The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “art”

The Topography of Tears: A Stunning Aerial Tour of the Landscape of Human Emotion Through an Optical Microscope
The Topography of Tears: A Stunning Aerial Tour of the Landscape of Human Emotion Through an Optical Microscope

From Blake to biochemistry, “proof that we cannot put our feelings in one place and our thoughts in another.”

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Jeanette Winterson on How Art and Storytelling Redeem Our Inner Lives
Jeanette Winterson on How Art and Storytelling Redeem Our Inner Lives

“Creative work bridges time because the energy of art is not time-bound… This makes our own death bearable.”

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Anna Deavere Smith on How to Break the Paradox of Procrastination
Anna Deavere Smith on How to Break the Paradox of Procrastination

“If I swim a mile, the first half hour might be drudgery, but somewhere in the middle it catches fire.”

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A Laboratory for Feeling and Time: Pioneering Philosopher Susanne Langer on What Gives Music Its Power and How It Illuminates the Other Arts
A Laboratory for Feeling and Time: Pioneering Philosopher Susanne Langer on What Gives Music Its Power and How It Illuminates the Other Arts

“Music is ‘significant form,’ and its significance is that of a symbol, a highly articulated sensuous object… Feeling, life, motion and emotion constitute its import.”

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Power and Tenderness: Robert Penn Warren on Democracy, Art, and the Integrity of the Self
Power and Tenderness: Robert Penn Warren on Democracy, Art, and the Integrity of the Self

“[Art] is the process by which… a society comes to understand itself, and by understanding, discover its possibilities of growth.”

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Beethoven and the Crucial Difference Between Genius and Talent
Beethoven and the Crucial Difference Between Genius and Talent

“Genius has to be founded on major talent, but it adds a freshness and wildness of imagination, a raging ambition, an unusual gift for learning and growing, a depth and breadth of thought and spirit…”

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Billy Collins’s Advice to Writers
Billy Collins’s Advice to Writers

“Spotlessness is the niece of inspiration.”

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The Doom and Glory of Knowing Who You Are: James Baldwin on the Empathic Rewards of Reading and What It Means to Be an Artist
The Doom and Glory of Knowing Who You Are: James Baldwin on the Empathic Rewards of Reading and What It Means to Be an Artist

“An artist is a sort of emotional or spiritual historian. His role is to make you realize the doom and glory of knowing who you are and what you are.”

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Emily Dickinson’s Herbarium: A Forgotten Treasure at the Intersection of Science and Poetry
Emily Dickinson’s Herbarium: A Forgotten Treasure at the Intersection of Science and Poetry

An elegy for time and the mortality of beauty, composed with passionate patience and a sensuous cadence.

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Beethoven’s Advice on Being an Artist: His Touching Letter to a Little Girl Who Sent Him Fan Mail
Beethoven’s Advice on Being an Artist: His Touching Letter to a Little Girl Who Sent Him Fan Mail

“The true artist is not proud… Though he may be admired by others, he is sad not to have reached that point to which his better genius only appears as a distant, guiding sun.”

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