topic > thinking about art

Bach said it best

May 16, 2012 in Art as a professiontopics:,

I was just browsing through Ted Orland’s excellent book Art and Fear, and came apon this great quote from Johann Sebastian Bach. After he wrote a set of training pieces, Bach said that he wrote the music to: “…glorify God, to edify my neighbor, and…  read more


Favorite picks from The Armory Show

March 05, 2010 in Art as a professiontopics:

I just returned from this year’s Armory Show. Wow, that place is crazy. An overwhelmingly huge warehouse of identical white cubes stuffed with art. It’s a gallery on steroids. And beside my very sore feet, I also managed to find some fascinating and beautiful work…  read more


art for the eyes and ears

April 03, 2008 in Art as a professiontopics:,

In my last post, I ranted a bit about how artists are expected to be “deep”, while musicians are allowed to just play. Zak commented that he thought this could be because of a key difference between visual art and music: “…music takes place over…  read more


art is not essential – it is important

March 17, 2007 in Art as a professiontopics:

I’m in an online class with a group of artists, and the other day someone mentioned that they believed that art was essential part of society. Everyone agreed, but of course we did — we’re artists after all! But I’ve been mulling this idea over…  read more


a tree falls in the forest

February 28, 2007 in Art as a professiontopics:

Today on her blog, Alyson Stanfield coyly asked: If you create something and no one else ever sees it, is it art? I think some of the best art are the small private things you create just for yourself, and then let fall away. The…  read more


seeing the world through someone else’s eyes

February 27, 2007 in Art as a professiontopics:

I believe that people buy art so that they can see the world through someone else’s eyes. Most people are used to seeing the world in only one way: through their getting-through-the-day eyes. They are used to seeing things as they are, and using their…  read more


Take a number

May 31, 2006 in Art as a professiontopics:

You have to applaud this guy for originality. We’ve all seen art as performance. Now witness art as web business. He paints 1000 small canvases, each with a number from 1 to 1000. He then sets up a website to sell them, using a simple…  read more


Einstein on art and science

May 11, 2006 in Art as a professiontopics:, ,

“Where the world ceases to be the stage for personal hopes and desires, where we, as free beings, behold it in wonder, to question and to contemplate, there we enter the realm of art and science. If we trace out what we behold and experience…  read more


Creativity and Fear

April 21, 2006 in Art as a professiontopics:, ,

A quote from Seth Godin: The enemy of creativity is fear… In the long run, the enemy of fear is creativity. I’m sure of it. I disagree. The relationship between the two is much more symbiotic. Fear is a natural part of creativity because the…  read more


Art and Patience

April 13, 2006 in Art as a professiontopics:, ,

I love this quote from Art and Fear, a book by David Bayles and Ted Orland: The function of the overwhelming majority of your artwork is simply to teach you how to make the small fraction of your artwork that soars. I have a formula…  read more