I subscribe to Popova's blog. Popova is very knowledgeable and her posts are fascinating. My only bitch is that with all her related links I sometime forget where the hell I started.

The art an artist makes, I think, is 2/3 driven by the society where the artist resides and 1/3 by the artist as an individual., where the individual is the derivative of a family, a community of close connections.

I also believe that justice is only possible and legitimate in a democracy but that art goes beyond justice and democracy because it creates intensities of feelings organized in works capable of communicating insights that resonate to the center of our being. The center of our being as the locus of narratives/roles that shape our lives and form our self-identity.