Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice

by J.F. Martel

A compelling call to rediscover the transformative power of art in an age of distraction, coercion and spectacle - with a new introduction by Donna Tartt

In Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice, J. F. Martel offers a compelling and incisive meditation on the nature of art in a world dominated by invasive media, rampant consumer culture, and artificial intelligence. Drawing on a wide range of examples, from Paleolithic cave art to contemporary cinema, Martel argues that true art reveals the unseen forces shaping our existence-forces that transcend politics, technology, and even culture. In contrast to artifice, which seeks to manipulate or distract, authentic art calls us back to the essence of things, opening "rifts" onto the sublime and the weird and reconnecting us with the radical mystery at the heart of the world.

Featuring a foreword by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Donna Tartt, this edition also includes a new afterword by the author, reflecting on the continued relevance of art in our increasingly mediated world.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction, Philosophy, History, Cultural, Essays, Sociology

209 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 1, 2015

Reviews

[Forrest · Rating 5 out of 5]

I sometimes hear critics decry artists as being “indulgent” when they do something they love that isn’t popular with said critics. I recall the one season of American Idol that I watched (the one where Adam Lambert should have won) wherein one of the early contestants was called “Indulgent” for singing what I thought was a not terrible rendition of Pearl Jam’s “Jeremy”. I’ve been similarly accused and, in fact, used said accusation in my writer’s bio from time to time. You see, I don’t care if I’m viewed as indulgent. I write because I like to write. Some publishers happen to have liked what I’ve written and have published some of my work. Pardon my flippancy (or don’t), but . . . get over it.

Those who have spent any time with me in person know that I’m not so bold in person. I’m a pretty nice guy, sometimes a bit too deferential. But when it comes to my writing and my reading tastes, I am my own man. Writing is my drug. MY drug. Your drug may be different, and your experience with writing may be (and should be) different. It should be your own. All art should be your own because it is your interface with art that matters, not the art itself. The object that elicits the feelings within you, the emotional and intellectual connection, the reaction, will never be the same for another person. Nor should it be.

Here we have one of the central points of J.F. Martel’s “treatise, critique, and call to action”: Art is different for every person, while artifice is intended to engender the same reaction from each person who encounters it. Art is about expression, with the viewer taking an active role in interpreting the meaning of the object/picture/performance, while artifice is about communication, with the viewer taking the passive role of receiving the message which the deliverer wishes to inject into his or her heart or mind. One is a complex symbol open to many different interpretations, while the other is a sign pointing to an ideology to which the creator wants to assign one true meaning:

The moment we reduce a work of art to its references to other things, as with statements such as “Kafka’s Trial is a story ‘about’ modern bureaucracy” or “Fargo" is a film ‘about’ the corrupting influence of money,” we risk losing sight of what art alone can do, because we are effectively turning it into something that can be deciphered . . . a work of art is not ‘about’ any one definitive thing. Captain Ahab isn’t “just” a man obsessed with a whale any more than Moby Dick is “just” a story about whaling and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Ahab and his obsession are inseparable from one another. He is formed by his drive to kill the white whale – and cannot exist apart from it. Nor is Ahab’s preoccupation with hunting down Moby Dick a generic characteristic that, in his particular case, happens to be directed at a large sea mammal. Rather, his obsession is itself inseparable from Moby Dick; it is an aspect of the whale as well as an aspect of Ahab. The madness at the heart of Melville’s story becomes an abstract “character trait” only once we have extracted it from its specific context, stripping it of its singularity and generalizing it into a psychological opinion . . . the hunter, the hunt, and the hunted constitute an indissoluble system, each part of which exists by virtue of the force exerted by the others.”

The need to dissect and dissemble art into its constituent parts, while laudable in academic circles, does, to some degree, rob one of the mystery of discovery that one feels when encountering a moving piece of art for the first time. As an undergraduate, I studied Humanities with a history emphasis. I learned how to examine art, music, dance, theater, drama, architecture, and cinema in historical context, but always with a bias toward one school of philosophy or another. The intent was that we students would become exposed to and possibly even facile in criticism of various forms. I spent several good years of my life doing this and, while I am grateful for the intellectual exercise (and actually enjoyed it, to some extent), I felt an overwhelming sense of relief when, one summer, I read The Complete Sherlock Holmes and Tolkien’s The Silmarillion (followed by The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings series) after a particularly grueling semester of Marxist and Objectivist analysis of several works of art and literature. It took a week or so to deprogram from the academic rigor of that semester, but when I did, and when I read the books without any preconceived analysis, I felt . . . free! And, strangely, when I did have the analytical devil whisper over my shoulder, my thoughts “uncoiled” quite naturally. Maybe I had just been indoctrinated, I don’t know. But I was able to enjoy the fruits of my studies when I let myself relax and enjoy the art itself, first and foremost. My sense of mystery returned to me as I let these works unfold on their own terms, without the need for analysis.

As Martel notes:

Astonishment has an intellectual as well as an emotional component - in it, the brain and the heart come together. Far from distracting us from the strange and the uncanny in life, the astonishment evoked by great artistic works puts them square in our sights . . . the world is not what we thought it was: something hidden, impossible to communicate . . . [is] clearly expressed in the work.

That aesthetic astonishment (which, I will note, is also often felt by the artist while in the act of creation) is the “drug” I seek in either bringing art to life or engaging with the art of another. While I appreciate the careful analysis and dissection of a work (watch me at a museum – I’m the guy the guards keep an eye on because I want to get nose-close to the painting to see the individual strokes), I also realize that the appreciation of art is not a scientific endeavor. Scientific thinking can never explain the magic I felt, for example, when I first heard Kronos Quartet play live, or when I saw my first Redon painting in-person or when I first read A Clockwork Orange. It cannot tell me why I loved these things and why they moved me inside, why they created such a strong emotional and intellectual response.

”Why?” is a problem science can’t lick; in fact, the very nature of science prevents it from even framing the problem. What science does – and does beautifully – is to enrich the mystery by revealing ever deeper layers of the physical universe, which becomes more puzzling with each new discovery. Any adequate response to the mystery of existence must be poetic, for only the poetic can take on the “why.” If poetic answers are always figurative, never literal, it is because no sooner has the question of being been raised than we leave the world of determinate things to travel in a far stranger country.

