"Great Artists Ship"

I was reading Walter Isaacson’s book on Leonardo da Vinci, in which apart from the man’s life (obviously), describes many of his paintings and the techniques used. Now it’s one thing for a lot of effort, analysis, and practice to have gone into a work of art, but if the viewer needs to be told how to appreciate a painting, then something’s not right… I guess that’s why I’ve never liked any of Leonardo’s paintings. Give me the works of Norman Rockwell, van Gogh, and Leonid Afremov any day.

 

But just as Michelangelo is the synonym for artistic genius, Leonardo’s Mona Lisa is the synonym for best painting. I realized this when my 9 yo daughter was painting on canvas a mountain-lake scene from a YouTube video. Given how good the painting on the video was, I told my daughter to take her time, even spread the effort over a few days if needed. She whirled around and asked, “Why? How long did it take to paint the Mona Lisa?”

 

Thanks to that book I was reading, I knew the answer. “16 years”, I said. She was stumped. Round 1 to me.

 

She spent 2 hours on it (a lifetime from her perspective), used painting knives in addition to all her brushes, and here’s what she came up with:

Round 2 to my daughter. We’ll call this one a draw.

 

In a rare instance of being brutally honest about herself (not someone else), she admitted that the 2 green patches in the foreground didn’t come out so well. That’s OK, kiddo, it’s still better than Leonardo’s works. Plus, unlike Leonardo, who kept the Mona Lisa with him, never convinced it was done, you “shipped” your painting out for others to see. And as Steve Jobs said, “Great artists ship”.