VAEDU Book quotes

Joy Prior
VAEDU 397
Sec. 001
Mark Graham
Quotes
Gablik, Suzi. The Re-enchantment of Art. Thames and Hudson Inc. New York, New York. 1991. Print.

“When did it happen, that working with kids became a saintly, do-gooder thing? It’s a basic duty of society. The reason the kids are running wild is that no one is there for them.” Rollins (108)

“Cultural myths do not die easily, especially when our personal commitment to them is so strong that it is difficult even to entertain explanations of possibilities based upon different premises… Our cultural myths support economic advancement and the hard edged individualist writ large, rather than service, caring attitudes and participation. Though certain individuals are exploring and implementing more communal values, others have not shifted their understanding in this way and may not wish to. For them, art remains a question of radical autonomy.” (116)

“When someone seriously questions the accepted way things are done suggesting a new approach, the person may trigger anxiety in others. This anxiety may be turned against the innovator in the form of anger.” Carol Becker (116)

“One of the peculiar developments in our Western world is that we are losing our sense of the divine side of life, of the power of imagination… without the magical sense of perception, we do not live in a magical world.” (42)

“Negative images have a way of coming alive just as positive images have. If we project images of beauty, hope, healing, courage, survival, cooperation, interrelatedness, serenity, imagination and harmony, this will have a positive effect. Imagine what artists could do if they became committed to the long-term good of the planet. The possibilities are beyond imagination. If all artist would ever pull together for the survival of humankind, it would be a power such as the world has never known” (155)

“Community, as it is being enacted here, is the ability to touch others in ways that matter to them-to give them a voice.” (105)

“Our psychic “entrancement” with industrialism is what is pre-still continue to believe it is the necessary condition for our survival, even when its desolating effects have become so obvious, and we perceive the basic life-support systems closing down under its assaults.” (93)

“The experience begins with a feeling, a sense of something that wants to materialize itself… What the world lacks today is not so much knowledge of these things of the spirit as experience of them. Experiencing the spirit is all. To believe is okay, but a personal experience is better, a direct feeling with something” Shaffer (44)

“Obviously, how we see the future has everything to do with how we live in the present. For the first time in recorded history, the certainty that there will be a future has been lost; this is the pivotal psychological reality of our time. According to the French social philosopher Jean Baudrillard, there is no future. Everything has become “nuclear, faraway, vaporized”; and the ending of the possibilities for art merely reflects the more general ending of reality itself. Since everything has already been wiped off the map, Baudrillard finds it useless to hope, or to dream. In an amazing essay called “The Anorexic Ruins,” Baudrillard claims that the great artistic visions were those of the years from 1920 to 1930. Since everything has been done already, today we are only inferior imitators. Intrinsic values have been replaced by simulated, synthetic values. “The maximum in intensity lies behind us,” he states. “The minimum in passion and intellectual inspiration lie before us.” Quite simply, according to Baudrillard, there is no life any longer in our societies, although the vital functions continue. One comes to an arrangement with the situation; reciprocal indifference is negotiated.” (19)