The best opening paragraph to a profile of someone that I’ve read in awhile:
The most important thing about artists is that they should behave like artists. Who wants a creator who sounds like a real estate agent when you could have one who walks his pet lobster through the Palais Royal gardens on a blue silk ribbon? Responsible behavior in an artist is like modesty in a stripper: unbecoming, dispiriting and not at all what you signed up for. Today they often appear like business gurus or politicians, slick with financial nous and deep into the yoga of modern public relations, and it’s possible to forget that we once looked to the artist to ridicule our common pieties. We once had Salvador Dalí teasing his mustache and the public’s unconscious. We had Andy Warhol creating a scene, producing movies, art, fashion, offering himself as a strange and wonderful embodiment of the idea that the artist could be a work himself. Who is the Picasso of today — driving a herd of symbolic bulls through the gardens of convention and changing our idea of how to see?
His name is Not Vital.
The lines between creativity, genius, and insanity are thin – and often invisible. Brilliance emerges from the interaction.
Very well put!
Ben–love this. I think so many of us get caught up in “fitting in” (even when we’re desperately trying to stand out) and we forget to follow the lead of artists (or entrepreneurs) of the past and stop being stale and conventional.