In A Perfect World

Expanding the Boundaries of Art

Here's the online version of "By Design," a just-published magazine story of mine about three of my favorite things: art, architecture, and writing about art and architecture. Working on the piece reminded me why I like architects so much. The best ones are imaginative thinkers, capable of transforming highly conceptual ideas into functional forms -- and typically they are amazingly articulate about their visions. The story focuses on the newly expanded Virigina Museum of Art in Richmond, the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Michelle Wie Opens Her Mind

Silence your inner critic. Get out of your comfort zone. Experiment. Who knows what you might discover?

In the case of Michelle Wie, doing artwork might just be making her a better golfer. Or at least a happier one.

That's the suggestion of an interesting New York Times story this week. "When I'm drawing, the rest of the world disappears," Wie explains. "I think it just makes me really happy."

Wie, who's in her second year on the LPGA tour, is drawing and creating pieces with spray paint and watercolor. She's also extended her newfound creativity to making her own clothes and even baking vegan cookies from her own recipes.  

“Basically, I started to love trying things,” Wie said, “instead of before, I was scared of trying new things.”

Is Michelle Wie producing great art? Honestly, I think that's the wrong question. Is her creative risk-taking helping her to open her mind, prosper in her chosen profession and develop as a person? That's priceless.

What Would You Sacrifice for a Major Breakthrough?

 
What would you sacrifice to solve a problem that has stumped mathematicians for more than a century? What if, at the conclusion of your creative breakthrough, you would be deluged with generous offers from top American universities? What if you could expect a million-dollar prize for solving that problem?

Russian mathematician and genius Grigory Perelman solved the Poincare Conjecture, a complex topological problem involving how to characterize three-dimensional spheres. With an unbending focus on mathematics since childhood and a mind possessed with nearly superhuman computing power, Perelman did what no man or woman could do before. But to do it required sacrificing nearly every vestige of a normal life. Now 43, this internationally acclaimed mathematician lives with his mother. 

Masha Gessen, author of the recently published and powerfully told Perfect Rigor: A Genius + The Mathematical Breakthrough of the Century, believes that Perelman has Asperger's Syndrome, an autistic condition that has enabled his singular focus and rigorous commitment to rules. But it also has made him unable to cope with the messy reality of everyday life and the social pressures that swirled around him and his extraordinary achievement.

In fact, Gessen describes how offended and hurt Perelman was by the outpouring of offers from schools such as Princeton, Columbia and MIT that followed his celebrated triumph. Rather than enjoying the flattery, he saw this behavior as signs of the crass commercialization of math, a lack of ethics, vulgar attempts to buy him off for all his hard work.

So what did he do? He dropped out. He is said to have stated that he was quitting mathematics forever.

Whatever level of eccentricity or madness (Gessen's word) Perelman suffers, I have to say that I admire his fearless stand enormously. He's forsaken most everything for what he believes is right.

Yes, it may be a loss for mathematics and for the universities and students who could learn from him, but he's offered an enduring principle: What matters most is not the fame or the fortune. It's the work itself. 

Wrestle with Contrary Ideas for a Vital Brain

See the New York Times story about the aging brain? Remember any of the details? No? Then, it's probably a good idea to check it out. There's both good news and useful advice for keeping your mind sharp.

First, the good news: A middle-aged person, while more easily distracted and more likely to forget details, has mental gifts that younger people don't usually have. "The brain, as it traverses middle age, gets better at recognizing the central idea, the big picture," writes Barbara Strauch. "If kept in good shape, the brain can continue to build pathways that help its owner recognize patterns and, as a consequence, see significance and even solutions much faster than a young person can."

And while researchers have long believed that the aging brain suffers significant brain cell loss, Strauch says that scientists in recent years are doubting this: "What is stuffed into your head may not have vanished but has simply been squirreled away in the folds of your neurons."

So what will it take to nourish and reawaken your brain? Get out of your comfort zone, confront contrary ideas and shake those synapses. Here's what Dr. Kathleen Taylor, a professor of St. Mary's College of California and a student of the brain, says: "As adults we have these well-trodden paths in our synapses. We have to crack the cognitive egg and scramble it up."