This strange country is where the artist lives and thrives. It is of little use to ask me why I love the aforementioned pieces. And, in fact, it’s more than a little distracting from my enjoyment of the piece. What matters is that startling moment of revelation, that twist of the brain and heart that sends a thrill of excitement or dread or any other unanticipated feeling response that the art invokes in me.

Not to wax overly meta-, I present the following quote from Martel’s own work as an example of something that struck me on a deep level. Now, keep in mind that Poe’s poem, “The Raven” is an old favorite. It is also the first poem that my daughter memorized (the entire thing – as a nine year old, no less!) and that she recites, even as an adult, around Halloween. Now, with that in mind, read this seemingly innocuous quote:

At the literal level, Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” (1845) features a bleak November night, a black bird, and a dead woman – only this and nothing more.

SWOON! Do you see what he did there? If not, go back and read the poem. Then read that quote again. It’s an esoteric twist that I had not at all expected. I almost shed a tear at this. Why? That’s my secret, my experience, involving my relationship to reading, writing, and my daughter. I can’t explain it. Either you feel it or you don’t.

And if you don’t feel it, that’s fine. But I do. So, indulge me and call me indulgent. This sentence was written for me. At least I choose to take it that way. Martel encourages the profound idea that one should engage a work of art as if it was created and meant specifically for you. Or, in the case of those who create art:

. . . this means taking the job seriously enough to pursue the visions that come from within rather than those that are foisted upon us by social pressures, popular taste, and the whims of the market. It means making it our principal task to let the symbol speak through the work rather than trying to speak through the symbol. We need to revive the ancient idea of art as a holy madness in which one is guided by external forces. Only thus can we bring forth what we have never seen, yet desperately need to see.

This is what I seek when I write. Call it indulgent. I call it art. No apologies.

********
For those interested in more of J.F. Martel’s musings, I cannot recommend his podcast (along with Phil Ford) Weird Studies strongly enough. It has quickly climbed to the top of my list of favorite podcasts and never fails to satisfy, no matter what the specific subject matter. Please give it a listen!

[Diz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Martel presents his manifesto on what art is and makes strong claims on what is and what it isn't.

The part that I particularly liked outlined the different between a work of art and a masterwork. Art allows for discovery through mistakes and accidents. Its rawness can reveal insights into the human experience. A masterwork, on the other hand, is a perfect example of craft. This can explain why some works may be perfect but fail to move us, while others may astound us with their profundity despite their imperfections.

[John Pistelli · Rating 4 out of 5]

[This book was in-demand at the library, so I had to take it back before writing a review; hence the lack of quotation below, a defect I have tried to correct with rich re-description of the text.]

At the end of the 18th century, with the Enlightenment giving way to Romanticism, German poet and playwright Friedrich Schiller wrote his Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man. In that book, he defined the play drive, a uniquely human mental capacity that mediates between the formal drive (associated with reason, morality, and judgment) and the sensuous drive (associated with all physical experience). Without this ludic, or artistic, capacity, we would veer between the chaos of experience and the rigidity of reason, the one too hot and the other too cold; but art converts experience into form by way of sensual and, as it were, living embodiment. For this reason, artists, who live and work by the play drive, in some sense typify human subjectivity itself, since only aesthetic thinking can translate experience into form without loss of either vitality or rationality. Art becomes the model for life.

This Romantic defense of art has perhaps not been bettered—today's instrumental appeals, to the effect that art makes us better critical thinkers or more empathetic citizens, are weak in comparison. But Schiller's Romantic aesthetics have also been bruised and battered by any number of challengers in the last century, from the monstrous (concentration camp commandants who read Goethe and listen to Schubert) to the ridiculous (words of wisdom from great writers on your burrito bag). If the aesthetic drive cannot prevent its appropriation by brutal murderers or crass businessmen, then what is it worth?

J. F. Martel's Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice can be read as an update and a correction of Schiller, a Romantic aestheticist manifesto for the twenty-first century. For Martel, art is a force that opens a "rift" in the world of the merely given, a rift that discloses other ways of being, for both good and ill. Art is the appearance of the nonhuman—all the larger forces to which we are subject—within a human artifact. Any seeming work of art that does less than this, Martel dismisses as mere artifice, an appeal to the senses for utilitarian purposes, whether of pleasure (pornography, entertainment) or of control (didacticism, propaganda). Unfortunately, contemporary society's whole approach to art seems to be take place under the aegis of artifice. Today we see those who would subject art wholly to the market, thus demanding a kind of audience-flattering pornography in place of the audience-offending disturbances that real art offers, and those who would submit art wholly to political considerations, from those on the Right who influentially derided the non-patriotic in the years after 9/11 to those on the Left who have recently taken to decrying everything they deem oppressive, triggering, etc.

But these contemporary errors—the commercial and the political—have a long genealogy, which Martel traces intelligently. He is admirably clear and forthright on the three great calamitous appropriations of aesthetics in the twentieth century: 1. the Right's aestheticization of politics, which ended in the genocidal violence of fascism and Nazism; 2. the Left's politicization of aesthetics, which ended in the terrors of totalitarianism and the crudity of political correctness; 3. the historical avant-garde's aestheticization of everyday life, which ended in a coercive because inescapable commodity/fashion culture. That these appropriations still have their defenders, especially the last two, which have proliferated on the Internet, makes Martel's book all the more necessary.

In place of artifice, Martel calls for a renewed commitment to the dislocating and even prophetic power of art to open up the world. He does not repeat Schiller's overly optimistic Enlightenment plea to reform society around the aesthetic; that dream died with the twentieth century and should not be resurrected. In fact, Martel cites the shamanic practice of certain indigenous cultures, for whom the shaman was a person set apart from the workaday world of community and necessity. Art and politics, play and work, should be kept apart so that each may perform its necessary function, the one of rational organization and the other of supra- or sub-rational exploration. This is perhaps my favorite element of Martel's argument, since I believe there are too many people who think the solution to today's minimization of art is to find some way to make everyone into artists. But everyone can't be an artist, any more than I can be a physicist or an athlete or a veterinarian. We artists should argue that we, too, have our necessary function, and that we should be left to pursue it, and Martel presents that argument beautifully.

