The Moneylender and His Wife, Quentin Matsys, 1514.
... it was this answer, and others like it, which soothed her when she woke up in the night, which helped her believe that their union was correct and inevitable rather than, as sometimes at 4am it seemed to her, a totally random collision of souls.
When an artist leaves the shape of their creation up to fate, who gets credit for the work? The person, or the process? The calculus, or the one who applies it?
The idea of the artist-individual-self––that creative concepts appeared from thin air detached from cultural contexts, conversations with peers, encounters with strangers, or interactions with the world––has never sat well with me.