And this: “There’s a place for information. We need to know stuff. But we need to move beyond that and challenge our perception of the world. If you always hang around with those you agree with and read things that agree with what you already know, you’re not going to wrestle with your established brain connections.”

That's good advice -- for brains of every age.

Shedding Light on The Art of The Idea

Often the strongest ideas are the simplest ones. John Hunt, author of an insightful new book called The Art of The Idea, describes two categories of people: sunrisers and sunsetters. "A sunriser gives out energy, a sunsetter sucks it away," he writes. "A sunriser goes through life open to the idea that the best may still be coming. A sunset person is heavy in the knowledge that the best is past."

Guess which kind of person suffocates creativity and which is best in a brainstorm session determined to spur fresh ideas and creative breakthroughs.

Hunt, a South African and worldwide creative director of the advertising agency TBWA, says that age has nothing to do with which category anyone falls into. In fact, Hunt, who was intimately involved in Nelson Mandela's election campaign in 1993, describes South Africa's extraordinary leader as "the most sunrise person I've ever met...Often in meetings, he'd listen to people angry about the past. When they were finished, he's agree with them. They were right, he'd say. Then he'd ask that their anger at the past not contaminate the future...Mandela knew that if he based his ideas on the evils of the past, he'd soon have a sunset country."

Hunt's short book -- filled with pithy, well-written observations and charming artwork from South African artist Sam Nhlengethwa -- aims to give room  for ideas to breathe, be it in a jam-packed meeting or alone on an airplane. It's based on his experience that original thinking really can happen in a group and that the power of an idea is not based on who owns it but how it's shared.

That's a view worth exploring. You can see an interview with Hunt on an interesting blog -- mad-blog.com-- created by TBWA to "celebrate media arts and disruption."

Mickey Mouse: Welcome to the Dark Side

Get ready for Mickey's dark side. Mickey Mouse, the nicest mouse on the planet, is about to get real. Turns out the Disney folks have finally recognized that their too-tight cling to their super-clean icon has been killing the little fella. They're planning to awaken his less savory qualities, allow him to be cantankerous and edgy now and then, maybe even make us care about him again.

That's brave for a brand that generates billions in merchandise sales. And smart, because this world-famous icon has become an increasingly irrelevant pop culture figure. Once it's all about nostalgia, it's game over.

According to The New York Times, it's starting with a new video game called Disney Epic Mickey in which Mickey "traverses a forbidden wasteland." And that's only the first step in Disney's "re-engineering" of Mickey -- the way he walks, talks, appears on the Disney Channel and interacts online. 

The game, to be released in 2010 for the Wii, has been created by developer Warren Spector and his team at Junction Point. I rarely like video games, but this one looks different. Spector, in an excellent interview with Time, describes it as a visual marriage between Tim Burton and Walt Disney. That's compelling terrain.

And Spector, a hard-core game nerd and self-described Disney freak, has pulled from the early days of Mickey Mouse, way back to 1928 and Steamboat Willie, when Mickey Mouse was a genuine troublemaker, before he was buffed up to please the widest possible audience.

"The first thing I wanted to do was put Mickey in a world where he's out of place, where he's uncomfortable and has real problems," Spector says. "We've taken him to a strange place where it's a world of forgotten and rejected Disney creativity. There's 80 years of Disney creativity that exists in the archives and we've taken all the stuff that people have forgotten about."

Mickey, Spector reminds, was modeled after the heroic adventurer figure of Douglas Fairbanks and the comic figure of Charlie Chaplin.  Back in the beginning, Mickey could be seen smoking, drinking, even abusing animals. I'm guessing Mickey as smoker, drinker and abuser won't be Disney's ticket to the future.

But as a non-gamer, I'm pretty excited to see the new world in which the reimagined Mickey travels. It sounds like it's a world that extends beyond the five-and-under set. And if Epic Mickey is just the first milestone in Mickey's rebranding, the folks at Disney may be entering a new golden era where what they create matters again. 

