Archie Rand - Basic Drawing Part 1

Intro

Upon a painter friend’s suggestion, I took Archie Rand’s basic drawing course in my last semester of college. Having taken all science and math till that point, this course altered the trajectory of my life and opened the visual arts to me. To make his subject come to life, Rand taught drawing through the eyes of artists, telling their stories as we worked. He structured his impromptu stream of consciousness talks like ‘Lives of Artists’ by Vasari.. but the discussion encompassed a lot more than just Renaissance artists. From Michelangelo to Pollock and Ingres to Picasso, Rand provided an mesmerizing introduction into the arts that would eventually lead me into architecture.  If I were to teach art or architecture, I would try to emulate Rand.

Judging Art

Jazz stations don’t announce their sets anymore. What’s the point? The point is that bit of information is the entranceway to aesthetic appreciation. 

TS Eliot - Mediocre art is imitation, good art is stealing.

You can paint so that the greatest number of people enjoy your work, but that’s no good because the standard of the general public is low. But when nobody appreciates your work, then it’s likely that it’s no good either. But if it strikes one person, it’s probably good. It means it has communicated something to the viewer. If it weren’t for Theo van Gogh, Vincent wouldn’t have had a viewer. Theo wasn’t crazy, he got it. 

“Mr Rand, how can you calmly criticize all these great artists (Ingres was an academician, etc…)?” Rand replied, “the  teacher in Welcome Back Kotter was a great standup comic. So he had a joke about a son and his mother. He asked her “What does childbirth feels like?” She says “Oh it’s easy”. “But what does it feel like”. So she says, “just stick out your lower lip”. The son sticks out lower lip and says “It’s this easy?” “Now pull your lip over your head.”

Breaking down what you believe

He commented on the Bohr Einstein correspondence over Einstein’s theory of relativity. Bohr was a pure academic: a pure product of the hierarchical nature of German academics, that is— all knowledge has foundations. He kept questioning Einstein how he came up with his theory. (Einstein was only in his 20’s) Finally Einstein replied “ I simply chose to ignore an axiom (what if there were no gravity).”

At Bell Labs, they commissioned a group of scientists to work on any project they pleased. One scientist would observe his smoke rings and the currents of the water flowing in the stream. The other scientists asked if he was crazy and replied, “how can you predict the shape of the rings, the directions of the currents, future weather, etc… he had come up with fractals.  

There were 3 statisticians at a duck hunt. The hunter fired a shot. 
Statistician 1: the show went 6 inches under. The hunter fired another shot. 
Statistician 2: the shot went 6 inches over. 
Statistician 3: I think we have a hit.