Martel summons an impressive array of thinkers and artists to his side: Werner Herzog, Friedrich Nietzsche, Oscar Wilde, Carl Jung, James Joyce, William Gibson, Martin Heidegger, Herman Melville, Gilles Deleuze, J. G. Ballard, H. P. Lovecraft, William S. Burroughs, Stanley Kubrick, and more. No Schiller, though, surprisngly—or perhaps it's not surprising, given Schiller's Kantianism. Avowedly wanting to avoid the cliche of blaming Descartes for the modern dualism that relegates art to the realm of the irrational, Martel instead makes Kant his villain. It was Kant, he claims, who permanently severed subject from object, thus rendering art's testimony merely subjective, of no truth value whatever. This is persuasive enough, for a short and non-scholarly book anyway, and strikes through Kant at postmodernism, with its endless deferral of meaning. It is interesting to see in such an anti-postmodern book what remains of the postmodern critique, and which authors of '68 survive. Going by Martel's book (but not only by Martel's book), it seems to me that the question of what is living and what is dead in postmodernism can now be answered with some precision: Romanticism is living, and Marxism is dead. Deleuze might get a century to himself, after all.

I do have a few quibbles with Reclaiming Art:

1. While I am not bothered, as some people might be, by the introduction of Jung into Martel's canon, there is a New Age nimbus around the text—it is published by an imprint of North Atlantic Books and blurbed by Daniel Pinchbeck—that makes me wonder how literally some of the language of "rifts in reality" might be secretly meant. Martel does a superb job of keeping his claims for art both modest and radical: art is a disclosure of a new world, but this "new world" is not a literal place to which one could ever travel. Mistaking the world the artwork lets us glimpse for a utopia we could visit is precisely what led to the death camps and the gulags, in Martel's own account, so any flirtation with such literalism as one finds in New Age idealism is troubling to me.

2. Martel seems somewhat poptimistic for a person whose aesthetic standards are so severe. He repeatedly assures his readers that anything can be great art, from pop song to video game to symphony. He is not indiscriminate in his assessment of mass-cultural works, as shown by a strongly negative reading of Cameron's Avatar as a work of supreme artifice, forgettable because both didactic and overly controlled. But surely any product involving the vast sums expended on Avatar will be artifice and not art; and Martel seems to have a sufficiently Shelleyan temperament to see the ruins of ancient architectural marvels as the remains of artifice, rendered aesthetic only accidentally, but their fallen state's ironic disclosure of where monumental contrivances of control end. (Perhaps a "ruined" Avatar will be similarly compelling in two thousand years.) In short, when too much money and too many people get involved, you will get artifice, not art, almost by definition. This is definitely implied in the book, but perhaps not addressed adequately. I suppose I am more skeptical about many forms of investment-heavy and tech-dependent media.

3. Martel has some superb pages on the difference between the artist and the maker of masterworks. The master craftsman does everything right, is at one with his or her tools, and produces superior product. But the artist has no such assurance, often feels alienated from his or her tools, and produces works of weird excess that violate all sorts of artistic norms. That is all true, but the naive reader could come away from this with the idea that breaking rules is in and of itself all one has to do to make great art. It seems to me that some fierce dialectical engagement with the rules is what makes for great art; merely breaking them is not sufficient, is not even really interesting. If it were, I could pee on the floor, and it would be a masterpiece. So I missed from Martel's book much acknowledgement of thinkers (e.g., Eliot, Bloom) for whom the shaping force of tradition is the necessary resistance that any new work has to overcome.

But Martel's is a book well worth reading, despite any faults I find with it. Reclaiming Art has the rare virtue of being concise, precise, and conversational all at once, and most of what it advocates is, from my perspective, correct.

[112358 · Rating 4 out of 5]

fascinating and inspiring. I struggle with his ideas about rifts and prophesies, but I don't have a good alternative idea that I can express.

I'll probably reread this again very soon and write about his ideas as I do.

[Dominic Bercier · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must-read thriller of the mind for every artist, or aspiring artist, and a refreshing humanities course wrapped into one humble yet mighty tome.

Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice: A Treatise, Critique, and Call to Action



Like the astronaut film ‘The Right Stuff,’ 'Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice' begins by reminding us of the story before the breaking of the sound barrier, i.e. before the sudden experience of 'ART' on its own terms, and sets us on a breakneck speed artistic adventure up until we achieve orbit in chapter 5, 'Rift and Prophecy,' which, to me, was like witnessing, in slow motion, every aspect of a rocket making for the heavens. It took my breath away. There and then, time and space gave way to an eerily silent zero gravity and peace outside of normal experience, like the astronaut orbiting the Earth in a pod for the first time ever, letting one hope that art is indeed more powerful [and timeless] than the 'weapons of mass consumption' we have since devised.

Given that ‘the sky is the limit’ and that we have, by the middle of the book, achieved that limit, it only seems fair to compare concluding chapters to the rapid frame denouement of exploring our solar system and indeed even the nearly unimaginable barrier breach of interstellar flight. 'Reclaiming Art' delivers on its promise to open us to a simple yet robust character, 'Imagination,' born out of nothing, of a big bang nucleus called humanity’s heart, and allows us to clearly follow her travails against 'History' and 'The Unconscious,' using both as fuel to achieve ever greater heights of inner and outer levity.

Reminding me of the impossible qualities of the 'Book of Genesis,' which speaks to a war 'before and after time,' the modes of experience called 'Synchronicity' and 'Magic' come to 'Imagination’s' aid and pit a true [and final] defense against the threat and onslaught of our spectral culture and apathy.

- Dominic Bercier, graphic novel writer-artist-designer

[Regan Halas · Rating 5 out of 5]

This little book has become my studio bible: I open it randomly for beacon and support when the voices of fear and loathing come a bit too close. Martel is eloquent, discerning, discriminating and deliciously specific as he deftly identifies the climate and character of (American? Capitalist) society and its effect upon aesthetic-artistic sensibility and practice.

The absolutely invigorating confirmation of experience I received from 'Reclaiming Art...' is gold. I think I used up an entire pack of sticky tabs marking passages that had me sighing with relief, chuckling with recognition and shaking my fist in solidarity.

Slogging through the swamps of the contemporary 'art' landscape can be a potentially deadly (for the soul) undertaking. Navigating a society bent on productivity, artifice and entertainment, particularly as an artist or someone otherwise dedicated to the aesthetic and sublime, is labyrinthine at best. If you are an artist, an aspiring artist, a supporter of art...well, if you are a human being that craves a bit of wild reason amidst the morbid domestication, rush, superficiality and toxic competitiveness we're afloat in, check this one out.

