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Eccentricity of Artists Boosts Appreciation of Their Art

How much one enjoys a painting or a pop song should, in theory, have nothing to do with its creator’s personality. But newly published research finds the degree to which we appreciate an artist’s work...

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Should You Really Make Your Passion Your Job?

In our current start up-obsessed moment, aspiring to have a job that already exists seems almost unfashionable. The true goal of meaningful employment, or so the aspirational entrepreneurial culture...

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Culture Creep: How and Why We Separate the Artist From the Art

The first Woody Allen movie I ever saw was Manhattan. It was 2004, I was 14 years old, and less than a minute into the intro (a black-and-white cityscape of New York City set to “Rhapsody in Blue”) I...

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Lock Up Your Daughters: An Interview With Ralph Steadman

Ralph Steadman is watching Columbo when I call him at his home in Kent. It’s a Thursday in early March, and Robert Vaughn is today’s villain, but Steadman is more concerned with defending his honor....

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How Do You Make a Living, Fine-Art Photographer?

For 40 years, Stephan Brigidi has been juggling: artistic and commercial photography, book publishing, teaching, and more, all to pay the bills and stay ahead of the bills. The Rhode Island School of...

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Can You Learn to Judge Creativity?

Once every four years, Americans gather around their television screens to partake in a national pastime, delivering brash, passionate opinions on a topic they barely understand—Olympic figure skating....

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The Myth of the Artist’s Creative Routine

Charles Dickens wrote while blindfolded. Virginia Woolf took three baths a day, and always with ice-cold water. Stephen King eats a blood orange at every meal whenever he is working on a book. Joyce...

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The Best Museum Is a Home

Every city and every town has its own storied homes and grand estates. When the families who built these homes can no longer afford them or no longer have heirs to inhabit them, they sometimes become...

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Artists Working Solo Create the Finest Work—or So We Believe

Art is very often a collaborative endeavor. Yet the paintings, poems, and piano pieces we esteem most highly are almost always attributed to a single creator. So is there something special about work...

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Art Museums Foster an Appreciation for Ambiguity

How do you judge a work of art? Last week, we presented evidence that the assumptions we make about its creation play a role in our evaluation, with points given for an artist’s perceived hard work....

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Are Artists Created in the (Testosterone-Rich) Womb?

Why certain people become artists is a question that perplexes evolutionary theorists, who see no obvious way that making art helps perpetuate the species. While their attempts to explain this apparent...

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Designers Can Help Save the Planet

Earlier this spring I took a look at the draft of the National Climate Change Assessment, which was posted online for public comment. I felt discouraged, and not for the obvious reasons—I expected the...

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What Is the Worst Thing You’ve Ever Made?

I, like many a writer, have an unpublished novel just sitting in a file on my computer. Its working title is With this Ring, and it’s about a con artist who steals cars via his car wash...

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Making Art Boosts Seniors’ Psychological Resilience

If you’re approaching retirement, you’ll be facing some difficult issues, even if your finances are in order. Fundamental concerns inevitably arise, including “What shall I do with my time?” and “How...

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Spectators of the Orient: Kara Walker and a History of White Americans...

Kara Walker’s recent site installation, “A Subtlety or the Marvelous Sugar Baby: An Homage to the Unpaid and Overworked Artisans Who Have Refined Our Sweet Tastes From the Cane Fields to the Kitchens...

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