BEAUTY AND IDEA

Image

To my mind, there are two essentials for any work of art: that it should be beautiful, and that it should mean something. If a concept has no real visual expression, best to write it; art is about looking. The aesthetic of a work of art is its means of getting directly to our emotions, of burrowing deeper than an intellectual appraisal and touching the heart. I also think that the concept itself should be decipherable and available to the viewer without the help of other knowledge—of the artist’s history, for example, or anything else. Images should stand by themselves, clear and self-explanatory. Most importantly, pictures should ...

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