Good morning.
This edition of The New Art World Order is a little different from our usual material. It’s shaped by a series of philosophical and existential questions I’ve been sitting with lightly. Less dense with data than my usual musings, but no less relevant. If anything, more so. This series is written for those who like to sit with ideas slowly. If that’s you, you can subscribe here to receive future editions in your inbox.
I am a voracious reader, and a secret collector of quotes, tucked into folders, scrawled into notebooks, saved for the moment they become necessary. Writing this, I found myself returning to many of them, the way you return to old letters when you’re trying to remember what you actually felt. A few kept surfacing. They say something I couldn’t say better myself about the nature of what follows, about what it actually means to be an artist and work in the arts. Not the romanticized version. The real one: the relentless, consuming, often unglamorous act of making. Art is beautiful and painful, frequently in the same breath. It asks everything of you. These quotes acknowledge that paradox. They are about the consumption and the transformation of this inexhaustible love.
I was burning, while you came blaming me for the smell of ashes. — Dostoevsky
Yes, you will rise from the ashes but the burning comes first.
For this part,
Darling,
You must be brave.
-Kalen Dion.
This is an unconventional essay on love, art, and the slow, relational process by which each forms the other. I hope it finds you well, and open to sitting with a few hard questions alongside me as we explore this philosophical stance that the skill of making, understanding and collecting art is an act of love. A love of art isn’t transferred. It’s received.
