Be realistic, ask the impossible.
Put even more beautifully: Imagine immensities.
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In his fantastic SVA commencement address on the false division between “high” and “low” culture, critic Greil Marcus adds to history’s finest definitions of art.
For Children’s Book Week, the best illustrations from 130 years of Brothers Grimm fairy tales.
There’s this myth that designers aspire to be artists. No — designers aspire to be really great designers.
Paola Antonelli, MoMA’s Senior Curator of Architecture and Design, echoes Bruno Munari at a recent TED salon titled “Design Is Everywhere.”
Antonelli’s most recent book, Talk to Me: Design and the Communication between People and Objects, based on her MoMA exhibition of the same name, is fantastic.
I believe in art’s social presence—as breaker of official silences, as voice for those whose voices are disregarded, and as a human birthright. … I don’t think we can separate art from overall human dignity and hope.
Poet Adrienne Rich, born on May 16, 1948, adds to history’s finest definitions of art in the historic letter that made her the only person in history to decline the prestigious National Medal of Arts.
Attention is what creates value. Artworks are made as well by how people interact with them — and therefore by what quality of interaction they can inspire. So how do we assess an artist who we suspect is dreadful but who manages to inspire the right storm of attention, and whose audience seems to swoon in the appropriate way? We say, ‘Well done.’
The question is: ‘Is the act of getting attention a sufficient act for an artist? Or is that in fact the job description?’
Perhaps the art of the future will be indistinguishable.
Music legend Brian Eno, born on May 15, 1948, considers the essence and currencies of art.
If you imagine less, less will be what you undoubtedly deserve. Do what you love, and don’t stop until you get what you love. Work as hard as you can, imagine immensities, don’t compromise, and don’t waste time. Start now. Not 20 years from now, not two weeks from now. Now.
Debbie Millman’s timeless advice on courage and the creative life, in a wonderful illustrated essay.
What makes a work of art ‘good’ for you is not something that is already ‘inside’ it, but something that happens inside you.
Ambient music godfather Brian Eno, born on May 15, 1948, on the essence of art.
Every once in a while — often when we least expect it — we encounter someone more courageous, someone who choose to strive for that which (to us) seemed unrealistically unattainable, even elusive. And we marvel. We swoon. We gape. Often , we are in awe. I think we look at these people as lucky, when in fact, luck has nothing to do with it. It is really about the strength of their imagination; it is about how they constructed the possibilities for their Life. In short, unlike me, they didn’t determine what was impossible before it was even possible.
Fail Safe – Debbie Millman’s fantastic illustrated essay of timeless advice on courage and the creative life.
Where do you work?
Do you work ‘inside’ or ‘outside’?
To work inside is to deal with the internal conditions of the work — the melodies, the rhythms, the textures, the lyrics, the images: all the normal day-to-day things one imagines an artist does.
To work outside is to deal with the world surrounding the work — the thoughts, assumptions, expectations, legends, histories, economic structures, critical responses, legal issues and so on and on. You might think of these things as the frame of the work.
A frame is a way of creating a little world round something.
[…]
Is there anything in a work that is not frame, actually?
Brian Eno, born on May 15, 1948, on art and culture.
Salesmanship, another ingenious newspaper blackout by Austin Kleon. (Psychologists would agree.) Find more in his fantastic Newspaper Blackout and let him tell you how to steal like an artist
Cats may be famous literary pets, but who knew the propaganda art of the anti-suffragist movement had an entire cat-centric sub-genre? As felines represented the domestic sphere and thus the feminine, they were used to portray suffragists as incompetent and unintelligent.
The irony, of course, is that everyone knows how a cat boosts your creativity. For non-believers, there’s always The Cat-Hater’s Handbook, which now carries whole new undertones of misogyny.