[Kevin Fitzpatrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Entertaining and erudite, this book creates an argument, replete with examples from high and low culture over the millennia and from different regions, for the continuing relevance of Art in our age of Artifice. One finds oneself nodding in unconscious agreement, for the arc of dialogic imagination that is at the basis of the author's polemic is both complete and completely persuasive. This book restores one's faith in the redemptive power of the imaginary, it provides fodder for countless late night rap sessions, and it brings together strands of thought that once seemed forever alienated from each other: surely one can see that such a treatise is for the ages! Two thumbs up!

[David Steele · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hmm. This is quite a device book, and its reviews seem to polarise between the five star and the bin. While I disagree with much of the author's framing (especially his characterisation of left and right-wing world views), I found a lot here that chimed with the direction I want my own work and growth to take. I also enjoyed the thoughtful and philosophical path that Martel took to get there.
I won't waste your time by explaining the book's content, other than to over-simplify it by saying that the author defines artifice as something that wants something from you (such as an advertisement for Pepsi that makes you thirsty) and art as something that presents something to you (such as the sensation of transcendence you might feel when viewing a Turner landscape). Ultimately, it's a question of whether the artist expects to motivate you or move you. I think the whole "art or not art" discussion is more relevant now than it was ten years ago. maybe some of the people who rejected it in the pre-diffusion era might consider a second look today.
This book is prone to the same identitarian bias that a lot of modern authors have displayed recently, with the feminisation of otherwise neutral pronouns ("When the artist looks, she sees with her own eyes" being used where "they / their" would be less intrusive). You could argue that this is a step toward equality, were it not for the fact that the author has rammed this book full of quotes and examples from a truck-load of artists, philosophers, writers and commentators, and I think only three of them were women.

[Tobias · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just finished reading Reclaiming art in the age of artifice by the Canadian author J.F. Martel. This is an interesting and thought-provoking book for anyone who has ever thought about what art really is and what function it serves for us as persons. Martel's answer is in many ways anachronistic, or at least such that it goes against much of what has been said in the last fifty years or so, on both sides of the Atlantic. His thesis is that art is fundamentally ambiguous, without clear interpretation, and that it is opposed not only to external control, but also that real art cannot have an overly clear and controlling intention even on the side the artist. Instead, he starts from what many artists throughout history have said about the work growing as if by itself, that they did not know exactly where they were going with the work from the beginning but instead followed an inner logic that developed during the work, often more results that surprised them themselves, an idea that inspiration is a driving force beyond conscious control, something reminiscent of how dreams arise, outside the waking self. Unlike dreams, works of art must then be processed consciously, with the help of experience, talent, knowledge and so on, but that does not change the fact that the origin is something completely different, or that the artist is forced to use his craftsmanship in the often thankless work of realizing the work. In many ways, this is reminiscent of classic notions of genius, but without the same focus on the artist as an individual.

[Vinicius · Rating 5 out of 5]

10/10

[Jonathan Kissam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Provocative, fascinating, and a joy to read (as long as you find words like “imaginal” and phrases like “chaosmos of dream images and correspondences” charming, which I do).

[Stephane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un libro que deberíamos de leer todos, además dedica tres páginas al maestro Lovecraft y su relato ''El color que cayó del cielo". Dándonos otra perspectiva del relato en la actualidad.

[Hannah Contreras · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a revelatory experience. J.F Martel’s observations are prescient and startling. In this new edition complete with Donna Tartt’s preface, his words on art and artifice are even more important now in 2025 than they were ten years ago in 2015. He builds his way up to his argument in an easy to understand and relatable way, using examples from both “popular” culture and more “academic” sources. For the lay reader, it might be a bit much, but if you’re at all interested in film, classic literature, or philosophy, it’s easily digestible. I would still recommend it for the lay reader, as it’s a theory of art that’s extraordinarily applicable to today’s circumstances, it just might take a few more Google searches to explain his references. His theory on the whole opens like a flower to the willing audience, easily guiding the reader from idea to idea.

I had so many “Aha!” moments throughout, and it was incredibly rewarding to relate this to other material that I’ve read recently, like C.S Lewis’ “An Experiment in Criticism” and John Berger’s “Ways of Seeing” (which he uses as a reference!). I was happy that he maintained such a hardline stance on the “uselessness” of art, i.e. that real capital-A Art has no utilitarian purpose. Instead, its purpose is to illuminate our perception of the Real; of the mysterious essence of life, of the soul, of the symbols that reveal to us our nature and Nature herself. Martel’s prose flows with a beauty and a passion that belies his true belief in his ideas. He is not arguing for an idea; he’s arguing for a philosophy that he truly believes can save our world from digital doom. While at the end his language could get a bit flowery and naive-sounding, I overall loved his explanations and arguments for a philosophy of art that’s extraordinarily applicable to today’s world and one that prioritizes the individual’s experience with art as a transformative process which opens our eyes to worlds and meanings beyond the everyday.

[Lizzi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I sometimes struggle with books like these because they are so didactic and it becomes kind of intense. This isn't a long book but I think that is why it took me a little while to read. I agreed with the central thesis and manifesto, though all the references to spirituality and the soul gave the whole thing a slightly religious vibe that I personally found off-putting, but that's just me. I think the point was that religious/spiritual beliefs play such a huge role in the foundations of culture and society, and many people's individual lives as well, and we have to account for the influence of religious texts throughout history even outside of their religions. So I think Martel is taking all that into account, which is sensible, and as a reader you don't feel like his personal beliefs/opinions are being pushed in the book - other than the central idea of course. It is a hugely accomplished book with an incredibly important message that remains relevant throughout our digital age and I think is becoming increasingly vital in our current state of apathy, fear, hate, and the rise of fascism (AGAIN) and callous disregard for human life. Everyone should read this book.

[Samantha · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book brought me back to my days as an Art History major. I appreciated that the author used examples from different media— from traditional paintings to hit films to well known music. This made the book a bit more approachable. That said, the introduction and a few chapters towards the end felt a bit esoteric at times (hence four stars vs five). I loved the epilogue of the book on AI and wish the author had more room to expand upon these ideas. Would love to read a sequel on that!

Thank you Net Galley for the advanced copy.

