ART

"The 20th century, in the footsteps of the 19th, has difficulty with the notion of art as ecstasy. Yet that is the traditional notion and I believe it is the right one. It is quite easy to live at a low level of sensibility; it is the way of the world. There is no need to ask art to show us how to be less than we are. Art shows us how to be more than what we are. It is heightened, grand, an act of effrontery. It is a challenge to the confines of the spirit. It is a challenge to the comfortable pleasures of everyday life. There is in art, still, something of the medieval mystic and something of the debauch. Art is excess. The fiery furnace, the freezing lake."
Jenette Winterson from
ART[OBJECTS]