Art & Creativity Quote by Arthur Erickson

Erickson is smuggling a quietly radical claim into a calm sentence: buildings are not inert containers, they are batteries. “Whenever we witness art” turns the viewer into an active participant, a person who doesn’t just pass through space but registers it. The line’s pivot is “contained.” Architecture, in this view, isn’t merely a frame around painting or sculpture; it’s the apparatus that holds, compresses, and releases feeling. The building becomes an instrument that can intensify art’s charge or deaden it through bad proportions, harsh light, or a circulation plan that treats people like foot traffic instead of attention.

The intent reads like a defense of Erickson’s own modernism, often accused of being austere: he’s arguing that restraint can be a kind of pressure chamber. Minimal surfaces and controlled vistas don’t have to be cold; they can concentrate “energy” by directing the body and eye, choreographing anticipation, and making pauses feel earned. “Energy” is also a useful word because it dodges mystical talk while still pointing to what’s hard to quantify: mood, awe, agitation, calm.

Context matters. Erickson worked in an era when museums, campuses, and civic buildings were becoming cultural engines and political statements, not just utilities. His quote hints at a larger institutional critique: when you put art in a building, you aren’t neutral. You’re deciding what kind of attention is possible, what kind of public is formed, and whether culture feels alive or safely embalmed.