From The Accidental Masterpiece: On the Art of Life and Vice Versa by NYT art critic Michael Kimmelman:
"Before cameras, educated, well-to-do travelers had learned to sketch so that they could draw what they saw on their trips, in the same way that, before phonograph records, bourgeois families listened to music by making it themselves at home [sheet music was bought instead or records], playing the piano and singing in the parlor. Cameras made the task of keeping a record of people and things simpler and more widely available,and in the process reduced the care and intensity with which people needed to look at the things they wanted to remember well, because pressing a button required less concentration and effort than composing a precise and comely drawing. During the last century, the history of amateurism in American, whether it entailed snapping photographs or painting pictures or tickling the ivories, like so many other aspects of life, increasingly centered on labor-saving strategies to placate our inherent laziness and to guarantee our satisfaction, a promise, if you think about it, that should be antithetical to the premise of making art, which presumes effort and risk."
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