‘I just invent. Then I wait until man comes around to needing what I’ve invented.’ –R. Buckminster Fuller
This is evident in the element of chance and randomness inserted into design by painters like Arp and Pollock, but, beyond that, it is evident in the larger urge, shared by poets and writers, to make a career of violations, risks, wagers. Gauguin is the original of the type, of whom Picasso is the most famous realization, of the artist as gambler–the solitary risk-taker, indifferent to anyone’s welfare but his own and therefore capable of acts of independence and originality unknown to timid, orderly, nice people, acts that thrill and inspire new acts a century later. It is the goal of that kind of modern artist to run the red light and hit the old ladies–the old ladies of custom and convention. Where art since the Renaissance had attempted to limit luck in a system of inherited purpose and patterns, modern art demands that you press the pedal as hard as you can, and pray.
{ Excerpted by Daniel from The New Yorker }
photo { Jean Renoir by Richard Avedon, 1972 }
