Saturday, January 03, 2009

Amateurs ...

... and amateurs: What They Do for Love. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Winston Churchill is a good example of the serious amateur. When not busy saving the Western world, Churchill loved to paint and did it surprisingly well. Had his life followed a different course, he might possibly have evolved into a second-tier post-Impressionist painter of real quality. Instead he became a politician, one so famous and powerful that there was no shortage of people willing to tell him that he was a better artist than he was. Yet Churchill took great care not to allow himself to fall into the trap of letting such praise turn his head. He never sold his canvases, and rarely signed them or allowed them to be exhibited. In "Painting as a Pastime," one of his wittiest and most insightful pieces of writing, he displayed his essential modesty toward the "delightful amusement" that gave him so much joy: "We must not be ambitious. We cannot aspire to masterpieces. We may content ourselves with a joy-ride in a paint-box."

3 comments:

  1. In one of David Niven's great books he tells of William F. Buckley's being his neighbor in Switzerland.

    Although Buckley was an accomplished author, editor and TV host, he was an amateur painter.

    Niven wrote that he had a great painter as a house guest (I don't recall who it was), and Buckley wanted to show his paintings to the great man.

    Niven suggested that he not do so, but Buckley insisted.

    The great man looked at Buckley's paintings closely for a few moments, and said "Poor paint."

    Paul

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  2. Very foolish move on Buckley's part. It reminds me of the time, many years ago, when Charles Stegeman, then the head of the art department at Haveford College - and a fine painter - was over my house and we stood together looking at a large, somewhat surreal painting in my dining room (in my house in Germantown, where I then lived), which now is hanging on the wall behind where I sit. It was painted by an old friend of mine, Dan Murphy - a PAFA grad. After a few minutes of careful looking, Charles remarked that "I don't know if I like it, but whoever painted it knows how to paint."

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  3. And I suppose the same goes for wriing?

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