A while ago, while exploring ideas around simplicity, I came across a video entitled “Why an Ordinary Life Can be a Good Life“, by The School of Life.
A key segment of the video celebrates the work of the 17th century Dutch painter Vermeer, and his work based on ordinary daily life in Delft, including the 1658 masterpiece The Little Street.
Later that day I saw a TV segment about a young black South African artist, Dada Khanyisa, also known as The Mighty Whale. Dada’s work is superficially very different from that of Vermeer, but both powerfully celebrate the everyday life, both its mundanity and its transcendent beauty, what “people neglect or take for granted” in Dada’s words.
Two Mighty Artists of our extraordinary ordinary lives.
Links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHVZVCbicTg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kfeWpLry3U
https://themightywhale.co.za
Appreciative Realism 