Maurice Sendak Illustration by Tony Millionaire |
Wisdom from Maurice Sendak, wonderfully interviewed not long before his death by British author and journalist Emma Brockes in The Believer:
I’m totally crazy, I know that. I don’t say that to be a smartass, but I know that—whatever that means—it’s the very essence of what makes my work good. And I know my work is good. Not everybody likes it, that’s fine. I don’t do it for everybody. Or anybody. I do it because I can’t not do it.
Of course, doing it because one can’t not do it doesn’t guarantee the value of the work. Not in visual art, not in writing. But it is the foundation.
Artists who create for others, poets who write for fame or self-esteem, to cultivate a “lifestyle,” to maintain tenured status, writers who if given an excuse not to write will stop writing—how good can their work ever be?
Making art is an obsession—or nothing. Worse than nothing: an empty obligation….
what they gonna do when<br />at 72 years old, re-tired and<br />broken-down<br />running on mostly fumes<br />and when they look<br />back find that they've<br />become<br />what they've pretended to be ?<br /><br />"crazy" ? damn few of us left ….<br /><br />(sending you a photo of some new work<br />I had to throw out the last of my furniture<br />to make room for my