Wil S. Hylton today in the online New York Times —
"It seems to me now, with greater reflection,
that the value of experiencing another person’s art
is not merely the work itself, but the opportunity
it presents to connect with the interior impulse of another.
The arts occupy a vanishing space in modern life:
They offer one of the last lingering places to seek out
empathy for its own sake, and to the extent that
an artist’s work is frustrating or difficult or awful,
you could say this allows greater opportunity to try to
meet it. I am not saying there is no room for discriminating
taste and judgment, just that there is also, I think,
this other portal through which to experience creative work
and to access a different kind of beauty, which might be
called communion."
Or damnation.
