8oinks

Brendan Lott: “All the good ideas have already been thought about,” people say. They mean that this is a bad thing. But I love it. It is comforting. It really takes the pressure off of me. All these pre-thought ideas are useful, and they usually still have some good left in them, especially when applied in a different context.

Art is not special. Therefore neither are artists. An artist is simply someone who happens to professionalize an activity that everybody else does automatically. To choose the color and texture and size and style of your couch is an artistic gesture equal to one of Pollock’s drips or Judd’s shelves. The only difference is the couch chooser is simply doing it, whereas Pollock and Judd are making a big production of it. This doesn’t mean art isn‘t important. It clearly is. Like making the right choice for couch color is important. Many people express themselves beautifully by doing nothing other than selecting clothes that they will wear that day. Is this any less valid than Duchamp selecting a snow shovel? The difference is that Duchamp gets in the canon and everybody else just looks great at parties. I’m not sure which is more important.

If I could write a dictionary I’d want to make all the strong words so broadly defined that they would lose all practical meaning outside of a specific context. I’d like negatives like stupid and ugly to become more positive and words like brilliant and beautiful to become more negative so that they would meet somewhere in the middle. These words would then become simply descriptive without carrying any sense of judgment, like shiny or rectangular. I think then the language would become really free. People could say whatever they thought without worrying about hurting anybody’s feelings. People could really describe their own personal state of affairs clearly and without shame. (via)