ninme

I’ve noticed that whenever the news gets cripplingly slow, after a few days the major newspapers turn to more abstract, wide-reaching, and interesting topics. So whenever the frequency of my posting starts to ebb, rest assured that by the weekend I’ll have all sorts of random topics here for mulling over and discussing.

The Times - Veni, vidi, Vinci
Renaissance man was a young painter who took pains and perspiration

There is more to art than meets the eye. Today we publish the underdrawings obscured beneath Leonardo’s Adoration of the Magi. …

But the revelation has more general significance. It affirms the unfashionable truth that genius consists of 90 per cent perspiration as well as 10 per cent inspiration. It demolishes the sentimental Britart notion of the artist as splat-and-run (wo)man. It contradicts Andy Warhol, who said: “If you want to know everything about me, just look at the surface of my paintings, it’s all there, there’s nothing more.”

But no great artist sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist. Originality is the art of concealing your sources. And, as usual, Leonardo led the way.

I was listening to something a couple months ago (a podcast, I think, but what on earth was it?) about how Michelangelo burned all his sketches because he couldn’t stand the idea that anyone might see sort of mortal struggle he went through to create the divine, if you know what I mean. It was an interesting concept. Utterly different than that stupid quote of Warhol’s.