Art Is A Thing In Itself (Henry Miller)
September 1, 2025·0 comments·zg
You can always tell when something is art.
Yes, good art vs. bad art, and I’ll leave all the subjectivity in the world in those qualifiers.
But you can always tell when something is art because it’s got some container around it.
It’s got something that separates it off from the rest of the world.
It exists, as it exists, which - read how Henry Miller put it,
Art is not the translation or the representation or the expression of some hidden thing. It is a thing in itself—pure, absolute, without reference. In whatever medium you choose to employ, the mastery of the medium constitutes the art. There are no rules, no guideposts. But one can detect bad art from good art—or better, one can detect art.
Henry Miller, Letter to Anaïs Nin, 10th April 1933 (via A Literate Passion: Letters of Anaïs Nin & Henry Miller, edited by Gunther Stuhlmann)
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