Quotes: Milan Kundera

"Chance and chance alone has a message for us. Everything that occurs out of necessity, everything expected, repeated day in and day out, is mute. Only chance can speak to us. We read its messages much as gypsies read the images made by coffee grounds at the bottom of a cup." 

–– Milan Kundera (1929-2023), Czech-born French writer 

Source: Milan Kundera. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Translation by Michael Henry Heim. New York: HarperCollins, 1984; p. 48-49. 

via: Commonplace Book, 2013-2014, 2014, p. 92.

Quotes 350: Roberta Smith

"What's missing is art that seems made by one person out of intense personal necessity, often by hand." 

–– Roberta Smith (b. 1948), American art critic 

via Sketchbook 10, 2010, p. 13

Quotes 289: Charles Handy

"Necessity may be the mother of invention, but curiosity is the mother of discovery." 

–– Charles Handy (b. 1932), Irish writer and philosopher (quote from The Age of Unreason) 

via Sketchbook 5, 2008, p. 56

Beauty and necessity

"Important lessons: look carefully; record what you see. Find a way to make beauty necessary; find a way to make necessity beautiful." -- Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces (p. 44)


Early in my studio practice, I listened to a lot of audio books. One audio book, Anne Michaels' Fugitive Pieces, moved me to such a degree that I had to read it again in book form. The above quote about looking, beauty and necessity resonated with me. I had just graduated from NSCAD and some of the conversations that I was "chewing on" were about the place of beauty in art. At that time beauty was taboo. Some leading artists and curators spoke against beauty, especially prettiness. Was the thinking that there is a fine line between beauty and pretty, so let's just do away with both?