Handicrafts and Sesshu I have almost never judged a work of art by first looking at its signature. This way of assessment holds no interest for me. If what I see is good, it is good with or without a seal. Whether it is a painting or a pot, you must first look at the thing itself. Yanagi Sōetsu, The Beauty of Everyday Things fameseeing
Prestige is just fossilized inspiration Prestige is like a powerful magnet that warps even your beliefs about what you enjoy. It causes you to work not on what you like, but what you'd like to like. Prestige is just fossilized inspiration. If you do anything well enough, you'll make it prestigious. Plenty of things we now consider prestigious were anything but at first. Jazz comes to mind—though almost any established art form would do. So just do what you like, and let prestige take care of itself. Paul Graham, How to do what you love fame
Spelled with a lowercase letter I used to tease John Tukey that you are famous only when your name was spelled with a lowercase letter such as watt, ampere, volt, fourier (sometimes), and such. Richard Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn fame
Somebody is living on this beach Once, I had a dream of fame. Generally, even then I was lonely. To the castle, a sign must have said. Somebody is living on this beach. David Markson, Wittgenstein's Mistress famelonelinesssolitude
1,000 True Fans An Essay by Kevin Kelly kk.org To be a successful creator you don’t need millions. You don’t need millions of dollars or millions of customers, millions of clients or millions of fans. To make a living as a craftsperson, photographer, musician, designer, author, animator, app maker, entrepreneur, or inventor you need only thousands of true fans. A true fan is defined as a fan that will buy anything you produce. These diehard fans will drive 200 miles to see you sing; they will buy the hardback and paperback and audible versions of your book; they will purchase your next figurine sight unseen; they will pay for the “best-of” DVD version of your free youtube channel; they will come to your chef’s table once a month. If you have roughly a thousand of true fans like this (also known as super fans), you can make a living — if you are content to make a living but not a fortune. artmakingfame
Phenomenal: An Introduction An Essay from Phenomenal: California Light, Space, Surface by Robin Clark Aesthetic palate cleansingUntitled (Light Canvas)Little Blank Riding HoodNot intended to be read until you have seenA vaporous middle-world+5 More
Aesthetic palate cleansing During the 1960s and 1970s, light became the primary medium for a loosely affiliated group of artists working in Greater Los Angeles who were more intrigued by questions of perception than by the notion of crafting discrete objects. ...Often with modest means (a bolt of scrim, a sheet of glass, a bucket of resin, an open window) these artists engaged in a kind of aesthetic palate cleansing, shaking off the art-historical weight and heavy impasto of midcentury painting as it had been influentially practiced in New York and San Francisco. aestheticsmaterial
Not intended to be read until you have seen This is not a catalogue because there is no list of works. The exhibition will comprise three spaces in which three artists will have made their art. At the moment of writing we are not sure exactly what they will do—and we cannot know how what they do will appear to us. Therefore we cannot attempt to help you perceive it. So this is also not truly an introduction to the art. It is not intended to be read until you have seen the exhibition. Michael Compton perceptionseeing
A vaporous middle-world In between these two extremes is a room with three constructions by Robert Irwin. These can be read as individual works of art but their function here is primarily that of creating a climate of fastidious ambiguity. Light turns into a new kind of material; new kinds of material are fused into light; a vaporous middle-world stands midway between total black (Bell) and total white (Wheeler) light