If you could live with just one work of art, what would it be?
One of Vija Celmins’s wonderful Night Sky works. Maybe one of her charcoal drawings of the cosmos, with a comet flaring across the surface. She conjures up such immensity, and such intimacy, with countless tiny points of light shining out of the darkness.
Which cultural experience changed the way you see the world?
In a word, Paris. After I left school, I spent several weeks working in Paris and discovered the pleasures of looking, on my own, for myself. The Pompidou had just opened earlier that year. The building was mind-boggling and the parade of 20th-century art inside was mind-blowing.
Which writer or poet do you return to the most?
Over the past few years, I have often returned to the endlessly inventive writings of Italo Calvino. Over the past year, Olga Tokarczuk’s novels. She writes with great empathy and a dark humour about the strange, sometimes repellent, tangle of ideas, beliefs and habits that people have.
What music or other audio are you listening to?
I’m increasingly drawn to music that leaves a lot of space for the listener. Prompted by a brilliant book by Ian Penman about Erik Satie and his milieu in early 20th-century Paris (Three Piece Suite, published by Fitzcarraldo Editions), I’ve recently been listening to piano works by Debussy, Ravel and Satie. Also, the two great virtuosos from Mali, Toumani Diabaté and Ali Farka Touré. What Diabaté does with his kora is as beguiling and beautiful as Debussy.
What are you watching, listening to or following that you would recommend?
Right now, David Olusoga’s series Empire on BBC iPlayer. He conveys the enormity of what the British Empire was, and did, with a measured anger. Thankfully, the films avoid the vogue for illustrative re-enactments. Instead, the narratives are interspersed with the poignant testimonies of individuals, descendants of “empire” in India, Australia, Africa and the Caribbean.
What is art for?
Art is for life.
• James Lingwood is the curator for Atlante, Thomas Dane Gallery, Naples, Italy, 3 February-2 May
