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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.
Art Is Life: Icons and Iconoclasts, Visionaries and Vigilantes, and Flashes of Hope in the Night
In concert with other things, however, art can change the world—incrementally and by osmosis. This is because art is part of a universal force. It has no less purpose or meaning than science, religion, philosophy, politics, or any other discipline, and is as much a form of intelligence or knowing as a first kiss, a last goodbye, or an algebraic equation. Art is an energy source that helps make change possible; it sees things in clusters and constellations rather than rigid systems. It is both a bridge to a new vision and the vision itself, a medium or matrix through which one sees the world. It grants that pleasure is an important form of knowledge. Art is not optional; it is necessary. It is part of the whole ball of wax.
The most beautiful still lifes are never pristine, and herein lies one of their secrets. The lemon has been half-peeled, the wine tasted, the bread broken; the oysters have been shucked, part of this great wheel of cheese cut away; the sealed chamber of the pie, held aloft on its raised silver stand, has been opened. Someone has left this knife resting on the edge of the plate, its handle jutting toward us; someone plans, in a moment, to pick it up again. These objects are in use, in dialogue, a part of, implicated. They refuse perfection, or rather they assert that this is perfection, this state of being consumed, used up, enjoyed, existing in time.
