#cs

It seems obvious, looking back, that the artists of Weimar Germany and Leninist Russia lived in a much more attenuated landscape of media than ours, and their reward was that they could still believe, in good faith and without bombast, that art could morally influence the world. Today, the idea has largely been dismissed, as it must in a mass media society where art's principal social role is to be investment capital, or, in the simplest way, bullion. We still have political art, but we have no effective political art. An artist must be famous to be heard, but as he acquires fame, so his work accumulates 'value' and becomes, ipso-facto, harmless. As far as today's politics is concerned, most art aspires to the condition of Muzak. It provides the background hum for power. ↗

— Robert Hughes

#artists #capitalism #consuemrism #creativity #entertainment

All of that art-for-art’s-sake stuff is BS,” she declares. “What are these people talking about? Are you really telling me that Shakespeare and Aeschylus weren’t writing about kings? All good art is political! There is none that isn’t. And the ones that try hard not to be political are political by saying, ‘We love the status quo.’ We’ve just dirtied the word ‘politics,’ made it sound like it’s unpatriotic or something.” Morrison laughs derisively. “That all started in the period of state art, when you had the communists and fascists running around doing this poster stuff, and the reaction was ‘No, no, no; there’s only aesthetics.’ My point is that is has to be both: beautiful and political at the same time. I’m not interested in art that is not in the world. And it’s not just the narrative, it’s not just the story; it’s the language and the structure and what’s going on behind it. Anybody can make up a story. ↗

— Toni Morrison

#politics #art

Language is the most massive and inclusive art we know, a mountainous and anonymous work of unconscious generations. ↗

— Edward Sapir

#art

It is a thing of no great difficulty to raise objections against another man's oration, it is a very easy matter; but to produce a better in it's place is a work extremely troublesome. ↗

— Plutarch

#criticism #critics #inspirational #art

In any case, do you really think kids even want something that is relevant to their daily lives? You think something practical like compound interest is going to get them excited? People enjoy fantasy, and that is just what mathematics can provide -- a relief from daily life, an anodyne to the practical workaday world. ↗

— Paul Lockhart

#math #mathematics #art

I think that's what art is: art is communication made in the hope that interesting miscommunications will arise. ↗

— Misha Glouberman

#art #art

I have been using art as a means to the emotions of life and reading into it the ideas of life. ↗

— Clive Bell

#art #emotions #life #art

I did not mean to sodomize Dick Cheney. I mean, I’m not even gay. Not that it matters. Because when, to my surprise, I bumped into him — literally — at the counter of Heimler’s Guns and Ammo in Casper, something clicked. And I’m not talking about the safety on my Mauser. You see, there’s another side to “L’il Dickens,” as the VP liked to refer to himself. Or, at least, a certain part of himself. En privado, he’s tender. He’s funny. He’s pink. And he’s a gun man, just like me. ↗

— Jerry Stahl

#politics #sex #funny

There has to be a cut-off somewhere between the freedom of expression and a graphically explicit free-for-all. ↗

— E.A. Bucchianeri

#artists #arts #arts-and-humanities #dignity #dignity-in-the-arts

Mathematics is the music of reason. To do mathematics is to engage in an act of discovery and conjecture, intuition and inspiration; to be in a state of confusion—not because it makes no sense to you, but because you gave it sense and you still don't understand what your creation is up to; to have a break-through idea; to be frustrated as an artist; to be awed and overwhelmed by an almost painful beauty; to be alive, damn it. ↗

— Paul Lockhart

#art