"Colors answer feeling in man; shapes answer thought; and motion answers will"
About this Quote
Sterling sketches an almost Victorian wiring diagram for the human psyche: feeling, thought, will, each with its proper artistic counterpart. It’s tidy on the surface, but the subtext is messier and more ambitious. He isn’t just describing how art “affects” us; he’s prescribing an order of operations for what art should do to a person, moving from the immediate to the deliberate.
“Colors answer feeling” frames emotion as something pre-verbal and reflexive, a stimulus-response loop where the body reacts before the mind assembles an argument. Color is the fastest route in: it bypasses explanation. “Shapes answer thought” shifts from sensation to cognition, implying that form is where meaning gets built - the part of art that can be reasoned with, measured, compared, criticized. Then the line tightens into its real thesis: “motion answers will.” Motion isn’t merely a visual feature; it’s the trigger for agency. What moves, moves us. In Sterling’s sequence, art reaches its highest purpose when it doesn’t just charm or persuade but recruits the viewer into action.
Context matters: writing in a 19th-century world obsessed with moral cultivation and the education of taste, Sterling is basically arguing for a hierarchy of aesthetic impact. He anticipates modern design and cinema logic (color sets mood; composition tells you what to think; movement cues desire and decision) while still sounding like a Romantic who believes inner life can be trained. The quiet audacity is that he treats will - the most political part of the self - as something art can legitimately touch.
“Colors answer feeling” frames emotion as something pre-verbal and reflexive, a stimulus-response loop where the body reacts before the mind assembles an argument. Color is the fastest route in: it bypasses explanation. “Shapes answer thought” shifts from sensation to cognition, implying that form is where meaning gets built - the part of art that can be reasoned with, measured, compared, criticized. Then the line tightens into its real thesis: “motion answers will.” Motion isn’t merely a visual feature; it’s the trigger for agency. What moves, moves us. In Sterling’s sequence, art reaches its highest purpose when it doesn’t just charm or persuade but recruits the viewer into action.
Context matters: writing in a 19th-century world obsessed with moral cultivation and the education of taste, Sterling is basically arguing for a hierarchy of aesthetic impact. He anticipates modern design and cinema logic (color sets mood; composition tells you what to think; movement cues desire and decision) while still sounding like a Romantic who believes inner life can be trained. The quiet audacity is that he treats will - the most political part of the self - as something art can legitimately touch.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
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