By Alex Ross

When faced with adversity, it can be difficult to understand how art and beauty fit into the ebb and flow of life and how the arts can be “useful” in crisis. As Alex Ross points out, the poet Wallace Stevens envisioned the mind as “the imagination pressing back against the pressure of reality,” simultaneously creating and protecting us from the world around us.

How have the arts helped you in a time of crisis?

Read at The New Yorker

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