Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
Harvard biologist tackles evolution of culture in a monumental essay. Captivating throughout. "Rich and seemingly boundless as the creative arts seem to be, each is filtered through the narrow biological channels of human cognition"
Interview with Eric Kandel, giant of modern neuroscience. Discussion centres on the science of aesthetics (how the brain responds to art), and the rise of Modernists in 19th century Vienna
"The basic idea of surrealism is simple enough, and that defines its power. Everyday life or the habitual reality we experience is a barrier to the expression of those manifold and unspoken desires encoded in dreams"
It's become unfashionable to talk about art having any purpose; art is merely "for art's sake". But what if museums bore in mind didactic function of Christian art to present their collections differently? To suggest a meaning
"We are profoundly immersed in the tortuous, commercially controlled currents of postmodern design and thought, and its weapons of mass psychic deconstruction. Has this made our lives richer in meaning, or just richly vacuous?"
One nightclub in New York dared to suggest it was. So, where do you draw a line between performance art and stripping? Courts ruled that "to distinguish erotic dancing from, say, ballet, real art requires you to go to school"
Reprint from FT [free access] on Making Art. Levi noted "it is through the hands that you learn the properties of the 'grey of steel beams and plates'". Theory alone teaches little; hands on practice needed. Thanks to @kirstinbutler
Long review of Umberto Eco's "History of Beauty". Perhaps too long, but full of insights into the history of art, and the evolution of beauty "from being a property of the Ideal to being an attribute of the Real"
"A work of art is precisely that which remains when you have run out of words to describe it. The works that move us most are those that have the most life and power in them when the talking stops"
Our tastes in visual art are universal, shaped by evolution
Image from the Artchive
