Back to honesty: Unaffected self-portraits
In discussions about art, we babble constantly about “quality” as if it is the determining factor in terms of what is “good” or “bad”. Some say that, for instance, Mozart was a better composer than John Williams could ever be. Or, we might dismiss Norman Rockwell (a mere illustrator) in comparison to, say, a VanGogh. We read a novel, and we nit-pick, saying: Steinbeck is sentimental; Dickens’s plots are too neat. A ballet choreographer might look at kids dancing for change on the street and he might say, “Unsophisticated. That’s not art. It’s ‘pop’ dancing.” But, in the end, what does all of this mean? As I have suggested lots of times, isn’t the measure of art in the way it directly affects us? How important is the “quality” of the work? One can (and I certainly do sometimes) marvel at an artist’s craft, but is great skill necessary for great art? Is skill necessary at all? [Read more →]
by Melissa Marr, thinking I would read the first chapter while they finished boarding and got through the announcements. I planned to sleep the rest of the way home…187 pages later, we landed in Cleveland. I hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep. Instead, I was utterly absorbed in the book, wishing I had just another hour in the air so I could finish it. 
