In his Treatise on Painting , Leonardo da Vinci suggested you could find new ideas by looking at stains on a wall. By looking attentively at old and smeared walls, or stones and veined marble of various colours, you may fancy that you see in them several compositions, landscapes, battles, figures in quick motion, strange countenances, and dresses, with an infinity of other objects. By these confused lines the inventive genius is excited to new exertions.
I used to set down tea bags on an index card, and turn the stain into a drawing:. Leonardo notes that Botticelli used to throw a sponge with wet paint against a wall and find a landscape inside it. This is, essentially, how Ralph Steadman starts his drawings: first, a splash of ink, then seeing what the splash of ink wants to become….
A few years ago, Tamara Shopsin, illustrator and author of the splendid Arbitrary Stupid Goal, recalled seeing a Claes Oldenburg exhibit:. It is a display case of s toy ray guns alongside homemade ray guns and found ray guns. And you go home and for a while you see ray guns everywhere — boots, toothbrush, your laptop. The same thing happened to me just from looking at the them on the internet — I was watching John Waters preview his new show, Indecent Exposure , on PBS Newshour, and….
Waters is a collector , and says he owns over 80 of his books. He keeps the catalog for Letters of Resignation beside his bed. He explained on Newshour :. You have to figure it out. Why these things happen and then suddenly this whole world up— opens up to you. You can see it in a completely different way.
The minute you start looking, the world will keep showing you pictures. Toni Morrison — Toni Morrison! No, no, no! This is precisely the time when artists go to work—not when everything is fine, but in times of dread. In his book, Artists in Times of War , the historian Howard Zinn tried to outline the relationship between the artist and society.
