Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Recycled Beauty

How is it that the world is so full of fantastic majesty and beauty, in nature as well as in art and architecture, in humanity and the animal kingdom, and yet it seems as if we have run out of new ways to express that. It seems to me that this era is a hard time to be an artist, because it's impossible not to feel as if you're recycling someone else's art, someone else's beauty.
It simultaneously seems that all my thoughts have been thought before me, and that no one has ever thought the things I think, the way I think them.

They say the human mind is limitless.... I wonder how long it will be before we find new ways to express beauty, or if we will just continue copying the generations before us. Kendall's humanities teacher last year started the class with the statement, "Art is Dead". When he first told me that, I thought his teacher was crazy, but the more I ponder it the more true I find it. Hopefully, I'm wrong.

1 comment:

  1. "What hath a man more of all his labour, that he taketh under the sun? One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth standeth for ever. The sun riseth, and goeth down, and returneth to his place: and there rising again, Maketh his round by the south, and turneth again to the north: the spirit goeth forward surveying all places round about, and returneth to his circuits. All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea doth not overflow: unto the place from whence the rivers come, they return, to flow again. All things are hard: man cannot explain them by word. The eye is not filled with seeing, neither is the ear filled with hearing. What is it that hath been? the same thing that shall be. What is it that hath been done? the same that shall be done. Nothing under the sun is new, neither is any man able to say: Behold this is new: for it hath already gone before in the ages that were before us." (Ecclesiastes 1:3-10)

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