seeing something that still has no name, that cannot yet be named, even if it is right in front of everyone’s eyes. The way people usually are is that something becomes visible to them only once it is named. — People with originality are mostly also the name-givers.

—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) in Die Fröhliche Wissenschaft [The Gay Science] (1882), Third Book, 261.

Was ist Originalität? Etwas sehen, das noch keinen Namen trägt, noch nicht genannt werden kann, ob es gleich vor aller Augen liegt. Wie die Menschen gewöhnlich sind, macht ihnen erst der Name ein Ding überhaupt sichtbar.— Die Originalen sind zumeist auch die Namengeber gewesen.

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Tomma Abts’ paintings’ names

[Tomma] Abts gives all her paintings titles that she selects from a dictionary of German first names. We lingered before one called Meko, a red, white, and green painting with an op-art feel. Critics describe her paintings as “living things” that incite “inter-subjective confrontation.” Abts frets about which paintings are exhibited together and exactly how they are hung, as if she were arranging the seating plan for a dinner party and it would be a disaster if Teete sat too close to Folme. When I mentioned casually that I’d be curious to see her dictionary of first names, Abts looked alarmed, moved toward the table, tossed a sweater over the mysterious volume, and said, “It is better if it is unknown.”

—Seven Days in the Art World (2008), by Sarah Thornton