Everything Else
Culmination of artist quotes curated by Professor Jason Schneider
“I think that if there is one thing we can learn from John Ruskin, it is that each age must find its own way to beauty. And in our case, it means finding our way back to beauty, since we seem to have lost sight of it completely. One cannot simply hope to survive a one-hundred-year obsession with fracture and fragment by accident. As I say at one point in this book, so much has been destroyed that, to have any hope of retaining it, we must learn a forgotten language, make it new, and speak up until we are heard.”
Lars Spuybroek
The Sympathy of Things: Ruskin and the Ecology of Design
The document is a collection of personal ideas, written as expressive rants, offering a deeply subjective exploration of contemporary art, design, and cultural introspection.
It discusses contemporary art’s expansive nature in the 21st century, traditional and modern mediums, understanding the emphasized role that art has on human connections, and questioning the roles of Gaze, design, and self-reflection in society’s evolving cultural landscape.
“Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision. Their goals differed, but they all had this in common: that the step was first, the road new, the vision unborrowed, and the response they received — hatred. The great creators — the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors — stood alone against the men of their time. Every great new thought was opposed. Every great new invention was denounced. The first motor was considered foolish. The airplane was considered impossible. The power loom was considered vicious. Anesthesia was considered sinful. But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered and they paid. But they won.”
“I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York’s skyline. Particularly when one can’t see the details. Just the shapes. The shapes and the thought that made them. The sky over New York and the will of man made visible. What other religion do we need? And then people tell me about pilgrimages to some dank pesthole in a jungle where they go to do homage to a crumbling temple, to a leering stone monster with a pot belly, created by some leprous savage. Is it beauty and genius they want to see? Do they seek a sense of the sublime? Let them come to New York, stand on the shore of the Hudson, look and kneel. When I see the city from my window – no, I don’t feel how small I am – but I feel that if a war came to threaten this, I would throw myself into space, over the city, and protect these buildings with my body.”
This document includes seven large personal discussions of architectural concepts for my potential master’s thesis. This piece also holds a list of works by architects that I’ve researched, been inspired by, and want to remember for future use in my work.
