It was once said of Edward Hopper the American painter who gave us "Nighthawks"-- you know, the painting of the late night diner where the server is bending under the counter to grab a drink for a couple of lonely patrons--that, and I'm paraphrasing: "He is, for sure, a horrible painter, but if he were any good at painting, he'd probably wouldn't be such a great artist."
Hopper, as eloquently put by the vox populi of Wikipedia, was the anti-thesis of Norman Rockwell. Where Rockwell "exulted in the rich imagery of small-town American", Hopper interpreted the same scene through the lens of "forlorn solitude."
Hopper employed rough brush strokes and on close inspection he seems to have had a poor grasp of shadow, perspective, and depth.
Sure, he's a better painter than 99% of the general population, but he's a worse painter than 99% of the artists who did that for a living.
But when you think of the most important American artists of the 20th century, Hopper is right up there with Rockwell, Jackson Pollack, Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, and the ilk.
He's a great artist and a bad painter.
So what made him a great artist? His ideas.
Reminds me of this critique of graduate-level graphic design. There was this one professor, famous guy by the name of Bob Gill. Real legend in his field.
One by one he would look at the student's work and ask them questions like: "Why the hell would you do that? That's horrible."
One student's magazine spreads "lacked adequate vocabulary."
Another student was "too sensible." Sensible is a quality of "insurance salesmen" and "accountants", not graphic artists.
And another student had created a logo for her department, which he labeled, and this is a direct quote: "career suicide."
The problem with the logo wasn't that it was ugly. It was decent. It was actually, a little pretty. The problem with the logo was that it had no idea. It wasn't saying anything. And if you do art without saying anything, then what's the point?
Gill instructed the girl, and by now everyone was locked into every word he said, to "think of the idea first, think of what you want to say, and then the design will present itself."
And that's exactly what Hopper was good at. He had a very strong idea about American life as lonely and depressing, and his art was a natural, expression of that theme.
So what does this all have to do with the English language?
Well, when people ask me, "are you a writer?", I like to say no, even though, obviously, I am a "writer."
In actuality, I'm an artist, it's just that the form that my art takes is words. I don't like writing, per se, I like expressing ideas.
If I knew how to express my ideas with a paint brush or an Irish jig, I might be a painter or a Riverdancer.
I'm like a Hopper. If you had commissioned Hopper to paint your family portrait, when he was done, you'd probably want your money back. You'd say: "This guy is famous? My nephew in high school paint class could do better."
And you'd be right.
And if you asked me to write your family biography and I handed you a manuscript nine months later, you'd probably smack me in the face and sue me for incompetence.
I'm not so much a good writer, which is, for me, a positive thing, because if I was, I probably wouldn't be able to express my ideas.
If anything, I owe my writing style to a long history of communicating with people who do not understand English, and therefore have cultivated in me, a contempt for the use of finer English.
When you're talking to a New York intellectual, you can say something like: "He refused to capitulate to my demands."
This is an abstract statement, involving the immediate interpretation of a rich word like "capitulate."
But when you're talking to an international student, all that vocabulary, all your fancy brush strokes, go right out the window. What you've got to rely on is sheer expression, basic images.
The same idea to a non-native speaker would be this: "I'm big gorilla. He's little gorilla. There's only one banana. I said, 'It's mine.' He said, 'No!' "
If someone were to listen to me speak that sentence, they'd probably think I was mentally retarded or something. It's absolute horrible English.
"Big Gorilla. Little Gorilla. Only One Banana. Me want. He say no."
But it's good communication.
"He said no to me, even though I was bigger. Brave little gorilla. Mean big gorilla."
Why is a good expression of an idea?
Because it uses images, which are engaging and activate the imagination, instead of abstraction, which is confusing and slows down narratives.
Because it stems from one basic idea of what needs to be said, and lets the form present itself.
Because it's art and not writing. |
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