How to Matter in the World

November 9, 2007

image used under Creative Commons License, by Flickr User Pinhole

Peter Schjeldahl, the art critic for the New Yorker, managed to rouse my interest in contemporary art with a beautiful little review of the work of the sculptor Martin Puryear (see a slide show of his work here). After reading the lengthy article in the same issue of the New Yorker about art collector/seller Jeffrey Deitch ("A Fool for Art" by Calvin Tomkins) I felt disgusted at the way market fads and deep pocketed businessmen drive the art world. But with two columns of text Schjeldahl sketches an artist engaged in his art.. and engaged with life. It was not a view of the art world from the vantage of Sothebys or businessmen from China.

At the end of his short review Schjeldahl writes a sentence that flies off the page.. and qualifies as wise:

By these and myriad other stratagems, Puryear shows how to matter in the world: be interested and thereby, perhaps, interesting, as often and for as long as you can.

Those are words to live by. On further reflection they work as a statement as to why I blog: it is the outgrowth of a ceaseless interest in the world. Such an interest may become "interesting" to others—"perhaps". But I can hardly control what others find interesting.. so no use sweating that "perhaps". The goal of life is to sustain this interest in the world for as long as possible. I like this because it puts the emphasis on the personal need to be interested in the world, and only secondarily mentions the possibility of being interesting to others. That should be the order when it comes to writing a lasting blog: interest in the world, then, perhaps, interest in what you do. But the only reason to write about the world is because it is a deeply interesting place.