[Edmundo Mantilla · Rating 4 out of 5]

Precioso ensayo que intenta responder a esa pregunta que todos nos hacemos en algún momento: ¿por qué nos entusiasma el arte?

[Kapuss · Rating 3 out of 5]

La lección que nos ofrece el arte es que en las grietas, en las hendiduras de la superficie aparente de las cosas, se manifiestan las realidades más profundas.

[Pam Ward · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I didn’t finish this book, some points were notable. It was a difficult read and hard to follow. I think it could have been more concise.

[Shyan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book that should not be able to exist in reality. It feels like something out of the Imaginal, the water-soaked scroll saved in the caverns of a shipwreck lost to time, or the tattered pamphlet hidden in contraband by resistance members as they read by flashlight underground. Radical splendor and truth laid out so cleanly, so concisely. A classic, too impactful to be immaculate, bold enough to inspire new thought.

You should read this book, if only to gain a greater appreciation for all future books you read.

Rather than engage in the more beautiful ideas of this work, let me leave this discussion by presenting its ugliest foot forward, the one that tracks into the mud of politics:

Things that are called beautiful in the everyday are those that pose the least threat and reinforce the belief that deep down the universe is a reasonable, fully knowable place. The phrase “life is beautiful” as usually intended could only serve as a motto for those who have shut their eyes to certain stark truths [...] given the political terror and cultural upheavals of the last 120 years, the only function beauty in the traditional sense can hope to have today is a cosmetic one. Beyond that, it only serves to perpetuate the illusions of a former age in our own, even if the realities these illusions may have concealed are now in plain view. ‘To write a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric,’ Theodor Adorno declared in a passage that is too often taken out of context to condemn modern art as a whole. His point wasn’t that art itself is shameful in the age of extermination camps and genocide, but that it is incumbent upon artists to transcend the cultural paradigm that produced these horrors. In the years and decades after the Second World War, Adorno and other thinkers sensed that if the traditional concept of aesthetic beauty was to survive, it could only be in a grotesque embodiment.

[...]

Politics involves all that relates to usefulness and the spirit of work. Art involves all that relates to excess and the spirit of play […] The moment art enters the political sphere it turns into artifice […] Conversely, when politics ventures into the field of play, it threatens to bring forth a purely aesthetic evaluation of life, society, and history. The aestheticization of politics absolves the political of its function of organizing society effectively. Only a nihlistically ironic aesthetic vision could give Stalin license to starve millions of Ukrainians in the name of human welfare. Only a perverse aestheticism could allow Hitler to cast tens of millions of people in a catastrophic production of his own Dionysian tragedy. The removal of the boundary between work and play, politics and art, does not result in a better world but in a monstrous hybrid under whose influence the line between truth and delusion, right and wrong, becomes dangerously blurred.

[...]

Ours is a hyper-aesthetic age, a time of phantom images and blinking lights, manufactured memories, and synthetic dreams. The cloud of artifice distracts us from certain fundamental realities with which cultures before us, in spite of their shortcomings, were better attuned. […] the artifice that floods our private and public spaces seems to have a goal, […] the production of a completely artifical space in which emotions and desires respond solely to mercantile and political cues. Contemporary mass artifice seeks to replace the inborn imagination with a manmade interface by means of which the memes of the global marketplace can come to override the symbols that take shape spontaneously in the imaginal mind.

[...]

As a vector for officially sanctioned ways of seeing, artifice tells us that things should be valued only according to their instrumentality […] or usefulness [...] The reduction of the world and its inhabitants to a dispensable quantity without essential value is the supreme danger that Heidegger saw lurking in modern technology [...] spectacle overrides reality and artifice overrides art [...] if we are to believe again in this world, we must recover the willingness to face the reality of the beautiful as a basic quality of the universe, as well as the mystery that such a reality entails.

[Shyan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book that should not be able to exist in reality. It feels like something out of the Imaginal, the water-soaked scroll saved in the caverns of a shipwreck lost to time, or the tattered pamphlet hidden in contraband by resistance members as they read by flashlight underground. Radical splendor and truth laid out so cleanly, so concisely. A classic, too impactful to be immaculate, bold enough to inspire new thought.

You should read this book, if only to gain a greater appreciation for all future books you read.

Rather than engage in the more beautiful ideas of this work, let me leave this discussion by presenting its ugliest foot forward, the one that tracks into the mud of politics:

Things that are called beautiful in the everyday are those that pose the least threat and reinforce the belief that deep down the universe is a reasonable, fully knowable place. The phrase “life is beautiful” as usually intended could only serve as a motto for those who have shut their eyes to certain stark truths [...] given the political terror and cultural upheavals of the last 120 years, the only function beauty in the traditional sense can hope to have today is a cosmetic one. Beyond that, it only serves to perpetuate the illusions of a former age in our own, even if the realities these illusions may have concealed are now in plain view. ‘To write a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric,’ Theodor Adorno declared in a passage that is too often taken out of context to condemn modern art as a whole. His point wasn’t that art itself is shameful in the age of extermination camps and genocide, but that it is incumbent upon artists to transcend the cultural paradigm that produced these horrors. In the years and decades after the Second World War, Adorno and other thinkers sensed that if the traditional concept of aesthetic beauty was to survive, it could only be in a grotesque embodiment.

[...]

Politics involves all that relates to usefulness and the spirit of work. Art involves all that relates to excess and the spirit of play […] The moment art enters the political sphere it turns into artifice […] Conversely, when politics ventures into the field of play, it threatens to bring forth a purely aesthetic evaluation of life, society, and history. The aestheticization of politics absolves the political of its function of organizing society effectively. Only a nihlistically ironic aesthetic vision could give Stalin license to starve millions of Ukrainians in the name of human welfare. Only a perverse aestheticism could allow Hitler to cast tens of millions of people in a catastrophic production of his own Dionysian tragedy. The removal of the boundary between work and play, politics and art, does not result in a better world but in a monstrous hybrid under whose influence the line between truth and delusion, right and wrong, becomes dangerously blurred.

[...]

Ours is a hyper-aesthetic age, a time of phantom images and blinking lights, manufactured memories, and synthetic dreams. The cloud of artifice distracts us from certain fundamental realities with which cultures before us, in spite of their shortcomings, were better attuned. […] the artifice that floods our private and public spaces seems to have a goal, […] the production of a completely artifical space in which emotions and desires respond solely to mercantile and political cues. Contemporary mass artifice seeks to replace the inborn imagination with a manmade interface by means of which the memes of the global marketplace can come to override the symbols that take shape spontaneously in the imaginal mind.

