Wednesday Quote

Well … it’s kind of a long quote, but I haven’t sent you one in a while, and I really like this one. I read this online a long time ago, and copied it into a document, although I failed to copy where I got it from. If I am not mistaken, it’s from a talk with graphic designer Milton Glaser, on Art, Technology and the Secret of Life. Milton Glaser created the iconic I♥NY logo and founded The New York Magazine in 1968, among others.

When asked about where the seed for his creativity originates, he said:

“I have no idea where it comes from. The thing that I do know is that after a while, you begin to realize, A) how little you know about everything and, B) how vast the brain is and how it encompasses everything you can imagine — but, more than that, everything you can’t imagine. What is perhaps central to this is the impulse to make things, which seems to me to be a primary characteristic of human beings — the desire to make things, whatever they turn out to be. And then, supplementary to that, is the desire to create beauty — which is a different but analogous activity. So, the urge to make things is probably a survival device; the urge to create beauty is something else — but only apparently something else, because, as we know, there are no unrelated events in human experience.”

Glaser echoes Tolstoy’s timeless conception of art as a mechanism of human connection and Robert Henri’s notion of art as a brotherhood of mankind, reminding us that the creative impulse is integral to what makes us human:

“There is something about making things beautiful, and we sometimes call that art, that has something to do with creating a commonality between human beings so that they don’t kill each other. And whatever that impulse is, and wherever it comes from, it certainly is contained within every human being. … Sometimes, the opportunity to articulate it occurs; sometimes, it remains dormant for a lifetime.”

On his own unrelenting expression of that profound human characteristic:

“I imagined myself as a maker of things from the age of five. I realized that to make something was miraculous, and I never stopped.”

I hope you enjoy it. Off to create something now!

Ana

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