Art

We grow up scribbling with crayons and covering sidewalks with chalk, and then around middle school most of us stop. Maybe we think it's childish or just too hard. So what can we learn from the people who never stopped making art?

Choreogapher Bill T. Jones recommends Lawrence Weschler's biography of Robert Irwin, an artist who spent his career attempting to capture the subjectivity of the act of experiencing the world around us.

Frank Stella, Double Gray Scramble, 1973. Screenprint on white Arches 88 mould-made paper, 29 x 50 3/4 inches. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Gemini G.E.L. and the Artist, 1981.5.98 © 2016 Frank Stella / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New Yor

Frank Stella sits down with Steve Paulson to talk about a lesser known aspect of his remarkable career — his work as a printmaker.

paint on canvas

Philosopher Alva Noe has a theory about art. He says art is like philosophy, and the best art is disorienting and uncomfortable. It takes you into a space you didn't even know was there.

“Refugees didn’t live in town. The overwhelming majority were stuck in a camp with layers of razor-wire-topped fences that evoked comparisons to Guantánamo from some of its residents. Meant for 600, its population had, during my late-October visit, swelle

Molly Crabapple's art — her drawings, paintings and posters — have ignited various political causes, from the Occupy Movement to protests against the treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo. She tells Anne how art can be a political tool.

How do you join a revolution? Egyptian artist Bahia Shehab says she was too quiet to shout in the streets during the uprising in Cairo, so she started spraying graffiti with the word "no" in Arabic.

Street art that reads "Love is Color"

Maybe you're familiar with art therapy — making art to cope with pain. Philosopher Alain de Botton has a different idea. He thinks just looking at great art can be therapeutic.

A discarded pen of a poet.

Renunciation can be a creative force. American scholar Ross Posnock tells stories of writers, philosophers and artists who've committed "acts of abandonment," leaving careers and creative lives behind. They weren't failures, Posnock says — they were necessary departures that led to creative and intellectual breakthroughs.

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