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How to Be an Artist by Jerry Saltz
3.0

All art derives power from this background glow of time—that is, from the internal and external traces of all the decisions that went into its making. This produces a fabulous critical inversion: From the moment a new work is completed, the artist is parted from the work, and the viewer, in turn, becomes a participant in it. The viewer completes the work, unmaking and remaking it. "Every reader is—when he is reading—the reader of his own self," said Marcel Proust. If what's being read, seen, or heard is great art—a Bach cantata, a poem that keeps opening up for you, or a painting you've kept coming back to for a lifetime—it might be different every time you experience it.