Bottom of the T: Michelangelo & Carrara Marble
I just learned that Michelangelo spent of a total of four years of his life in the quarries of Carrara. (The smart move would be to do the pretentious white guy thing and say, “this morning I was reminded of a tidbit from art history”, but . . . I’d get caught.)
Anyway, biographers piecing together his pre-40 life have added up all his visits to the quarries and they total four years. During that time, he oversaw the cutting of pieces of marble he would use and just hung around in an area that he thought was beautiful talking to the stonecutters, observing marble in different lights throughout the day, learning different properties of the material.
This is working deep at the bottom of the T. Calling Michelangelo or Leonardo a t-shaped person seems awful. But, in an age where we are celebrating generalism, calling everyone a creative, and craving constant innovation, it seems important to remember how great artists stay great, Michelangelo at the quarries, Leonardo dissecting corpses for decades, Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane doing hours or scales and long notes every day throughout their professional lives. In a different vein you have Picasso’s legendary examination of the African statue and the bracing effect of Matisse’s late in life return to exaggerated colors and shape.
Working deep in one’s craft re-opens old assumptions, turns accepted answers into invigorating questions and can lead to something new.
Photo credit: Zephyrbunny on Flickr.
[…] Anyway, that close connection to material — which strikes me as a result of closely working and experimenting with them — as a source of inspiration, quality, and innovation is a theme near and dear to me. So, I clipped the movie and encourage would-be innovators and inventors to check it out. Moog the man is charming, engaged, lives a full life, and could be a more earth-bound person to learn from than Steve Jobs, Edison, and other lofty luminaries. […]