[...]

As a vector for officially sanctioned ways of seeing, artifice tells us that things should be valued only according to their instrumentality […] or usefulness [...] The reduction of the world and its inhabitants to a dispensable quantity without essential value is the supreme danger that Heidegger saw lurking in modern technology [...] spectacle overrides reality and artifice overrides art [...] if we are to believe again in this world, we must recover the willingness to face the reality of the beautiful as a basic quality of the universe, as well as the mystery that such a reality entails.

[Goatboy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book by J.F. Martel has become one of the most inspirational and creativity-inspiring books I have read in a very long time. I had already listened to the Weird Studies podcast episode during which JF and Phil discussed the work (Weird Studies... if you know you know. If you don't, GET ON IT) which is what motivated me to get the book to read further. I'm glad I did, because being immersed in the book really hammered Martel's point home. Which is basically this:

Art (True Art, as opposed to what Martel calls artifice) causes a rift in the percipient's being, dislodging their awareness from the day-to-day habits of their experience, to vaporize the cloud of purposefully-persuading spectral images we all live in, so as to open our being out to the vastly singular nature of ourselves and the world around us.

Another message that comes through very strongly is that even more important than any instance of artwork itself is the creation and then conscious appreciation and engagement with that artwork that is important. It is the BECOMING of the art-experience rather than the BEING of it that is essential (JF is quite the Deleuze fan for those that follow him).

No other work has made me feel more creative, and indeed, to feel the almost magical potential of art, than this book. I found myself looking at my day and the world around me differently to be quite honest. To think of my world more creatively, to live it more artistically, and to be hopeful that something I always believed about art - but perhaps forgot for too long - was true: Art really can redeem existence. A true experience of art (or artistic experience) can open possibilities that most of the world would rather keep hidden on a secret menu never to be seen. Art is revolutionary, or can at the very least, open up the space of revolution. Not by intending to promote a singular specific revolutionary thought, but by opening up the possibility of revolution itself. True art rebels against the status quo by causing a rift through which anything might appear.

I could have pulled many many quotes to help you see what he's getting on about, but these two from the last chapter stood out...

Art cannot overturn the things that have plagued us since the dawn of consciousness: sickness, hatred, fear, and death. On the contrary its tendency is to confront us with the fact that these realities will be with us for as long as we are finite creatures in an infinite universe. No matter how well-intentioned, artistic projects that aim to distract us from the fundamental realities lose the Real and come out as kitsch. Which is why Kundera wrote, "The brotherhood of man on earth will only be possible on a base of kitsch."

Science is concerned with the general, the abstract, and the knowable. In contrast, art deals with the particular, the unknowable, the singular. This applies not just to the content of artistic works but also to the way this content is received. Even in the case of a film or concert attended by large numbers of people, the artistic experience remains a fundamentally solitary one. Each one of us lives the work alone. Whatever sense of togetherness accompanies the experience comes precisely from the fact that, faced with the singularity of the aesthetic moment, each percipient feels his aloneness before the radical mystery that enfolds us all. Wherever an act of creation is shared with others, then, there is individuation not just for the author of the work but for the audience too. The singularity of art awakens us to our own singularity, and through it to the singularity in the Other.

Another book, that if I could, I would make everyone I care about read immediately.

[mr bones · Rating 4 out of 5]

Strong opinions on this one. I appreciate the attempt to separate the art from the bullshit and think it does a great job articulating different aesthetic theories into a cohesive, essentialist view of art that comprehends both a critical situated position and an affirmative ontological one. I agree wholeheartedly with a lot of the conclusions (the instrumentalization of art from the right and the left, the aesthetic experience as solitude with a living object, the work of art that transcends the author, the concept of radical beauty crucial to our age, etc) and believe them to be true.

However, in my opinion there is a big issue with this book that could be described as a kind of wistful dilettantism that undermines the seriousness of the journey. Martel constantly namedrops all kinds of different figures and artists several times, without any real intention of development to incorporate their work in a serious way to his arguments, mostly just to mentioned them and move on to the next. At best this could be interpreted as a warm indication of his own artistic taste and foundational experiences, at worst as a superficial and lazy way of getting into the core issues that he wants to get into. And since this is a "call to action" in favor of a direct and serious experience of art this is a problem, given the fact that it puts the book in the realm of the general not the particular.

I was also taken aback with the strong conservative current on display here. I understand that if you are going to write this book you'll have to draw the line somewhere between what is art and what is not, but this is a very complicated matter in the contemporary aesthetic paradigm (especially post 60s) and adopting Joyce's criteria and saying that art is apolitical does not give you a pass to not deal with, for example, the incorporation of artifice into the work of art of the postmodern neo-avant garde movements. It seems to me that using pornography as the opposite of art is a very antiquated, myopic way of understanding the state of our current culture, if not to say also very puritanical. And you could say that the term "pornography" utilized by Joyce is definitely more open than what we mean today by pornography, but Martel uses it in its contemporary definition as well. This goes also for that greenbergian opposition between art and kitsch, something that I think we are way past today: sure, lets shit on Avatar but that's a low hanging fruit. Nobody is making a case for multi-million studio blockbusters as works of transcendent art. The interesting debate is within the art world, which seems today to be completely atomized by the incorporation of elements of the cultural industry and technology. What do we do with serious works of art that adopt certain elements of kitsch? See for example later records of Nick Cave.

Lastly, a central point of the book is the connection between dreams and imaginal thought as the proof of the primordial nature of art, something which I have my doubts on. Even Nabokov, one of the figures evoked here (rightfully so), had a problematic relationship with this idea to the point of calling the divergence of the speculative/imaginal creator with the "imbecile dreamer". I don't know.


I enjoyed this.

[Laura Jordan · Rating 4 out of 5]

3 1/2 stars, rounded up.

