I had another blog once, called How To Talk About Art, where I talked about how to express opinions about art in different ways. It was a lot of fun. I encourage you to go back and read it if you’re so inclined (there are a lot of entries).

I have no idea how much longer I will be writing for this site, but I still think about art a lot. And the reason that is true is because it’s so important to my life! I spend a lot of my time working on the visual arts, or going to galleries or museums, or thinking about art in general. So it’s natural for me to still be thinking about how best to think about art.

And now that I’m writing here again, I thought maybe it would be a good idea to start writing some of those thoughts down again.

So here’s what I want to do: From now on, every few months or so, I’ll write up an essay on art somewhere in this space. Some will be pictures with text (like the one above); some will just be images; some might be video clips; some might be links; whatever seems appropriate at the time. And hopefully they’ll all contain interesting and useful ideas and concepts that can help you

This is how the art world works: you create a list of people who are famous for being artists. They were the famous ones, and now they are dead. You compare them to living artists; but you do that by making a list of people who are still alive, and who were once famous for being artists. These people now live in France; they got in trouble with the law; because they are “famous” — not rich or respected as much as they used to be, perhaps, but still somewhere in their past they were kind of successful — you can put their names on a list without having to explain why.

And then there is this other group of people who aren’t famous, but maybe should be. They do things that are hard to describe, but you can see how it’s art if you squint your eyes just right — though not everyone agrees that it’s art. And then there is this other group of people who don’t do anything very interesting except talk about the first group of people from

The word “art” is used to refer to the products of a variety of different activities, from painting and sculpture to filmmaking, songwriting and dance. The word refers both to the products themselves, and to the actions of the people who make them.

The word “art” is also used in other ways. It can be used to describe things that don’t look like art at all: furniture, food and architecture can be described as “art”. And it’s often used as a shorthand for creative work: people talk about writing or making music as “art”, even though strictly speaking only the finished products are art.

The arts are sometimes divided into categories such as visual arts or performing arts. Sometimes they’re divided into categories such as craft arts (such as pottery) and fine arts (such as painting). The way these divisions are made doesn’t always follow clear rules – some people may use one set of terms and others another.

The word “art” is sometimes used more generally still, to describe anything that involves creativity or beauty. This is how we talk about fashion, for example – but this use of the word tends not to cover things that are meant primarily to be useful rather than beautiful.

The most interesting things about Picasso are his contradictions. He had a serious, almost morbid interest in death; he was fascinated by the theme of the Minotaur, and he made a drawing of himself as the Minotaur; he was obsessed with the theme of dismembered women; and his work is full of skulls, bones, and femurs. He was also a lifelong communist who once called upon all artists to carry out “the revolution in our relations to art.”

Trouble was, he didn’t know how to paint.

What do I mean? Well, there’s this thing that happens when you’re learning to draw. If you’re not careful, your drawings get boring. You only know one thing — how to make straight lines — so every time you draw something it looks like the same thing: a series of straight lines. And if you only know how to make straight lines, then anything curved will look wrong. So most beginners learn at some point that they need to start curving their lines — which means that anything curved will look wrong. This is what Picasso did all through his youth: whenever he tried to paint something curvy, it looked wrong. It isn’t just that his early drawings are technically bad (though they are); it’s

The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing at the right place, but not to say unnecessary things.

-Lord Chesterfield

Conversation is an art form, and the mark of a truly accomplished conversationalist is that she always seems to have something interesting to say. You feel that every word she utters is chosen for a reason – she isn’t just rambling on aimlessly. She doesn’t tell stories that don’t illustrate anything; even if she’s telling a funny anecdote, you can learn something from it. Her words are never superfluous; they always seem to have a purpose.

The great conversationalist has mastered the skill of talking about nothing so well that you think she is talking about something.