What if? Destruction of Art

Stories of historical creation, such as" The Televisionary" by Malcolm Gladwell, get me thinking. All of these technological feats are based of of past success like harnessing electricity, creating lightbulbs, radios, the internet-- I could go on and on with lists of technological advances that shape the way future inventors look at things.

It's commonly understood that engineers need the knowledge of previous generations to move forward, but what about artists? What would happen if all past art was destroyed, or just never known about. If people didn't know about Picasso's cubism or Donatello's incredible perspective illusionism with his sculptures, what would have happened to these fields of art?

Though I usually think about art as people expressing a burst of creativity, it is much more complex than that. It is an expression using accumulated knowledge from past generations.

If art were all destroyed and no current artists knew of things from the past, we would start going in reverse. Artists would still receive immense pressure from society to paint inside the lines and not to ever create anything risqué. Eventually we would reach the point we are at today, but it is important to realize that art is history-- we must see how much art is like many other fields. It takes times to move forward, and there are waves of certain creativity. In essence, to keep moving forward, we must hold on to our past.

Best of Week: Stefan Sagmeister

Seeing Stefan Sagmeister's speech was the most interesting activity of the week.

In one part of his speech, he told about a group of people who replaced safety plaques on the trains of New York City with gag signs that looked similar at a glance. This made me think-- would I have noticed the change? I consider myself observant, but I had trouble convincing myself that I would actually have realized that something was different.

People race through their days, hardly stopping to notice the world going by. Though a sign on a train is unimportant, it made me think of how little people care. People see a homeless person on the street, and they'll walk by without acknowledging the fact that a person is sitting on the curb.

This thought reminded me of a story I read a few years ago in the Washington Post about the world famous violinist Joshua Bell. The highly-regarded musician donned a t-shirt, and played in D.C for an hour as an experiment. Two people stopped to listen to his incredible talent, while everyone else, hundreds and hundreds of people, walked by. His world renowned talent and his incredibly highly priced concert tickets stood nowhere between those who walked right by, and their destinations.

People can walk through the streets of a city with blinders worse than the horses they see in the street-- at least the horses are looking at what is in front of them. As a whole, our society is not conscientious of what is going on around us. And even if we do notice, who takes the time to care?

photo: moriza