#vocation – @nickkahler on Tumblr

Art is one of those things that has no essential definition. It has a history and it has no qualifications necessary. It has no need for a reference point to anything else. It is one of those things that appears in the world because somebody decides that they’re going to pose the question and that makes it art.

Lawrence Weiner, “On Art,” c. 2016

#lawrence weiner #quote #art #thing #essential #history #qualifications #qualification #job #profession #vocation #need #reference #reference point #point #appearance #appear #pose #question #making #thinking

nickkahler

Since the economic downturn in 2008, liberal arts colleges and universities across the country have reshaped their curriculums. They have narrowed the fields of study to prepare students for vocational work quantified by employment and statistical analysis, shearing the visual arts––in part or whole––from the intellectual mold that has underpinned students’ critical thinking in the United States over the past century.

Lilly Lampe + Amanda Parmer, “Emory University Eradicates its Visual Arts Department,” 2012

nickkahler

You are about to enter the much more difficult phase of unlearning everything you have learned in college, of questioning it, redefining it, challenging it, and reinventing it to call it your own. More than in any other vocation, being an artist means always starting from nothing. Our work as artists is courageous and scary. There is no brief that comes along with it, no problem solving that’s given as a task. … An artist’s work is almost entirely inquiry based and self-regulated. It is a fragile process of teaching oneself to work alone, and focusing on how to hone your quirky creative obsessions so that they eventually become so oddly specific that they can only be your own.

Teresita Fernandez, “Commencement Address at VCU,” 2013

nickkahler

Long ago, I was wounded. I learned to exist, in reaction, out of touch with the world: I'll tell you what I meant to be - a device that listened. Not inert: still. A piece of wood. A stone. Why should I tire myself, debating, arguing? Those people breathing in the other beds could hardly follow, being uncontrollable like any dream - Through the blinds, I watched the moon in the night sky, shrinking and swelling - I was born to a vocation: to bear witness to the great mysteries. Now that I've seen both birth and death, I know to the dark nature these are proofs, not mysteries -

Louise Glück, “Parados,” c. 1990 (via mythofblue)

#louise gluck #poem #poetry #mystery #quote #lit #vocation #blind #shrink #dark #nature #proof #existentialism #reaction #listen #stone #wood #material

nickkahler

If you have any sense of responsibility at all, stay with your riots here at home. Work for the coming elections: You will know what you are doing, why you are doing it, and how to communicate with those to whom you speak. And you will know when you fail. If you insist on working with the poor, if this is your vocation, then at least work among the poor who can tell you to go to hell. It is incredibly unfair for you to impose yourselves on a village where you are so linguistically deaf and dumb that you don't even understand what you are doing, or what people think of you. And it is profoundly damaging to yourselves when you define something that you want to do as "good," a "sacrifice" and "help."

Ivan Illich, "To Hell with Good Intentions" at the Conference on InterAmerican Student Projects (CIASP), Cuernavaca, Mexico, 1968 (via archinect)

#ivan illich #quote #hell #good intentions #good #do good #sacrifice #help #riot #election #communication #poor #vocation #imposition #village #language #philosophy

nickkahler

But how now, Ishmael? How is it, that you, a mere oarsman in the fishery, pretend to know aught about the subterranean parts of a whale? … A veritable witness have you hitherto been, Ishmael; but have a care how you seize the privilege of Jonah alone.

Herman Melville, Moby Dick, 1851

#herman melville #quote #ishmael #oarsman #pretend #knowledge #subterranean #part #anatomy #epistemology #favorite #profession #vocation #work #jonah #priviledge #witness #lit #literature #humility #humble #pride

nickkahler

The less memory is experience from the inside, the more it exists only through its exterior scaffolding and outward signs. ... Memory has been wholly absorbed by its meticulous reconstitution. Its new vocation is to record; delegating to the archive [lieu de memoire] the responsibility of remembering, it sheds its signs upon depositing them there, as a snake sheds its skin.

Pierre Nora in James E. Young, "The Counter-Monument: Memory Against Itself in Germany Today," 1992

#pierre nora #memory #lieu de memoire #record #archive #sign #experience #inside #outside #responsibility #snake #skin #exterior #interior #vocation

nickkahler

First of all, the art of living; then as my ideal profession, poetry and philosophy, and as my real profession, plastic arts; in the last resort, for lack of income, illustrations.

Paul Klee, "On Life," c. 1920

#life #living #paul klee #art #profession #vocation #calling #philosophy #plastic arts #income #illustration

nickkahler

The most ancient extant portrait anyways purporting to be the whale’s, is to be found in the famous cavern-pagoda of Elephanta, in India. The Brahmins maintain that in the almost endless sculptures of the immemorial pagoda, all the trades and pursuits, every conceivable avocation of man, were prefigured ages before any of them actually came into being.

Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, 1851

nickkahler reblogged

oscardelarenta

www.siljamagg.com

nickkahler

Oscar de la Renta and the Event (via oscarprgirl)

I once asked him, “if you were not a fashion designer, what would you be?”

He replied, “I would be a fashion designer.”

Source: siljamagg.com

#fashion #vocation #quote