Intoxicating Introduction

After reading the catalogue for the exhibition From Sea to Shining Sea, curated by A. A. Bronson, I felt inspired to create this space.

". . . Intoxication must first have heightened the sensibility of the whole machine before it can come to any art. And all kinds of special varieties of intoxication have the power to work in this way:  above all, that of sexual excitement, which is the first and oldest form of intoxication. And then, too, the intoxication that comes with any great desire, any great emotion: the intoxication of the festival, of a combat, bravado, victory or of any extreme movement: the intoxication of ferocity; the intoxication of destruction; intoxication under various sorts of meterological influence, that of spring, for example; or under the influence of narcotics; or finally the intoxication sheerly of the will, of an overcharged, inflated will. The essential thing in all intoxication is the feeling of heightened power and a fulness [sic]. With this feeling one addresses oneself to things, compels them to receive what one has to give, one overpowers them; and this procedure is called idealization. But let us, right here, get rid of a preposession: idealization does not as is generally thought, consist in leaving out, a subtraction of the insignifcant, the incidental. What is decisive, rather, is a tremendous exaggeration of the main features, before which those others disappear. In this condition, one enriches everything out of one's own abundance: whatever one sees or desires, one sees swelling, bursting, mighty, overladen with power. The individual in this condition changes things until they are mirrors of his own energy - reflections of his own perfection. And this compulsion to change things to perfection - is art." (emphasis added)

-Nietzsche, The Twilight of the Idol 1888 (cited in From Sea to Shining Sea, A. A. Bronson, p.164)