ideas
Post #132 • October 21, 2003, 7:22 AM
This weekend a friend of mine told me that he was showing his work – prints, mostly – to another artist who said to him, “Yeah, I could do this. It would take longer and it might not come out as good. But my art is about ideas.”
Related reading on Brad Warner’s site:
Religious fundamentalists are deeply fearful of anyone who doesn’t believe what they believe. This is because their beliefs are based not on reality, but on a shaky foundation of idealistic notions. Reality needs no support. It is what it is and that’s that. Ideas, on the other hand, need tremendous amounts of reinforcement on a constant basis. Ideas attempt to remain static while reality itself is constantly shape shifting into something new. Even the mental state that gave rise to a particular thought doesn’t remain. So it’s very hard to hold on to an idea. In fact, it’s not possible. Try it for yourself. The harder you try and hold on to your own ideas, the crazier you become. That’s one of the fundamental causes of most of the world’s problems; people’s attempts to hang on to static ideas in the face of an ever changing world. And that’s all our deepest beliefs really are. Just ideas. But we mistake our own ideas for reality all the time.
Related reading on newCrit: Ideas Don’t Matter by John Link.
UPDATE: Thank you to Terry Teachout for the link.