I had the honor of interviewing Milton Glaser for Communication Arts Magazine's 50th Anniversary of their magazine which released in their March/April issue. Here are some excerpts from that interview:
CB: I would like to talk about your new book Drawing is Thinking.
MG: The idea is to experience the book as a melodic line instead of as a narrative, like a comic book without the words. The idea of the book was connections to be made intuitively and subconsciously and so there is one narrative that goes throughout. One image moves to the next one in some kind of relationship. And there is a secondary thing that happens when the facing pages comment on each other.
CB: (paging through the book) Yes, you definitely go into a dream space and just let your imagination roam, being that there are no words. I really like that. This is beautiful!
MG: I came to a decision not too long ago: That in your mind, the experience of art and experience of meditation are very related; that they each free you from the incessant chatter of the brain that you can’t control and allow you to experience reality without the interference of judgment. When you meditate you basically stop judging and in the act of not judging you can find that you see clearer, because judgment is an impediment to perception. The idea in the book is to have an experience like that—where the relationships are not literary but where they are implicit...and where your brain moves them. The brain has to be moved to actions and what moves the brain to action are puzzles and difficulty. You have to activate the brain.
CB: Did you consult neuroscientists on this as well?
MG: One of my best friends is Gerald Edleman who now heads neuroscience at Scripps Institute in La Jolla, but I have been interested in how the brain works for many years. Art has a role in survival but I never was able to quite figure out what that role is and now I think it is attentiveness. The Buddhists talk about attention, which means seeing without precondition. When you are meditating you are in a state of attention. And I think in the presence of art, you also are in a state of attentiveness. That means paying attention to where you are and understanding your reality. So then you can understand why attentiveness is related to human survival—being aware of where you are and what you are doing. And if that is the case, then I thought—there is the other component: beauty.
CB: What is the role of beauty?
MG: Beauty is a trick of nature to move us toward attentiveness in the same way that sexual desire is a trick to move us toward producing children. The aesthetic seems to be in our genetic code. Nature used attentiveness.
CB: What do you think the future of beauty is?
MG: It doesn’t go away. There is an argument of what beauty is. We respond as a species; we have always responded to beauty all through history, whatever the standard was. I think that is the role of the aesthetic. Because it is all related to how the body functions; you cannot separate the mind from the body or the body from the mind.
CB: I had this revelation in the last body of work that I did that was centered around beauty, searching for beauty and preserving it.
MG: But if you don’t think beauty is the aim, it changes your perception. It seems to be that in most of the philosophy around art, beauty was the objective and I don’t think this is true. Beauty is the means by which you move towards attentiveness. And art does have its purpose and that is for survival.
Drawing illuminates the brain. It activates the brain through action. The act of drawing, moving the hand in response to a thought, is an essential part of brain development. There is a wonderful book, The Hand by Frank Wilson. Interesting facts: If you prevent a child from drawing when the child is young—just take the materials away—the brain develops differently. The brain develops in a certain way through the act of drawing in a way that allows it to be changed. The creation of the model that exists in the mind in a material form, is the same way that the Suzuki violin geniuses play by trying an imitation method. There must be something there that changes the brain. So that is why, in a physical way, not doing that, seems to me, is an impediment to certain kinds of brain development.
CB: You recommended Lewis Hyde’s book The Gift to me a few years ago. He claims that all of the arts are interrelated: music, dance, art, design, writing and even cooking, and that art pacifies culture and creates commonality with the passing on of their gifts. What purpose do you think artists play in society and what are the barriers that keep us from playing that role?
MG: One of the most profound barriers is the economic system where art has been transformed into a materialist object. John Berger said there can’t be any art in our time because it is impossible to think about without its material value, and the purpose of art is not about material value. All you ever hear is $40 million spent for Jeff Koons or somebody and then you realize, if that is the point of interest, you can’t examine art without its relationship to culture or its desire or needs. So now you can say that the interest in this pacifying role has basically been replaced by the idea of its preciousness. When the culture is saying that, it is very difficult to produce art. Fundamentally, it is always the same though, art functions to provide commonality.
CB: You have built a lot of partnerships and you collaborate quite a bit. You have been able to achieve independence as a creator while in the context of commerce and in the context of a group. What personal and professional attributes do you feel are necessary to be successful at convincing others of your ideas?
MG: It is a complicated thing. First, the work itself has to be right. It has to answer to the needs of your client. Then you also want to try to do it in terms where it is a benefit to you and the public. You have the responsibility to the people you are talking to, to do no harm and encourage them to see things in a different way when you can. Finally, reflect on your own capabilities and sense of righteousness. I found this quote that I have been using a lot over the last year from the Roman philosopher Horace: “The purpose of art is to inform and delight.” It is to inform and delight, not to persuade and delight and there is a difference between informing someone and persuading someone. Persuasion weakens people and informing them, strengthens them. It is a very profound distinction. It is also another reason why it is hard for me to work in advertising and I don’t do it very often. Ultimately, the profession is bound by its persuasive intent, but you have to think about what that means.
CB: What challenges do you foresee in regards to the protection and respect of authorship?
MG: I used to do a lecture on imitation, influence and plagiarism. And the problem is that these are all terms not easily defined. Influence we celebrate and everybody is interested in influence as part of the flow of human culture. Imitation we are ambivalent about, yet we still admire it in many cultures. For instance in the Chinese culture, if you can imitate something it is held in the same regard as the original and in other places where the material value is not the first thing that matters. It is the spiritual value that is more valued. Lewis Hyde said that art’s purpose is to create an atmosphere of generosity in terms of the recipient. A guy I studied many years ago, Albert Rudolph said works of art are containers of the energy of the maker and they can never be destroyed and what you see in art is the energy of the maker and that is what you get and that’s what you respond to. That seems a very vague definition of art but you can’t really improve on it. CA
To read the interview in full visit
www.commarts.comTo view more of Milton Glaser's work visit
www.miltonglaser.com
If you are in the New York City area you should check out Milton Glaser's new Exhibition : “Seeing Things” at Stony Brook University’s Avrym Gallery in Southampton. There are more than 50 works in the show with a selection of six new prints which Milton described as his Black series on display (36" x 48") as well as a a selection of smaller prints from "Drawing is Thinking." Several small works of fine art / illustration drawn from projects and personal works throughout Milton's career that are loosely associated with music, literature and the arts are also on display. In the center of the Gallery there are display cases that will contain a selection of Milton's sketchbooks highlighting observational drawings and preparatory sketches. Overall, the show is more about Milton's ability to percieve and communicate ideas with insight, playfulness, and depth of meaning through his art work and less emphasis on his graphic work with the exception of 20 posters mounted and for sale in the lobby Gallery, as well as books for sale and a keepsake poster. You may want to plan your trip out there on July 19th as there will be a film screening of “To Inform and Delight” and a Curator’s talk. The exhibition runs through Sept. 12.