Gustavo Dudamel's Wild Ride

 
Get ready: The wild ride of the Venezuelan wunderkind, 28-year-old Gustavo Dudamel, has begun. The new conductor of the L.A. Philharmonic wowed a crowd of 18,000 in his free debut at the Hollywood Bowl last Saturday, then dazzled the celebs and money bunch in his official inaugural performance Thursday night at Disney Hall.  

Dudamel's arrival promises an expanded repertoire of Latin American music, an extraordinary ability to infuse his orchestra with energy and skill, and a charismatic buoyancy that excites audiences. 

Music critics were hailing his Thursday debut of Mahler's First Symphony. This from Anthony Tommasini of  The New York Times: "For all the sheer energy of the music-making, here was a probing, rigorous and richly characterized interpretation, which Mr. Dudamel conducted from memory."

But as high as musical expectations are among classical aficionados, Dudamel's potential for transforming the L.A. cultural scene is even greater. He took part in El Sistema, a Venezuelan youth orchestra that trains young children from poor backgrounds in classical music. He is passionate about sharing classical music with the widest possible public -- including kids from impoverished backgrounds -- and he's already helping develop a classical program in L.A. like the one that's made his success possible. 

As a sign of his seriousness, he opened the Hollywood Bowl premiere by conducting an orchestra of young musicians, mostly from South-Central L.A., many of whom didn't even play an instrument a year ago. "Of course, we need education," Dudamel told the crowd. "Of course, we need food. Of course, we need health care. But arts culture is the soul of the community of the world."

Anna Deveare Smith: Listening to Opposing Views

Susan Dominus has written a fine piece in The New York Times Magazine on Anna Deveare Smith, the playwright, documentarian and actress. She details the way Smith gathers dozens of points of view on a controversial subject with empathic interviewing, then chrystalizes the conversations into verbatim passages that often achieve a poetic power. 

Smith then creates one-woman shows where she transforms herself into these real-life characters. Her best known works include Fires in the Mirror, about the race riots in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, in 1992 (I saw that one) and Twilight, about the riots that broke out in L.A. after the acquittal of police involved in the Rodney King beating. One minute she's Al Sharpton at his most fiery, the next minute she's a soft-spoken Jewish lady.

That takes talent, but that's not what matters most.

In my experience, the cumulative impact from hearing the differing viewpoints in a single session can be profound: First, understanding for the other side, even when you disagree; and, then, appreciation for the essential humanity of people struggling with issues that are complex and painful. That's big, and damned hard to achieve.

This month Smith is opening a new show about healthcare and the human body  -- called Let Me Down Easy -- and I can't think of any subject where the need for rational dialogue between opposing viewpoints is more crucial. She can't get that one out fast enough.

Unexpected Connections: Mikhail Gorbachev and Louis Vuitton

In the last few years, I've been writing and editing stories dealing with the luxury world -- mostly in travel, fashion, art and culture. The goal has been to produce well-crafted stories highlighting creative excellence and emerging cities experiencing a massive infusion of money and talent (think Moscow and Beijing). This stuff interests me, and, yes, I expected this could be a long-term plan for continuing and well-paid work.

Be still my beating heart: The world does not always operate according to your plan.

That was before last year's crash, of course, back when advertisers and magazines and high-end brands spent freely and risked the unexpected. (Remember that old principle? You have to spend money to make money?)

And that was back when Louis Vuitton produced a breathtaking ad -- Mikhail Gorbachev sitting in the backseat of a Rolls Royce, an LV leather bag at his side, gazing out at a section of the Berlin Wall.  The concept was developed in Paris and shot in Berlin by Annie Leibowitz. Donations were made to Gorbachev's Green Cross International and Al Gore's The Climate Project.

For me, it was really an extraordinary reminder of how much the world had changed. That the former leader of the Soviet Union could now be involved in an advertising campaign with a luxury fashion brand. That the old alliances are not the new alliances. That power has changed hands. That a former Communist boss felt free enough to reflect on his loss of influence and engage in a most unlikely partnership -- for all the world to see. 

I want to remember that fine work and share it with you here.