about art and creativity
“For taste governs every free - as opposed to rote - human response. Nothing is more decisive. There is taste in people, visual taste, taste in emotion - and there is taste in acts, taste in morality. Intelligence, as well, is really a kind of taste: taste in ideas. (One of the facts to be reckoned with is that taste tends to develop very unevenly.
... See moreThe purpose of art is not the release of a momentary ejection of adrenaline … but rather the gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity.
– Glenn Gould
– Glenn Gould
The psychology of the flow state
many people “do not want to think critically about the things they consume” and feel that “if they absorb any criticism about the things they consume it will magically ruin their enjoyment of them.” When we chatted about the role of criticism on a (fun, lightly gossipy) video call this month, she added that saying a piece of art is bad isn’t saying... See more
“I picked a bad time to become a critic” – Elizabeth Goodspeed on the collapse of design critique
Art is the greatest operating system our species has ever invented, a means of exploring consciousness, seen and unseen worlds. It is an instrument, medium, matrix, or miracle that transforms old impressions into new thoughts; that makes a thousand insignificant details light up and draw you out. For many of us, it is another country, a new home.
Jerry Saltz • Art Is Life: Icons and Iconoclasts, Visionaries and Vigilantes, and Flashes of Hope in the Night
For all its good intentions, art that tries to minister to its audience by showcasing moral aspirants and paragons or the abject victims of political oppression produces smug, tiresome works that are failures both as art and as agitprop. Artists and critics—their laurel bearers—should take heed.
Anastasia Berg • On the Aesthetic Turn | The Point Magazine
If you consider yourself a technologist, here’s your imperative: build things that are unabashedly, beautifully tangled into all else in life — people and relationships, politics, emotion and pain, understanding or the lack thereof, being alone, being together, homesickness, adventure, victory, loss. Build things that come alive, and drag... See more