The drama, like the symphony, does not teach or prove anything.
Galleries began growing in both number and size in the late seventies, when artists who worked in lofts wanted to exhibit their work in spaces similar to the ones the art was made in.
Put yourself in the position of an up-and-coming artist living in early-sixteenth-century Italy. Now imagine trying to distinguish yourself from the other artists living in your town: Michelangelo, Raphael, Leonardo, or Titian. Is it any wonder that the Italian High Renaissance lasted only 30 years?
To engage with art, we have to be willing to be wrong, venture outside our psychic comfort zones, suspend disbelief, and remember that art explores and alters consciousness simultaneously.
Billions of photos are shot every year, and about the toughest thing a photographer can do is invent an original, deeply personal, instantly recognizable visual style. In the early nineties, Wolfgang Tillmans did just that, transforming himself into a new kind of artist-photographer of modern life.
The reason I love blogs so much right now is that I am seeing more critical voices appear, and that's kind of thrilling. I think a lot of critics in their forties or even their thirties have had their voice scared or trained out of them by the academy. I have nothing against the academy. I think it's brilliant and fantastic, but I also think that it's become almost monolithic. The same way a lot of art looks the same, a lot of writing can sound the same and quotes the same theorists.
Art schools are partly the villain here. (Never mind that I teach in them. ) This generation of artists is the first to have been so widely credentialed, and its young members so fetishize the work beloved by their teachers that their work ceases to talk about anything else. Instead of enlarging our view of being human, it contains safe rehashing of received ideas about received ideas. This is a melancholy romance with artistic ruins, homesickness for a bygone era. This yearning may be earnest, but it stunts their work, and by turn the broader culture.
Many of us spend more time on the C's of life than on the A's of life. Don't allow trivial things to crowd out the important ones.
I just like food too much, and I don't want to change. I spent so much of childhood trying to change, and I just got sick of it. . . I don't want to look like Britney Spears, I just don't want to. She's hideous.
I identify with the 99 per cent.
We've all got an identity. You can't avoid it. It's what's left when you take everything else away.