Daddy Wouldn't Buy Me a Bauhaus by Janet Abrams

Author:Janet Abrams [Abrams, Janet]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
Published: 2020-09-01T03:22:20+00:00

Hoping to steer back to safer ground, I ask which pieces of work he’s most pleased with, meaning, of course, his own work. The answer, needless to say, is indirect.

“I don’t know. If I’d done this”—he points toward a lively abstract print by Henryk Tomaszewski on the wall behind me—“I’d probably be most pleased. I’m going to use it in my next book as an example. I think it’s terrific.”

Why?

“Here, I have this little note and I was going to print it.” He rummages on the desk for a scrap of paper, then reads aloud: “Better to be silent and have folks think you are a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.”

He looks up. “If I start talking about it, then maybe I’d better not. I think it’s obvious.”

But what’s obvious? Why is it terrific?

“The colors. They happen to be the colors I always use, red and green. The way it’s done. The idea, which is very expressive of circus activities...calisthenics, twirling and twisting. This childlike quality that it has. Not childish. The distinction is tremendous. It has all the good qualities that children have: honesty, spontaneity. Most people who try to imitate that kind of stuff do lousy drawings, rather than understanding the spirit of childlike drawings, I mean, as in [Paul] Klee, [Pablo] Picasso, [Joan] Miró. Picasso said about Miró that he ought to stop playing with his hoop. In other words, grow up. But I think Miró was a genius, as was Picasso.”

For Rand, as for his heroes, childhood creativity is still vivid. “I always drew. Since I was a little kid—three or four years old. During the First World War. I used to use a chair as a drawing table. I’d sit on a little tiny stool or on my knees, and draw soldiers and trenches and photographs. My education was mostly from books and magazines, not from teachers. I used to be so admiring of people, I would stand in the rain, I would just stand there looking, for hours, in the drugstore, for example, or the gasoline station.” Rand studied with George Grosz for a while when the German artist first came here, at the Art Students League. “He didn’t even speak English. He would say a few simple words. But design I just picked up. From libraries, bookshops. From magazines. German magazines.”

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