Yesterday was the International Art Day and I would like to pay a small tribute to creativity that is undoubtedly within the concept of art itself. From the hand of several of the most endearing personalities in the creative world, I would like to present some very interesting anecdotes from those creative minds that inspired so many people over the years.
And what was special about those thinking minds (surely the most creative minds) that built projects and gave life to the most innovative and revolutionary ideas of their time?
Andy Warhol
Perhaps one of the most quirky and curious characters in the art world, starting with his name. The young Andrew, who was actually named Warhola, created his artistic name around 1949, when a drawing of him appeared published in a newspaper and, as a result of an error, the final a was omitted from the signature. Since then he was known as Warhol. He also had a special obsession with cats, which is reflected very well in many of his creations (including Christmas cards). It was not until his death that one of his most hidden secrets could be discovered from everyone, specifically a set of more than six hundred cardboard boxes called by himself Time Capsules. In them he stored all kinds of objects including magazines, newspapers or gifts that were released around 1987. He was someone endearing and intriguing even when it came to saying goodbye. His partner, Glenn O'Brien, chose as his epitaph “Andy died yesterday. It will never cease to amaze us », reason was not lacking.
Salvador Dalí
The name of the genius also had its important load and its history behind. Salvador was the name of the artist's brother, who died nine months before he was born. Since then he has not changed his name and decided to use it as an artistic name during his almost 85 years of life since his full name was Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech. As other curiosities we can talk about his particular phobia of grasshoppers, that he made a trip to Paris in a Rolls Royce full of cauliflowers, the white horse that went up to his room in a hotel or the inexplicable curiosity and love he felt towards the flies, although he did specify that: "Only for the clean ones, not for those that wander around the bald spots of bureaucrats, which are disgusting." Definitely, this man was surrealism made person.
Pablo Picasso
The great father of Guernica had certain very personal and not at all habitual customs and rituals. For example, he was in the habit of lying in bed for a long time each morning while listing the diseases he had one by one, a kind of litany that he repeated daily, with more or less insistence. Among the most particular data that surrounded the artist's life, we can highlight, for example, that he lived with a dog, three Siamese cats and a monkey named Monina whose routine had hobbies such as not drinking more than mineral water or milk and eating exclusively vegetables, fish, rice pudding and grapes.
Joan Miró
The great painter had one of the hardest diseases that a human being can suffer, depression. Perhaps for this reason he forced himself to perform a kind of ritual to ensure his good condition: Sport was a fundamental element in his life. He used to practice boxing, jog on the beach or jump rope, although in the afternoons he spent a period of time (no more than five minutes according to him) to take a nap.
Yoshiro nakamatsu
The inventor already holds more than three thousand patents, including the classic floppy disks. Your secret to developing so many innovative ideas? Approaching death. Yes, as you hear, this character has repeatedly put himself on the brink of death to come up with a groundbreaking idea. His technique? Diving underwater and until you get an inspiring, fresh idea, it doesn't surface. As he says, on many occasions, this moment has only come seconds before losing consciousness, something like a few seconds before dying. He ensures that when the brain does not receive oxygen, its brain activity rises to its maximum exponent. (Do not try to do this at home, please, I already see the intentions of more than one).
Thomas Alva Edison
Edison did not like to sleep as he considered it a huge waste of time, so when he felt that he had a streak of inspiration he decided to do without it. On some occasions, she would stay awake for more than 72 hours. Thanks to this mania, he managed to invent the alkaline battery or the phonograph, he claimed. He used to counteract this lack of sleep with short naps of which he claimed to wake up alert and energetic.
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
The great composer and author of The Nutcracker or Swan Lake had a terrible obsession with one of his routines, and that is that he had to walk every day for two hours without any exception, because otherwise he would be assailed by the idea that he would suffer a terrible accident or bad luck would haunt him hopelessly.
Agatha Christie
She is one of the most representative British writers of recent times, although she also had several somewhat strange hobbies, one of them was her routine when writing. On countless occasions, photographers and journalists insisted on taking a photo shoot at his workplace, that is, his desk. However, the creative claimed to write on her own lap, in bed or simply on a chair. In fact, he didn't even have a desk.
Charles Dickens
The also writer Charles Dickens could not bear that a hair on his head was out of place so they say that he always carried a comb, that he could pass it through his head hundreds of times a day.
Paul Cézanne
The pinto had a peculiarity. And he was convinced that his models always wanted to flirt with him. Furthermore, he couldn't bear to be touched by anyone. According to his friend Émile Bernard, the explanation for this aversion to physical contact is found in his childhood. Apparently, when he was very young, a child gave him such a kick in the butt as he slid down a railing that Cézanne fell to the ground. "The unforeseen and unexpected blow affected me so strongly that, after so many years, I am obsessed with it happening again," said the painter himself. Although this was not his only oddity.
Another of the most curious anecodtas of the artist is his curious habit of leaving the cutlery on the table in the middle of a meal to study the faces of the other diners under the effect of the light of the lamp, or also go down to the garden to sit and, act followed by rushing out to his study. He even was absent from his mother's funeral because he was immersed in a view of a valley at the foot of Sainte Victoire that he painted in watercolor.