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"It is the dynamic process of life itself - the continuous oscillation between opposite poles, between joy and grief, hope and fear, exultation and despair. 

 

To give aesthetic form to our passions is to transform them into a free and active state.

 

​In the work of the artist the power of passion itself has been made a formative power."

Ernst Cassirer, "An Essay on Man" (1944)

Heroes and Graces

“The heroic individual does not evade the debt of death but accepts the loan of life.”

 

Otto Rank, “Art and Artist” (1932)

David Stern, "Big Heart" (2023-24)

Dawn at the Jabbok

“The irony of man’s condition is that the deepest need is to be free of the anxiety of death and annihilation; ​

but it is life itself which awakens it, and so we must shrink from being fully alive.”

 

Ernest Becker, “The Denial of Death” (1973)

David Stern, "Dawn at the Jabbok (1)" (2023)

The Golden Thread

“The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside, as fate. 

 

That is to say, when the individual remains undivided and does not become conscious of his inner contradictions, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposite halves.”

 

Carl Gustav Jung, "Aion; Contributions to the Symbolism of the Self" (1951)

David Stern, "Armored Mornings" (2020)

At the Gates

“There is nothing that man fears more than the touch of the unknown.

He wants to see what is reaching towards him, and to be able to recognize or at least classify it.”

 

Elias Canetti

“Crowds and Power” (“Masse und Macht”), 1960

David Stern, "The Sentinels (third watch)" (2019)

Sons of God

“They are in themselves soulless beings who represent nothing but the thoughts and intuitions of their Lord.

 

Angels who fall, then are exclusively “bad” angels. These release the well known effect of “inflation”, which we can also observe nowadays in the megalomania of dictators: the angels beget with men a race of giants which ends by threatening to devour mankind, as is told in the book of Enoch.”

 

Carl Gustav Jung, “Memories, Dreams, Reflections” (1962)

David Stern, "Sons of God, Triptych (Center)" (2019-20)

Silent Running

"The human animal is characterized by two great fears that other animals are protected from:​ the fear of life and the fear of death…

 

He has to repress the realization that he is an animal, a creature of the earth, because this would undo his whole cultural world view.”

 

Ernest Becker, “The Denial of Death” (1973)

David Stern, "Silent Running" (2024)

© 2025 David Stern / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

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