The real value of art is in its ephemerality. Yes, I hope you desire what I create, and yes, I hope to continue to make a living creating things. But the value of art as social function worth doing is the exquisite bright light it shines directly onto the moment of its creation. In its best expression, we can only hope that work gets rescued from its own private steamer trunk so it can cast light on others.
Read MoreQR CODES at the MUSEUM
Trips to a ball park and trips to a museum require visitors to be physically present. In the same way as watching a game on television, seeing a painting on a screen is a wholly different experience from seeing it in real life.
Read MoreART IN A TIME OF SMOKE AND CINDERS
No matter what Election Day may bring —and I’m conscious that on whatever date you may be reading there will likely remain massive uncertainties ahead — it would be irresponsible to pretend that the travails of the day can just be ignored. They cannot be ignored. Artists especially cannot avert their eyes, even as the balm of creative work promises a cloak of comparative purpose, or at least meaningful pursuit. To pretend that our collective, human induced problems are not substantial would be to assert an abdication of civic engagement.
Read MoreWHAT I TRY TO REMEMBER
Art is the reason to preserve life in the first place, to fortify our shelters and our camp, to share sustenance with others around the fire. Art is the reason we exist. We exist to create; creation becomes the over arching beauty worth pursuing in a finite life; beauty is the reason to endure.
Read MoreLOSS OF MEMORY
Creative works are hardly ballast against the drowning, downward pull of recent events. Art is not “the answer”, especially considering how time and time and time again the human collective seems to eschew creative options in favor of destructive ones. It’s inevitable, perhaps, to wonder: does art really matter in the face of humanity’s often malevolent inclinations?
Read MoreTHE CHALLENGE OF ART IN INTENSELY POLITICAL TIMES
It’s a terrific development in human history that so many people should have the means and mechanisms to create images and sounds and words, but the dilution of importance for the best of those creations threatens the value and continuity of the whole enterprise.
Read MoreART IN A TIME OF CHAOS
What could art possibly mean to a global population that spends most of its days eking out meager livings on the rough streets of Bangalore, Dar es Salaam, or Medellin? What does art possibly mean to the people who spend their days pouring over spreadsheets working to score points with the House Appropriations Committee?
Read MoreTHE EVOLUTION WILL BE TELEVISED
Acts of creation become part of the overall drama of survival.
Read MorePOLITICS AND ART
Art becomes political the moment culture places meaning on what it sees or hears or reads, and politics requires some measure of creative work when it tries to synthesize civic strategies into cogent messages.
Read MoreIN THE ART UNIVERSE THERE’S SUDDENLY A NEW SUPERNOVA
A recent move by the famedMetropolitan Museum of Art in New York City is having the effect of opening opportunities that will be fabulously valuable to all of those who simply cannot expect to travel the globe just to see paintings and sculpture.
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