"The prime living environment offered to us today consists almost entirely of coded spaces, designed objects, staged events, and interfaces conceived to elicit specific cognitive responses from us. The examples range from traffic lights, advertisements, and news propaganda to manufactured catchwords, pornography, and products designed in light of the latest neurological research for optimal 'user-friendliness.' Left with little room for anything truly personal to determine our behavior, the spectral forces begin to think for us, often with such coercive influence that only outmoded terms like 'possession' can accurately describe the effect. How else shall we qualify the beclouding effect of algorithmic entrancement in the labyrinths of digital existence, the redirection of minds under the sign of designer politics, the continual modulation of terror and desire by warring powers and principalities that characterizes everyday life in the contemporary world? In an ironic twist, the very Enlightenment that was expected to rid the world of ghosts, demons, irrationality, and superstition laid the groundwork for the production of a new phantasmagoria. The convergence of ubiquitous media, artificial intelligence, psychotropic drugs, electronic surveillance, and invasive marketing has thrown us into a fluctuant in-between realm of spectral luminosities and wandering spirits, flickering images, and disembodied voices – this, even as the old ghosts, real or imagined or both, continue to dance at the edge of our narrowed field of vision…
"This idea of absolute alienation has caused a rupture in the human psyche, a rupture that in the spectral age has grown into a chasm. It is as if the tethers that bound us to the earth had snapped and we were drifting in a luminous void... That is spectrality: the feeling of living without ever quite being alive, the feeling of time flashing by even as a vague sense of boredom pervades the air, the idea that even what is most intimate is ultimately without meaning. Like the narrator in the Radiohead song 'How to Disappear Completely,' we specters of the new age are beside ourselves, caught in a negative ecstasy before the movies of our lives."

[Lamiel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Muy interesante e inspirador. Dejo extractos de la primera parte del ensayo:

" Tengo la esperanza de llegar a inspirar en el lector una apreciación más profunda de la fuerza única del arte, y también de lo urgente que es para todos hacer que el arte sea una parte fundamental de nuestras vidas y de nuestra sociedad. (...)

Actualmente se ve el arte como una simple fuente de entretenimiento. (...)

El arte es la única herramienta verdaderamente eficaz de la que disponemos para acceder, en un contexto común, a la psique en sus mismo términos... (...)

El arte derriba las barreras que se interponen habitualmente entre lo físico y lo psíquico, entre tu alma y la de los demás. "Sólo a través del arte podemos salir de nosotros mismos, saber lo que otra persona ve de un universo que no es el mismo que el nuestro y cuyos paisajes, sin el concurso del arte, permanecerían tan desconocidos para nosotros como los que pueden existir en la luna" Para el novelista Marcel Proust, autor de estas palabras, el arte es un lugar de encuentro en el que los seres humanos conviven a un nivel inasequible para el lenguaje y las formas de comunicación ordinarias. (...)

Hoy corremos el peligro de perder nuestra capacidad de distinguir la creación artística tal como la definía Proust de la creatividad estética que desemboca en una cancioncilla comercial, un nuevo diseño de automóvil o un éxito de ventas de temporada. (...)

"Todo arte es completamente inútil" Oscar Wilde. El arte desafiaba cualquier pretensión de utilidad... algo destinado exclusivamente a ser percibido. (...)

Una de las razones por las que nos afecta tan profundamente es que nos aparta del pensamiento utilitario que reduce las cosas a su funcionalidad. (...)

Samuel Coleridge describe la imaginación como "el poder viviente y agente fundamental de toda percepción humana". Esa imaginación alcanza todo su potencial en la expresión artística, donde trasciende la mera representación al ofrecer una imagen inesperada del mundo. (...)

La imaginación creadora es una fuente de revelaciones para el ser humano a las que el resto del universo conocido no tiene acceso. (...)

El arte es inseparable del sentimiento de perplejidad. (...)

La sorpresa, el asombro, es la prueba definitiva del arte, el signo por el que sabemos que nos hemos alejado, mediante una especie de magia, de objetivos prácticos y utilitarios para adentrarnos en el sueño insondable de la vida sensible. El arte asombra y nace del asombro. Y hay una sola cosa que es capaz de "comunicar" más eficazmente que ningún otro medio: la extrañeza de lo real. (...)

El poder del artista se reduce a dos cosas: su sensibilidad ante el misterio radical de la existencia y la habilidad, la maestría, con la que es capaz de plasmar ese misterio en un objeto o en un acto. Ni el sobrecogimiento existencial ni una determinada actitud metafísica son necesarios como motivación explícita. La aparición de la visión artística-y la necesidad de expresar esta visión sin distorsiones ni conceptualizaciones- surge tan sólo de la íntima capacidad de maravillarse, una capacidad sin la cual el arte no podría existir. (...)

Asombrarse, maravillarse, es ser tomado por sorpresa por la revelación de una realidad que es negada o reprimida en la vida cotidiana. El asombro tiene un componente intelectual y otro emocional; en él coinciden el cerebro y el corazón.

Toda gran obra de arte constituye una imagen completa de la vida, que presenta de forma palpable el asombro del artista ante las cosas.

Como expresó Immanuel Kant, el goce estético es una clase especial de fenómeno subjetivo, ya que se presenta a sí mismo como cualquier cosa excepto una subjetividad. Es algo que reclama ser compartido con otros, con la esperanza de que tambiñen puedan experimentar aquello que tanto nos ha afectado. (...)

Naturalmente, el deseo de compartir nuestro asombro se frustra en el momento en que nos encontramos con gente que reacciona con indiferencia, o incluso con repulsión, al aobra de arte que nosotros tanto apreciamos. Entonces recordamos que la fuerza afectiva de una obra de arte varía de un individuo a otro, y aun en diferentes momentos de la vida de un mismo individuo, algo que solemos atribuir al gusto personal, aunque no sepamos realmente qué significa eso. (...)

La existencia de marcadas variantes culturales en el plano estético ha llevado a la extendida creencia de que el arte no es sólo subjetivo sino también, en última instancia, relativo, totalmente dependiente de los condicionamientos culturales. (...)

Si la fuerza fundamental de una obra de arte determinada existe objetivamente, estará ahí tanto si hay individuos capaces de apreciarla como si no. (...)

La "capacidad de conmovernos" a la que me he referido no tiene nada que ver con el goce estético. Que consideremos una obra de arte disfrutable o no puede ser en última instancia irrelevante en cuanto al efecto que esa obra tenga en nosotros. (...)

