The frightening thought that what you draw may become a building makes for reasoned lines.
Interpretation
The quote expresses the tension between creativity and the permanence of artistic creations.
Saul Steinberg highlights the responsibility and seriousness that come with the act of creating art, suggesting that artists often find themselves contemplating the impact of their work as if it were to become a physical reality. This awareness can lead to more intentional and thoughtful choices in their artistic expression, pushing them to refine their lines and ideas in a more reasoned manner.
In practice
In an art class, to inspire students to think carefully about their projects.
I hate slick and pretty things. I prefer mistakes and accidents. Which is why I like things like cuts and bruises - they're like little flowers. I've always said that if you have a name for something, like 'cut' or 'bruise,' people will automatically be disturbed by it. But when you see the same thing in nature, and you don't know what it is, it can be very beautiful.
I think the only person a writer has an obligation to is himself. If what I write doesn't fulfill something in me, if I don't honestly feel it's the best I can do, then I'm miserable.
O! for a muse of fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention.
I went to the zoo one day and saw a chimp playing with a beat-up acoustic guitar in a way I had never seen before. Instead of using the pick the chimp was banging the neck and tapping it with its fingers. I knew the chimp was on to something so I practiced this new technique in my room for hours until I'd perfected it.
What has our culture lost in 1980 that the avant-garde had in 1890? Ebullience, idealism, confidence, the belief that there was plenty of territory to explore, and above all the sense that art, in the most disinterested and noble way, could find the necessary metaphors by which a radically changing culture could be explained to its inhabitants.
I don't have stylistic loyalty. That's why people perceive me changing all the time. But there is a real continuity in my subject matter. As an artist of artifice, I do believe I have more integrity than any one of my contemporaries.
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