Wednesday, June 13, 2007

On Art...

"In the Western tradition of individualism there is the assumption that art can grow out of a personal or a cultural disease, and triumph over it. I no longer believe that...  A work of art that grows out of a diseased culture has not only the limits of art but the limits of the disease - if it is not an affirmation of the disease, it is a reaction against it. The art of a man divided within himself and against his neighbors, no matter how sophisticated its techniques or how beautiful its forms and textures, will never have the communal power of the simplest tribal song."

                                              -- Wendell Berry, in The Hidden Wound

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