There are some centuries which - apart from everything else - in the art and other disciplines presume to remake everything because they know how to make nothing.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world - that is the myth of the atomic age - as in being able to remake ourselves.
Our culture now wonderfully, alchemically transforms images and history into artistic material. The possibilities seem endless and wide open.
By a Carpenter mankind was made, and only by that Carpenter can mankind be remade.
In its most limited sense, modern, art would seem to concern itself only with the technical innovations of the period.
The fact is that all writers create their precursors. Their work modifies our conception of the past, just as it is bound to modify the future.
If contemporary artists sincerely seek to be original, unique, and new, they should begin by disregarding the notions of originality, individuality, and innovation: they are the cliches of our time.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I think it's really important to remake things. If you never remake the classics, no one would know Shakespeare.
One can re-create what was in the mind of a mathematician a thousand years ago, recapture the truth of the intellect wherever it may have once come to light; but the image of art, that infinite variable of perception and expression in the individual, - that is not easily re-created, at least, not with certainty and in its original fulness.
It's easy to think that craft can't change but important to remember that all craft process was at some point new, at some point challenged convention - not to be contrary, but enabled by some breakthrough, some newly discovered principle, or sometimes some wonderful accident.
Shakespeare does a great job of taking 5,000-year-old stories and turning them into modern pieces that are true to the original essence but are completely remade.