What Are We Fighting For?
Approximately fifteen years ago, I stumbled upon a book by prominent Russian graphic designer Yana Frank, Diary of a Maniac Designer. It was a fun read, but two chapters about inner discipline and big projects particularly resonated with me. As I didn’t find the English version, here is my free translation.
What were we fighting for?
By Yana Frank.
I was very lucky. In Berlin I met and became friends with Abdullah, the owner of a carpet shop, who had been born in Baghdad in 1904. From the age of nine to nineteen, he lived and studied at a Sufi school where children were taught the craft of carpet-making as a path of spiritual development.
One day I asked Abdullah what he thought of the classical school of drawing. I myself had always held the masters of academic drawing and painting in great respect, and I constantly found myself involved in discussions about whether classical training stifles an artist’s creative impulse. I used to console myself and others with the thought that one’s own hand and individuality would break through the acquired techniques anyway, and I believed that it was better to depart from the rules only after first learning them. Some of those who argued with me said that spending ten years learning to draw by the rules only to later do one’s own thing was a waste of time. They warned that one never really escapes the oppression of school, and that works created under the influence of strict canons become rigid and lifeless. Others agreed that the lack of training would be noticeable to viewers and would trouble the artist, while personal achievement could not in any case be hidden behind perfect draftsmanship, flawless color, and impeccable shadows.
It seemed that what artists feared most was the loss of the uniqueness of their own face, its features threatened with disappearance inside the rigid framework prescribed by school. Studying the laws and laboriously acquiring technical mastery came to seem almost like self-destruction, the erasure of one’s own personality.
Wanting to resolve these doubts, I turned to Abdullah with a question: “What will I gain by learning to draw everything exactly as it is? I understand that depicting what you see with photographic accuracy is very difficult, but that is not what great artists are valued for. It is well known that almost anyone can be taught to draw perfectly, though it takes enormous effort. Why spend so many years on it, if creative flight consists precisely in breaking the rules? It cannot be that all of this is done for the sake of a single moment when everything that has been acquired is lightly thrown away as unnecessary! Especially since this usually does not happen, and people who have gone through all the torments of a good education do not stray very far from tradition afterward.”
Abdullah replied that this is done in order to arrive at a great dead end and, for the first time in one’s life, experience a feeling that is only an echo of the soul’s true freedom, yet leaves an indelible impression on everyone. By way of example, he told me the story of how he had learned to make carpets.
After ten years spent in school, every student knows how to weave flawless Arab carpets. For some, the work comes easily. Others struggle from the first day, and it does not become easier for them even many years later. The “clever ones” are eager to create something of their own, to invent something special before they have fully mastered what is in the curriculum. There are also those who want nothing beyond learning to do the work well and beautifully, so that no one can find fault with it and it will bring good money. All of them arrive at the same result: the ability to weave very good carpets. The final examination is the making of a carpet of the highest degree of complexity, of the finest quality, even, dense, with numerous traditional patterns whose meanings are known to the students, as are the rules governing their combination.
There is no point in departing from the canon. All the elements have already been stylized in the best possible way, and attempts to change their form lead to worse results. The same is true of colors, palette, and composition: any deviation from tradition seems suspicious both to masters and to buyers, because it jars the eye and appears less harmonious than the well-developed old forms. Everything that could be invented has already been invented, developed, resolved, and done. Every graduate of the school knows the laws, and knows them perfectly. Everyone has learned to do the work. How do they differ from one another now? In no way.
So it turns out that the highest degree of mastery is the ability to weave carpets exactly as dozens, perhaps hundreds or thousands of other masters do. Exactly the same. Not better, not faster, not more beautiful or more interesting. Ordinary traditional carpets - how boring that seems! What has the person become who has received the title of the greatest master of his craft? A craftsman who does the same thing as his colleagues and differs from them in nothing.
Having gone through a hard school, learned hundreds of rules, and mastered a multitude of skills, he has acquired nothing special - every other graduate possesses the same in the same degree. There is not the slightest trace of any individual style breaking through the traditional patterns. Many cannot reconcile themselves to this state of affairs and continue searching for some hidden way out, hoping that things are not really so, that they simply have not yet found the essential thing, the thing that will change everything for the better. But the conclusion remains the same: great mastery consists of nothing. Having become a true master, each of them has become nobody. Having achieved everything in their craft, they achieve nothing.
Once outside the doors of the school, with the title of master and a stunning craft in their hands, the former students begin to ask themselves what they should do next. Having said farewell to thoughts of their own exceptionalism, they rid themselves of numerous illusions and, for the first time, taste true freedom: something incomparable, and yet still only a foretaste of what they are yet to experience. Realizing that they can do nothing, the young masters discover that they are capable of everything.
Whoever has no illusions has no tears.
With these words, Abdullah finished his story.