Art is not a luxury

Modern life is a sea of images. Our eyes are flooded by bright pictures and clusters of text flashing at us from every direction. The brain, overstimulated, must rapidly adapt to process this swirling barrage of disconnected data. Culture in the developed world is now largely defined by all-pervasive mass media and slavishly monitored personal electronic devices. (p.6)

From preschool on, art is treated as therapeutic praxis—do-it-yourself projects with construction paper and finger paints to unleash children’s hidden creativity. But what is far more needed is a historical framework of objective knowledge about art.  (p. 14)

The most important question about art is: what lasts, and why? Definitions of beauty and standards of taste are constantly changing, but persistent patterns obtain. I subscribe to a cyclic view of culture: styles grow, peak, and decay but flower again through periodic revival. (p. 16)

Art is a marriage of the ideal and the real. Art making is a branch of artisanship. Artists are craftsmen, closer to carpenters and welders than they are to intellectuals and academics, with their inflated, self-referential rhetoric. Art uses and speaks to the senses. It is grounded in the tangible physical world. (p. 18)

The creative energy of our era is flowing away from the fine arts and into new technology. (p. 31)

The only road to freedom is self-education in art. Art is not a luxury for any advanced civilization; it is a necessity, without which creative intelligence will wither and die. (p. 37)

Camile Paglia (2012). Glittering Images: A Journey Through Art From Egypt To Star Wars. Nova Iorque: Pantheon Books.