【推荐2】Through art, one transmits feelings to others. This transmission of feelings can be a valuable thing. Imagine, for instance, a very special time and place — the kind that occurs for only a few seconds, and only once in a generation. Art, in the hands of a master, can capture (捕捉) that moment, preserve it and deliver it to people.

Feelings being communicated have value, and this is what makes art worth your time and energy. Here’s a personal example: There is a set of four paintings at the Art Institute of Chicago; they show groups of people discovering magnificent (宏伟的) ancient ruins. When I see these paintings, I feel what it is like to discover such things. I see that other men have done great things … I see that such things are possible, and I think that I, too, am capable of such things.

Seeing these paintings is a different experience for me than reading words. Both are valuable, but they are different. And I get the same type of experience when listening to good music. Art affects me differently than words, but both are strongly beneficial to me.

One way or another, art should deliver something positive to you. So, trying hard to understand and appreciate art that doesn’t move you is probably a waste of your time. It’s true that appreciation of some things may be learned, but trying hard to like something you really don’t, because people say you should, or because people will think you’re uncultured if you don’t, is foolish. Either art contributes something to you or it’s not worth your time.

【推荐3】Gilliam was born in Tupelo, Mississippi, in 1933 as the seventh child of eight to a father who worked on the railroad and a homemaking mother. He attended the University of Louisville for both bachelor’s and master’s degrees, but in 1962 moved to Washington, D.C., where he lived and had his studio (工作室) for the rest of his life. He became one of the leading artists of the Washington Color School—a 1950s movement that attached great importance to large fields of color.

He was very interested in freeing his paintings from the limit of canvases (画布) and frames. Instead, in his Drape works of the 1960s, he took unstretched canvases and hung them from ceilings or pinned them in great waterfalls to walls. Each time his work—part painting, part sculpture-was shown in an exhibition, it hung differently, never the same way twice.

In a 2018Morning Edition profile, Gilliam explained that the intention behind his Drape work was “to develop the idea of movement into shapes”—and that he was inspired by laundry (洗衣店) hanging from a clothesline.

His work is represented in the collections of some of the world’s most celebrated museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Tate Modern in London; and the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris. In 2015, he was awarded the U.S. State Department’s Medal of Arts Lifetime Achievement Award.

In the 2018 Morning Edition profile, the then 84-year-old Gilliam said that he felt that he was in his prime, despite health challenges. “I’ve never felt better in my life. I stopped drinking, I stopped smoking. I live for this period of being in the studio and actually working.”