El factor crucial no es si la obra nos ha agradado o divertido, sino si hemos permitido que su fuerza interior penetrara el perímetro cerrado de nuestra existencia para expandir nuestro horizonte. La auténtica sensibilidad, el verdadero buen gusto, está en la capacidad de reconocer la presencia de esas fuerzas, de saber distinguir entre una reacción superficial y las profundas emociones que suscitan las fuerzas del arte. (...)

Todo sugiere que la pasión y la sensibilidad son necesarias para vivir una experiencia significativa.
(...)

Para el joven James Joyce, el arte verdadero es "estático", mientras que el falso, que aquí llamaré artificio, es "cinético", calificativos que se refieren al efecto que provoca el arte en quien lo percibe, no a una propiedad del arte en sí mismo. El verdadero arte nos deja paralizados, suscita en nosotros un estado emocional en el que "la mente queda cautivada y se alza por encima del deseo y la repulsión", mientras que el falso arte tiene el efecto contrario, ya que su objetivo es hacer que el perceptor actúe, piense o sienta de cierta manera preconcebida. (...) El artificio no es falso arte por su falta de moralidad, sino porque su estética se funda en intenciones ajenas al ámbito estético. (...) Son una simplificación excesiva de realidades mucho más complejas. (...) Son opiniones, juicios y conclusiones preconcebidos. (...) El verdadero arte nos conmueve; el artificio trata de movernos.

Oscar Wilde escribió: "Cuando los críticos difieren, el artista está en armonía consigo mismo". La variedad de opiniones es una consecuencia inevitable, y también beneficiosa, de lo que Joyce llama el arte de verdadero. Por el contrario, lo último que quiere el constructor de artificios es tener una audiencia dividida. Su competencia como creador reside en su habilidad para reproducir la misma respuesta emocional en la mayor cantidad de gente posible. El artificio perfecto es el que evoca exactamente el mismo estado emocional en cada persona."

[Joshua Insole · Rating 5 out of 5]

For my next read of 2024, I finally got around to reading J. F. Martel's 'Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice'.

Of course, you will gasp when you learn this book was a gift from my friend Leander. Since I like to create stories, music, and digital art, we've often discussed creativity and art. These conversation topics prompted Leander to gift 'Reclaiming Art…'.

Martel is a writer and filmmaker in the Canadian TV and film industry; he has the credentials to discuss art. His writing style is not challenging or impenetrable – Martel writes to communicate. If it is sometimes difficult to read, it is because of the complexity of the topic.

As the subtitle claims, 'Reclaiming Art…' is a 'Treatise, Critique, and Call to Action'. (He won me over with that use of an Oxford comma.) Martel differentiates – referencing James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, and James Cameron – art from artifice. Artifice, in simple terms, is either pornographic or didactic. I.e., it either makes the observer want something or want to avoid something. For example, an advert is artifice because it makes you want to buy something. True Art (TM) does no such thing. From there, 'Reclaiming Art…' goes off in ways I couldn't summarise in a review.

While I have yet to grasp all of Martel's ideas, what I did understand was inspiring. This book is for creators and consumers alike, especially if you're weary of this modern world. It's not only informative but also a call to action that can invigorate your creative spirit.

Reading 'Reclaiming Art…' has sparked a deep introspection into my creative process as a writer.

And that's a powerful thing.

[janna ✭ · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Artifice forgoes the revelatory power that is art's prerogative in order to impart information, be it a message, an opinion, a judgement, a physiological stimulus, or a command...Artifice isn't improper because it is immoral but because it hitches the aesthetic on intentions originating from outside the aesthetic realm...Proper art moves us, while artifice tries to make us move."

Read this because Donna Tartt said in an interview that it reflects a lot of her own thoughts on art which she was thinking about while writing The Secret History. Having read it, I can definitely see what she means.

Because this was the main reason I picked this up (to sort of interpret TSH through it), some chapters were more relevant to me than others and some were definitely easier to understand than others. While I don't agree with everything that Martel says, I do agree with his big points and I think this is an important read for artists and consumers of art alike, especially given today's climate in regards to art.

[Broombiscuit · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a practising artist who constantly grapples with 'success' being linked to the prestige of showing in galleries or the prices people pay, or the number of followers on my Instagram account and feeling a complete fraud in comparisom with most of my peers on these accounts- this book just reaches into my brain and squeezes out all the dross and what is left is the reason I started painting and drawing in the first place, as a lost teenager in the days before social media even existed. Because it was essential. I was what I had to do. I am reminded that being able to create is a gift and every action we take as we live we either create empathy and healing consciousness or we destroy the universe a tiny bit more. Well, I can't do this book enough justice but it just made me excited again after months and months of numbness in this dreariest of years

[tiffany · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this book would assuage my fears about generative AI in the art industry, but what I got is even better. This book beautifully describes the experience of creating and experiencing art through philosophical, psychological, and anthropological perspectives. There is so much about Martel’s arguments that I’m still working through and loved reading about (the relationship between artifice and the US bombing Japan in ‘45, art as prophetic, the Imaginal, amorality of art, rifts in masterpieces) and many arguments that I’ve already believed (art and science as truth-seeking methods in different ways, art’s bridge to connect us further to ourselves, each other and the natural world).

What I’m most grateful for, in my experience reading this book, is knowing that I’m not alone in seeing the magic and finally having /some/ language to communicate my experience of it.

[Derek · Rating 5 out of 5]

EASILY one of the best non fiction books I’ve ever read, if not the best. Reading this felt like the climax of all of my study of aesthetic theory and philosophy as a whole. It provided a sudden burst of clarity over the half baked ideas I had developed on my own, as well as pushes further the ideas presented by Tarkovsky, Linklater, Ursula K LeGuin, Miyazaki, Deleuze, and all of my other idols who have provided puzzle pieces that all add up to the central argument of this book. I highlighted so much of it and I’m going to try and skim it a second time and write up a general summary of its arguments. So many of my friends would really love and benefit from the ideas contained here. It’s incredible, it’s short, it’s easy, and I absolutely adore it.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

An elegant argument for attending to art as the most effective way to access a kind of knowing that is otherwise unavailable to us. Art takes us out to the relentless pursuit of individualism through creating an artifice of our lives (ie a brand), and enables us to access the most profoundly singular of ourselves and creation, the only true way to the “I will be what I will be.” To whit: “Is this the secret of art, whose power is to transmute moments in time so as to lay bare the eternity that inhabits them?”