art as experience

I'm currently reading this book, Art as Experience... it's beautifully written and seems to relate to my work in so many ways. I've only read the first few chapters, so I can't give it a full review just yet, but I can tell already that I'm going to need to get my own copy - it's a text I'll be referring to often. I find it to be so relevant to the art of today, which is quite impressive considering it was written in the 1930's! This wikipedia article is quite informative if you're interested in learning more about the book!

 

 "Impulsions are the beginnings of complete experiences because they proceed from need; from a hunger and demand that belongs to the organism as a whole and that can be supplied only by instituting definite relations (active relations, interactions) with the environment. The epidermis is only in the most superficial way an indication of where an organism ends and its environment begins. There are things inside the body that are foreign to it, and there are things outside of it that belong to it de jure, if not de facto; that must, that is, be taken possession of if life is to continue... The need that is manifest in the urgent impulsions that demand completion through what the environment - and it alone - can supply, is a dynamic acknowledgment of this dependence of the self for wholeness upon its surroundings."

from John Dewey's Art as Experience

chapter 4 - The Act of Expression - p. 59