The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Search results for “The art of looking”

Some of Today’s Most Prominent Artists on Courage, Creativity, Criticism, Success, and What It Means to Be a Great Artist
Some of Today’s Most Prominent Artists on Courage, Creativity, Criticism, Success, and What It Means to Be a Great Artist

Wisdom from Ai Weiwei, Marina Abramović, Damien Hirst, Laurie Simmons, Carroll Dunham, and more.

read article

Henri Rousseau’s Heartening Story of Success after a Lifetime of Rejection, Illustrated
Henri Rousseau’s Heartening Story of Success after a Lifetime of Rejection, Illustrated

How a kind old man who spent his life in poverty, worked as a toll collector, and was entirely self-taught became one of the world’s greatest artists.

read article

The Knot in the Rosary: Rilke on How Difficulty Can Fuel Creativity and Why Feedback Poisons Art
The Knot in the Rosary: Rilke on How Difficulty Can Fuel Creativity and Why Feedback Poisons Art

“All art is the result of one’s having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, to where no one can go any further.”

read article

Artist Francis Bacon’s Conflicted and Creative Life, Illustrated
Artist Francis Bacon’s Conflicted and Creative Life, Illustrated

“It’s all so meaningless, we may as well be extraordinary.”

read article

The Paradox of Active Surrender: Jeanette Winterson on How Learning to Understand Art Transforms Us
The Paradox of Active Surrender: Jeanette Winterson on How Learning to Understand Art Transforms Us

“True art, when it happens to us, challenges the ‘I’ that we are.”

read article

Being vs. Becoming: John Steinbeck on Creative Integrity, the Art of Changing Your Mind, the Humanistic Duty of the Artist
Being vs. Becoming: John Steinbeck on Creative Integrity, the Art of Changing Your Mind, the Humanistic Duty of the Artist

“If I can’t do better I have slipped badly… I beat poverty for a good many years and I’ll be damned if I’ll go down at the first little whiff of success.”

read article

The Best Art, Design, and Photography Books of 2014
The Best Art, Design, and Photography Books of 2014

The world’s oldest living things, how to overcome creative block, meals from beloved books, the unusual stories behind people’s tattoos, and more.

read article

The Art of Quickness: Italo Calvino on Digression as a Hedge Against Death and the Key to Great Writing
The Art of Quickness: Italo Calvino on Digression as a Hedge Against Death and the Key to Great Writing

“Success consists in felicity of verbal expression, which every so often may result from a quick flash of inspiration but as a rule involves a patient search… for the sentence in which every word is unalterable.”

read article

The Spirit of Sauntering: Thoreau on the Art of Walking and the Perils of a Sedentary Lifestyle
The Spirit of Sauntering: Thoreau on the Art of Walking and the Perils of a Sedentary Lifestyle

Why “every walk is a sort of crusade.”

read article

Umbrella: A Tender Illustrated Love Letter to Time, Anticipation, and the Art of Waiting by Mid-Century Japanese Artist Taro Yashima
Umbrella: A Tender Illustrated Love Letter to Time, Anticipation, and the Art of Waiting by Mid-Century Japanese Artist Taro Yashima

A beautiful and subtle ode to the fleeting moment between a bird and a balloon.

read article

View Full Site

The Marginalian participates in the Bookshop.org and Amazon.com affiliate programs, designed to provide a means for sites to earn commissions by linking to books. In more human terms, this means that whenever you buy a book from a link here, I receive a small percentage of its price, which goes straight back into my own colossal biblioexpenses. Privacy policy. (TLDR: You're safe — there are no nefarious "third parties" lurking on my watch or shedding crumbs of the "cookies" the rest of the internet uses.)