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Preface

The essays in these collection appeared on my Arts and Culture blog, Los Cuadernos de Julia, starting 24 August, 2006. In the years that followed I have blogged there on so many topics that the texts that I particularly valued have got buried under a landslide of other publications. This is neither good nor bad, for LCJ was a popular blog, and I attended many events and wrote about many books and films. Yet 17 years later I felt it was high time to collect all essays on the subject of art in one book.

These essays explore the definition, the scope, and the aims and goals of what we call “art”. In the past, this word was associated with the fine arts; today, it is applied to just about anything, from tying one’s shoelaces to delivering a business presentation. By making this word so pervasive, people either devalue it, or overestimate it. The end of the entire affair is such that some genuinely wonder whether art is necessary. What Oscar Wilde intended as a pun has acquired a very serious meaning.

Of course, as a writer, I wholeheartedly believe that art is necessary, and that art-making should be the ultimate goal for a practising artist. Yet what is that passage from making something creative to producing a work of art? Do we still need art in the 21^st century, and why? What the Old Masters in any kind of art can give us today?

These are the questions that I have attempted to cover in my essays written between 2006 and 2023. And so, without further ado, I invite you to my own cave to explore the shadows on its walls.

Julia N. Shuvalova

Moscow

24 August 2023

World Cinema Day

On December 28, 1895, at the Grand Café Boulevard des Capucines in Paris, the Lumière brothers screened their first film. Since then, cinema has entered our everyday life.