about art and creativity
But the Taste Guy is just the Idea Guy reinvented for the attention age. It’s trading meaning-making for trend-hopping and cosplaying success instead of earning it. It’s posting slick prototypes for Twitter views instead of real products for DAUs and cash. It’s the fantasy of a post-AGI world where you don’t need to learn to code or write or sell... See more
Jasmine • are you high-agency or an NPC?
The challenge is to structure one’s workflow in a way that insight and new ideas can become the driving forces that push us forward. We do not want to make ourselves dependent on a plan that is threatened by the unexpected, like a new idea, discovery – or insight.
Sönke Ahrens • How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Wayne Thiebaud (1920-2021) knew how to appropriate most ardently. The renowned artist once said, “It’s hard for me to think of artists who weren’t influential on me because I’m such a blatant thief.”
Kate Mothes • Wayne Thiebaud's Passion for Art History Shines in 'Art Comes from Art'
Wayne Thiebaud on Art
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
Creative excellence is ineffable. When you see something that resonates, you’ll know — it will hold a mysterious, irrational power over you. That's as close to a definition as I can get: Something that moves me. It can come from anywhere; a weird combination of words, a stupid joke, the bright sound of a French horn, the way a piece of wood
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The 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 goal of art isn’t to attain perfection. The goal is to share who we are. And how we see the world. Artists allow us to see what we are unable to see, but somehow already know. It may be a view of the world singularly different from our own. Or one so close, it seems miraculous, as if the artist is looking through our own eyes. In either case,
... See moreRick Rubin • The Creative Act: A Way of Being
The psychology of the flow state