Breaking The Rules

The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions.

Oliver Wendell Homes
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Yesterday I wrote about Charlie the director who came into rehearsal with a button saying "There are no rules." Of course there are rules. But the wise artist knows when to break them. And how.

When I was learning to draw one of my teachers was a grand old curmudgeon named Marshall Glazier. One day he came into the class before it had started and found me studying a book on anatomy, with pictures of bones. He said "My advice is to take a good course in anatomy and then forget about it." At the time I didn't understand what he was saying. After all we were attempting to accurately draw the human figure, why shouldn't we concentrate on learning the anatomy? I have since come to understand what he meant.

There are two famous artists who seem to have thrown the ideas of anatomy out the window. One of them is Amedeo Modigliani. In his paintings you can see that he does know the anatomy of the figure, but a part of it is extended: a long neck or an stretched out torso, thus creating an elegant picture. His purpose is not to paint a portrait but a work of art based on the human figure. It is as Matisse once said "I don't paint women. I paint pictures."

Similarly the sculptures of Alberto Giacometti show a definite understanding of the human figure even though the entire figure is stretched out and distorted. The various parts of the sculpture are in correct proportion to each other but the entire piece is an expression beyond the literal.

An artist will go to the drawing pad in the same way a musician will go to scales and finger patterns and a dancer will go to the barre. The artistry comes from there but is not frozen there.

In short, in any endeavor, a person should know the rules and know how and when to make exceptions to them, not for the sake of breaking rules but from the demands of imagination and necessity.

DB
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Weekend Puzzle

Sci Fi Story

(an easy one)

A man gets on a bus in Boston at 1:45 and travels for half an hour.
When he gets off the bus it's 1:15.

DB

Why Didn't I Think Of that

Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see.

Arthur Schopenhauer
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When I was studying art I took a drawing class for a year from a great teacher named Marshall Glazier. Mr. Glazier was not an old curmudgeon, but he liked to pretend he was for the amusement of himself and others. He would come into the class room after the class had begun saying in his gravelly voice "All right, all right, what's going on in here?"

One day he came in and said "What's the difference between genius and talent?" One person said Mozart and Salieri. Another one said Bernstein and Bacharach. He said "Yeah, those are good. Now I'll tell so that you'll know, A man of talent does what he can, a genius does what he MUST."

"Oh, that's good"someone said.

Glazier said "You think that's good? I got it out of a fortune cookie."
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One definition of a genius is someone who can do something extremely difficult extraordinarily well and make it look simple. I think we all can have moments of genius. No one is a genius 24 hours a day. It is said the Albert Einstein sometimes couldn't remember if he had lunch or not and forgot where he was going.

A genius is one who comes to a solution no one else thought of and perhaps could not have thought of. When Mozart went wandering in the forest of music the trees and bushes stepped aside for him.

A genius is one who does something that can't be done. There is no way man can fly. But now we fly thanks to a couple of bicycle mechanics. We now have the benefits of the International Space Station, the Hubble Telescope, the shuttle crafts and the Soyuz vehicles thanks to the work of some far seeing geniuses who saw what others could not see and made amazing things happen.

The first step on the road to personal genius is to dismiss the idea that something can't be done, That's a lesson that took me years to learn. I pass it on to you free of charge. Once the "can't be done" is thrown out in the trash whatever it is is going to be done. The next step is the "How" factor and that means observation and imagination, followed by persistence, setting up theories and testing them, until finally the light bulb stays on and the plane stays up.

Never say "I'm not a genius" because you might be at least once in your life and probably more than once.

DB - The Vagabond
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WEEKEND PUZZLE
So you didn't care for last week's Who Done It?
All right, try this one.

FINISH THIS STORY.

It was an early September in the afternoon. The sky was darkening and a storm was threatened. But Dick and Jane needed to reach the other side of the lake. So they got into their canoe with two bags of groceries and Maxine, their Chihuahua. They began paddling across the lake and everything was going well until....

Grand prize goes to the one who gives me the best continuation of this story.

Good luck.
DB
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Variable Views 8/09/09

Art and works of art do not make an artist, sense and enthusiasm and instinct do.

Friedrich Von Schlegel
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Welcome to my briar patch.
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Hurry and....
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The other day I had a brief conversation with a woman out on the sidewalk We don't know each other well but during our chat she asked "Are you an artist?" When I said "Yes" I thought about the paintings and drawings in my apartment, but I also wondered what there was about me that would cause her to think, in those few short moments of talking with me, that I'm an artist.

While I lived in New York City I had the privilege of studying with some excellent teachers. One of them was an inspiring old curmudgeon named Marshall Glazier. He had us drawing the model life size, on a piece of shelf paper, with a can of ink and a pen shaped bamboo stick. When I first entered the class I thought it was silly because there is nothing permanent about rolls of shelf paper, nothing to show what I've learned. But I soon got into the process and discovered that the act of drawing was the instruction. It brought out in me the invisible things about art, the things Von Schlegel speaks of.

Given the right surface an artist can make a beautiful drawing with a mud puddle and a stick. A sculptor can make a work of art out of some stones and a hammer. There was a street drummer in New York who played with his drum sticks on the mail boxes and parking meters. I think of the most primitive examples of the artist's output: cave paintings, scrimshaw, poems written on the walls of prison cells, an actor's audition.

Fortunately for the world, artists have a vast amount of materials to work with these days. But tools are just what they are, tools to use. The tools do not make the art. They rely on the imagination of the artist to use them. They rely on the artist's "sense and enthusiasm and instinct" to know how to use them, and so does the artist.

Now, when I work on a painting, I start with an idea, apply my sense, enthusiasm and instinct, the invisible things, the truly creative things of my being and let the process of painting tell me where to go and what to do. It's the same with writing. They are complimentary sports.

DB
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Be a cool breeze for someone today.
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Test thrice Albert. (5)
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WEEKEND PUZZLE
Splish Splash - this one'e easy.

Below is a list of waters. Your mission is to tell me which one of them does not belong on this list and why.

1 right answer so far.

Arctic Ocean
Atlantic Ocean
Bering Sea
Bristol Bay
Buzzards Bay
Cape Cod Bay
Chesapeake Bay
Delaware Bay
Gulf of Alaska
Gulf of Mexico
Hudson Bay
Lake Erie
Lake Huron
Lake Michigan
Lake Ontario
Lake Superior
Long Island Sound
Massachusetts Bay
Pacific Ocean

Good luck
dbdacoba@aol.com