Quote:
Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
After dinner parties, it is said Picasso would have Guernica wheeled out for his guests to enjoy. Some saw only a mishmash of shapes. Some simply saw the meanings they had read various critics had ascribed in the art press. Still others saw new meaning, deeper significance and multi layered relevance.
Of course all of this flowed from that which Picasso had put down on canvas. I guess you wouold say this was because he painted "poorly."
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It is said that a Nazi officer once came to Picasso's house with a postcard of the painting Guernica. The Nazi show the postcard to Picasso and asked "Did you do this?" Picasso replied, "No, you did."
Whether apocryphal or not, this story has been rather instructive to me. I see now that my fascistic adherence to order and structure and rules only serves to quash the creativity that sometimes exists, and can only exist, outside of these rules. Grammar can be an important and useful tool, but when it becomes a fetish, worshiped for its own sake, it undermines the very purpose of putting pen to paper (or typed word to cyberspace, or ink to cave wall) in the first place - the expression of ideas. They laughed at Ornette Coleman when he felt he could no longer be constrained by time signatures and chord structures. They said his music was no different from that which an untutored child could make. But few could disagree that the haunting beauty of his song Lonely Woman has withstood the test of time.
Hank, I may not understand many of your posts, and I may find the ambiguity caused by your grammatical and typographical lapses to be maddening at times. But I will keep reading, looking for the Lonely Woman I know you have inside you.
