Justin Carter - One Minute Manifesto

Art is the Vital Grit Working Away Inside the Oyster.


“Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted”. (Albert Einstein)

Arts ability to be critical, to reflect, to be reflective, to be polemic, to be difficult, to embrace uncertainty, to explore contradictions, to offer alternate positions and new ways of thinking, is its social responsibility and it’s real value. The complex challenges we face in the World, as part of that World, require new ways of seeing, thinking, imagining, communicating, appreciating and valuing.

In an essay[1] the artist Donald Judd makes the case that it is complicated, not complex that is the opposite of simple. I draw from this the idea that art and artists can articulate and embody complex ideas through simple form. Good art has depth and manifold layers making it an endless language of possibility. Something that is both simple and complex has the ability to communicate beyond normal thresholds. We need to trust art in all its complicated simplicity.

Art is the vital grit working away inside the oyster.


[1] ‘It’s Hard to Find a Good Lamp’. (1993) “Complicated, incidentally, is the opposite of simple, not complex, which both may be”. (Donald Judd)