Barbara’s studio

*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.

The classic work of art is a form of life with its own bizarre consciousness.  In the performing arts – theater, dance, music – this consciousness is not reducible to the minds of the performers onstage.  The participants are parts of a spiritual organism that includes and transcends them.  In our modern materialist mindset we naturally attribute the impression that a work speaks in its own voice to the intention of the author, who used it as a vehicle for her own ideas.  But… works of art express much that their authors never intended to say:  they exceed the limited views of those who bring them into being.    

J.F. Martel in Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice:  A Treatise, Critique, and Call to Action 

Comments are welcome!