John Keats, the ingénue English Romantic poet, coined the idea of “negative capability”. He was trying to describe a characteristic of great artists: those who were comfortable of sitting “in uncertainties”.

Mystery and doubt were no great challenge to these people - there was no guiding necessity to reach “after fact and reason”.

In other words, great art needn’t seek moral, political, or philosophical resolution. You can aspire to the so-called sublime, unburdened by such analytical and passé frameworks. Not everything is in search of an answer.

Well, whatever the opposite of “negative capability” is, the semi-anonymous British street artist Banksy has it in spades.

Forced to think of others (and other things) without “negative capability”, I might describe high school economics teachers; primary school principles; heads of human resources; people who work for McKinsey; JK Rowling’s ethically didactic Harry Potter series and those in charge of the CAO admissions system.

The other side of things is harder to cast, because great artists are rare by definition. But you might look to genuine aesthetes – not those easily swept up by trend and fashion;........

© The Irish Times