Artists and critical analysis

Jon Taplin’s blog has an interesting post on “Artists & The Crowd”. I’m particularly interested in two quotes he cites in the article, by Herbert Marcuse and Marshall McLuhan.

Marcuse says:

In its refusal to accept as final the limitations imposed upon freedom and happiness by society, in its refusal to forget what can be, lies the critical function of the artist.

and McLuhan says:

To reward and to make celebrities of artists can, also, be a way of ignoring their prophetic work, and preventing its timely use for survival. The artist is the man in any field, scientific or humanistic, who grasps the implications of his actions and of new knowledge in his own time. He is the man of integral awareness.

I find both of those quotes interesting because of what they imply for ITP, suggesting a fusion of critical analysis and artistic creation that really does match what we do. (Also, I’ve been meaning to ask Red Burns about McLuhan – I detect a distinctly McLuhan-esque undercurrent to the program, which I am very enthusiastic about.)