Sometimes art is showing us what is wrong or good or fun about the world we inhabit, but other times it's showing us a made-up world, with, for instance, trolls and mermaids, or magical old-lady detectives.
-- Brian Eno and Bette A., What Art Does, p. 84
The things we care about are the things we make art about. We frame them with our attention. Art is proof of care.
-- Brian Eno and Bette A., What Art Does, p. 82
What an artist chooses to write or make drawings or songs about, can draw our attention to certain worlds. It tells us that somebody takes something seriously, perhaps finds it beautiful or threatening, and invites us to rethink how we feel about it.
-- Brian Eno and Bette A., What Art Does, p. 82
Art is how adults play. Art is the continuation of play into adulthood. We keep playing as adults because we need to keep learning. Play is research. In art we research our feelings.
-- Brian Eno and Bette A., What Art Does, p. 72
Art is effective because it is safe. You can read a novel and experience the horror of a prison or the beauty of deep love -- but you don't have to endure the real-world consequences of those things. You can shut the book. You can leave the gallery. You can stop dancing, close your eyes, exit the movie theatre. You can go away and you can get back to your life. But you can take with you some memory of the feelings you had and that can change you.
-- Brian Eno and Bette A., What Art Does, p. 35
Art can have a tremendous effect on the world -- that is why dictators have been so eager to lock artists away or employ them as propagandists.
-- Brian Eno and Bette A., What Art Does, p. 35
There are many examples of art changing the course of history, advancing revolutions, bringing stone-cold people to tears and horrifying conservative parents.
-- Brian Eno and Bette A., What Art Does, p. 35
A piece of art doesn't have to be a piece of art for everybody. It does not have to cause feelings in everyone.
Art doesn't have to be eternal. There could be something that works as art for a few people for a few weeks, for a lot of people for a hundred years, for one person for a lifetime, for a small number of people for a thousand years. There are all sorts of levels.
It is always a conversation, even if there is only one person involved in the conversation. You might make art as a conversation with yourself.
-- Brian Eno and Bette A., What Art Does: An Unfinished Theory
