A great piece on the different kinds of genius and the way we value the young genius over the old master. What's not addressed is the Bob Dylan kind of genius. There are some who believe that it would have been better if Dylan had never produced a song after Highway 61. That would have been a shame. Certainly though there's a doughnut hole in his career between his greatest work. He's now an old master though. So what other cultural geniuses have been both prodigies and old masters?
The piece also gave me a new appreciation for Cezanne, an Old Master. I like the idea of a plodding artist because I am quite plodding. One more level: do those who learn by plodding an experimentation prefer artists who produce their work in the same way?
more Cezanne here
The piece also gave me a new appreciation for Cezanne, an Old Master. I like the idea of a plodding artist because I am quite plodding. One more level: do those who learn by plodding an experimentation prefer artists who produce their work in the same way?
more Cezanne here
""picasso knew. gauguin knew. i know. bob knows. it's about getting there, never being there." "
"Grew up" with the New Yorker, first the cartoons (Peter Arno)...then the articles..thanks for the link....
http://www.bobdylanart.com/index.php?section_id=1
" She's(he's) got everything he needs,
he's an artist, he don't look back."
http://www.bobdylan.com/#/songs/she-belongs-me
Like most of Gladwell's writing, he's on to something interesting on the surface, but the idea doesn't hold up when you give it some thought. (Blink was particularly confused, I think.) In fact, his work on expertise complicates his precocious/genius thesis, as he basically admits in a New Yorker Out Loud podcast (http://www.newyorker.com/online/2008/10/20/081020on_audio_gladwell/?xrail). We think of Mozart as the ultimate prodigy, e.g., but he had practiced a whole bunch before producing anything memorable.
The conclusion that older folks can be geniuses, too, is mighty comforting.
I agree with you about Mozart but your point supports what I took away from Gladwell (or what I wanted confirmed by Gladwell when I read him, which is perhaps closer to what I mean)-- which is to say that the divine touch of genius is not what creates great art. Clearly Mozart was a genius and his hard work gave full birth to that genius. But even the hard working Mozart was nothing like Cezanne. The idea that there are multiple paths to genius and that one is full of toil, plodding, experimentation—all qualities associated with workaday rather than genius-level activities is what I found intriguing.