Recieved as a present a brilliant new(ish) book - Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thornton. I'm really excited by this book for a number of reasons. 1. I find its form quite inspriring. It does in effect survey the 'art world' through seven in-depth accounts of seven key days in the art world's calendar. These are written as minute-by-minute accounts. 2. Although this book is essentially journalistic, a lightening survey, I love the subject, and just to be briefly reminded of it for a few minutes at a time fulfils a need, and sets the mind sparking. The Museum of Modern Art in New York is the centre of its universe - and mine. 3. It's fast and furious - easy to read on the tube. A real page-turner. Essentially light reading. A kind of written TV documentary - if you can imagine such a thing - with glamorous locations and rapid cuts. 4. It bears (lightly) on the Practitioner Study Unit - the subject of this journal. Here are a few quotes which have stood out and seemed strangely relevant:

"Quite often when I thought I was brilliant, I wasn't. Then when I was really teaching, I wasn't aware of it. You never know what students will pick up on." Baldesari believes that the most important function of art education is to demystify artists. " Students need to see that art is made by human beings just like them." (p.52)

and further on:

Finally, art students need to understand their motivations deeply, because in grad school it's imperative to discover which parts of their practice are expendable. As Jones explains, "You have to find something that is true to yourself as a person - some non-negotiable core that will get you though a forty-year artisitc practice." (p.56)

and finally:

"If you look at the history of art," he (Michael Craig-Martin) maintains, "all the Renaissance artists knew their contemporaries. So did the impressionsists. There was a moment in their lives when they were all friends and acquaintances. The cubists were not simply individual geniuses. Their greatest works happened in conjunction. Who was van Gogh's best friend? Gaugin."

This reminded me of an experience I had the other day while taking part in a new work made by one of my students. Instructed, by letter,  to move from the room for a time to sit outside I was given a small bag containing among other things Vasari's 'Lives of the Artists' to keep myself amused. Opening it at random, in the first sentence I read,  Vasari spoke of something Michaelangelo had said to him the other day.  I will have to find the quote. Suddenly the whole history of art changed from something recorded in books, to something which actually happens - between friends.