This is the one lesson from the East and from the West. The forms of
art are always preformed and premeditated. The creative process is
always an academic routine and sacred procedure. Everything is
prescribed and proscribed. Only in this way is there no grasping or
clinging to anything. Only a standard form can be imageless, only a
stereotyped image can be formless, only a formula-ized art can be
formulaless. There is no other way of getting rid of all qualities and
substances. Finally there is nothing in the purest art to pin down or
point out. Nothing is attached to any miserable creature or jolly soul,
or to any special place, or "out of joint" time, or to any kind of
pleasure or pain.
from TIMELESS IN ASIA in Art News, January 1960.