Art & Creativity Quote by Mary Schmich

Schmich’s line flatters the reader, then quietly assigns them work. “Enter it from a variety of angles” treats art less like a monument to admire and more like a building with multiple doors: you’re invited in, but you’re also expected to move around, test sightlines, change floors. That’s a journalist’s sensibility smuggled into aesthetics. The ideal object isn’t the one that delivers a single, polished takeaway; it’s the one that behaves like a good story, holding up under re-reading, re-framing, and the inevitable bias you bring to it.

The subtext pushes back against the modern craving for immediate clarity. In a culture trained by hot takes, algorithmic “explainers,” and the pressure to declare what something is “about,” Schmich’s definition defends ambiguity as a feature, not a failure. “Emerge with a variety of views” suggests art’s job isn’t to persuade you into agreement but to expand your mental camera angles. That’s not relativism so much as elasticity: the artwork stays itself while your interpretation changes because you’ve changed.

There’s an implied critique of art-as-status-object, too. If “good art” is accessible from many angles, it can’t rely solely on insider codes or a single correct reading. The best work doesn’t punish you for coming in sideways; it rewards curiosity. Schmich’s bar for quality is durability through interpretation: art that keeps producing meaning without collapsing into either a riddle box or a slogan.