Some of the classics are outstanding — but most of them I’ve found dull, drawn-out, and unsatisfying. And unfortunately, I’ve read hundreds of them.

It’s been that way with art, too. I’ve been to art museums and tried to like the classics of art. I tried to reform my unruly tastes. But I found most of them unmoving and unimpressive.

So it’s a relief to hear that someone else that I respect felt similarly. Here’s Mark Twain:

Wherever you find a Raphael, a Rubens, a Michael Angelo, a Caracci, or a da Vinici (and we see them every day), you find artists copying them, and the copies are always the handsomest. Maybe the originals were handsome when they were new, but they are not now….

[People] stand entranced before [a da Vinci] with bated breath and parted lips, and when they speak, it is only in the catchy ejaculations of rapture:

“O, wonderful!”
“Such expression!”
“Such grace of attitude!”
“Such dignity!”
“Such faultless drawing!”
“Such matchless coloring!”

I envy them their honest admiration, if it be honest… But at the same time the thought will intrude… How can they see what is not visible?

I’ve stopped caring that my tastes are not what some people considered “cultured.” I’m not going to delude myself into liking something just because others do.

Tastes are subjective. Life is too short for reading books I don’t enjoy. It’s too short for old movies with bad acting and bad editing. It’s too short for art that was once moving, but now is mediocre at best.

“Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested,” said Francis Bacon. And some, I’d add, are to be shut and put back on the shelf for someone else who enjoys them.

(via)

If you don’t create a little confusion, it’s unlikely you’ve built something remarkable.

—Seth Godin

(via KK)

Encyclopedias are a vital part of many school libraries…. [They] represent the philosophies of present day humanists. This is obvious by the bold display of pictures that are used to illustrate paintings, art, and sculpture…. This makes it important that the materials we place before our children are free from … that which would inflame passion. [We] are not battling a plot that captivates minds but are looking for erroneous information, sensual pictures, and unchaste details…. One of the areas that needs correction is immodesty due to nakedness and posture. This can be corrected by drawing clothes on the figures or blotting out entire pictures with a magic marker. This needs to be done with care or the magic marker can be erased from the glossy paper used in printing encyclopedias. You can overcome this by taking a razor blade and lightly scraping the surface until it loses its glaze…. [Regarding evolution,] cutting out the sections is practical if the portions removed are not thick enough to cause damage to the spine of the book as it is opened and closed in normal use. When the sections needing correction are too thick, paste the pages together being careful not to smear portions of the book not needed for correction.

—Ray Martin, “Reviewing and Correcting Encyclopedias” in Christian School Builder (1983) as quoted in Michael Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things (1997), pp. 138-9.

(via The Plow)