From Discomfort Zone column by Shombit Sengupta in Financial Express and Indian Express
Professional CEO careers are limited in a boundary, and retirement happens. But paintings of the same CEOs are timeless. They’ll never become old or the past. Dauntless when orchestrating diverse corporate functions, from nitty-gritty internal happenings to juggling the multifarious outside environment, CEOs have something extra which made them CEOs. That’s ingenious imagination. To capture that as lasting recognition value beyond corporate work, we’ve created an exclusive Club for sensitive Painter CEOs (www.painterceo.com). Thirty six CEOs have to date spontaneously held colour in a brush to let their mind’s eye take over a canvas.
Let’s look at how the 2012 Painter CEO Club entrants painted their thoughts. Reaching Delhi’s office-cum-residence of Priya Paul, Chairperson of Apeejay Surrendra Park Hotels, I’d started arranging brushes, colours, palette, when suddenly a big dog breezed in, pounced at a tube of paint, and strode off challengingly like lion king who’s got what he’d wanted. “Don’t bother with him,” Priya said walking in. “He just wants to attract attention.” Watching a tree in her garden Priya displayed her fabulous perspective of colours, “Painting today made me happy, fulfilled and excited to do more.” Soon enough the dog quietly returned the paint in exactly the place he’d taken it from. “Seeing these beautiful colours and your colourful shirt Shombit, I feel compelled to paint you,” smiled Hari Bhartia, Jubilant Group’s Co-Chairman. His brother Chairman Shyam Bhartia walked in and looked appreciatively at Hari engrossed in painting. “Business is also creativity,” said Hari. “You need to create something all the time, make it work, make it sustainable.”
Travelling next to Thane, I found Aniruddha Deshmukh, President Textiles of Raymond, reflecting on his travels: “While I cannot put actual shape to thought, as I was painting I could visualize the outdoors I love, the sea, the forests. I’ve never done this, but I really felt it’s one of my most pleasurable moments.” Rajesh Jejurikar was Chief Executive of Mahindra Automotive Sector when he literally devoured the paints, giving life to nature and corporate promise, Mahindra RISE. “Our vehicles go through multiple terrains, greenery, water, dust and mud, to a destination close to the sun which enables people to rise.” Now President, ZEE Ltd., Rajesh said he’d enjoyed “expressing the spirit of freedom, energy and upliftment.”
“I want to capture the radiance of Om,” said Gunender Kapur, CEO, TPG Wholesale. “The beginning of everything is Om. I had just these two letters in mind. It’s been a fantastic experience.” For Sambhu Sivalenka, CMD, Amrutanjan HealthCare, “Painting is a primeval urge in human evolution. Heck, the caveman did it!” He reminiscences, “Connecting brush to canvas, some old memories came rushing back. Just like life, these involutes I’m making have a beginning and end. Painting challenges you to lose the security that comes with definition and rote, the finite numbers and cash flow statements CEOs spend time with.”
“Shombit I know you could be upto something crazy, but I didn’t think you’d go even to this length of getting me to paint,” laughed Guy Goves, President Agri Business, Deepak Fertilizers and Petrochemicals. “My painting is an expression of finding yourself in nature’s beauty, a great gift to mankind. You learn from it, gain from it, share it. To keep nature intact for our children to enjoy is of paramount importance to me today.” Geometric light is what Bijou Kurien, President Lifestyle, Reliance Retail drew, “This is a huge learning experience to use brushes, contrasting geometrical shapes, experiment with flowers, put paint on paint. Having never dabbled with paints, once you figure it out, you feel a sense of satisfaction of doing something original. There’s a parallel with the way you build companies and start businesses.”
“There’s always a storm brewing,” said Vivek Mehra, MD/CEO, Sage Publications India. “One goes away, another is waiting to happen. The question is about knowing you have the courage to ride it.” Deftly painting a mysterious purple storm he said, “I’ve not held a brush since 8th standard. It’s surprisingly like riding a bicycle, you really don’t lose touch.” Ashish Dikshit, President, Madura Fashion & Lifestyle, tried escaping this painting session since 1 year. As luck would have it, I had a meeting with Anuradha Narasimhan, Category Director, Britannia and discovered in conversation she’s married to Ashish. Anuradha sportingly collaborated with me, accepted my dinner invitation at home. Ashish was spellbound when I put colours before him, he painted wonderfully. “My expression was all about freshness, vibrancy, beautiful things, young and exciting. The experience was like any normal meeting with Shombit, unexpected, surprising, full of challenges, creativity into areas I’ve never ventured into.”
“Question mark is my favourite symbol. It’s the ovum in the womb here,” said Dileep Ranjekar, CEO, Azim Premji Foundation. He marveled at how easily paints rolled out creativity from his fingers. His wife Nandini said his circle was imperfect. While still painting Dileep explained that learning comes only when we interrogate, so the non-idyllic circle. Their husband-wife love and affection relationship was itself coming through like a painting. “More inquisitive people should be born, rebelling against the establishment, current fundamentals, seeking knowledge, change. The black spot here is like a mistake that happens and you live with,” said Dileep. “For DP Singh, CMD, Punjab & Sind Bank, this was his first attempt at painting, “I had carpentry classes in school.” His memories returned to Giverny, France, “Remember that arched bridge? I’m interpreting where Monet lived, where nature grows its own way, giving you a feeling of freedom unlike organized gardens anywhere in the world.”
Every painting of the 36 Painter CEO Club members is priceless. It arrests the CEO’s state-of-being in the most productive time of his/her professional life. Freezing these unique pieces of art into corporate memorabilia, future generations can appreciate how each CEO handled this complex, heady, industrious period. The Painter CEO Club is helping CEOs expose their embedded creative streak, so they can lead their companies towards differentiation to meet the challenges of global competition.
To download above article in PDF Exclusive Painter CEO Club of 2012
Financial Express link:http://www.financialexpress.com/news/exclusive-painter-ceo-club-of-2012/925174/0
From Discomfort Zone column by Shombit Sengupta in Financial Express and Indian Express
Similarities between art and business gave credence to the Painter CEO adventure. Corporate think-tanks spawn strategies on paperboards exactly the way a painter’s brush downloads ideas. Compare colours as artists’ ammunition to industry’s raw material procurement system for producing finished products. Liken industry’s manufacturing machine to the canvas, the transformer podium between brush-colours and artist’s mind. But the big difference is that the canvas holds one piece of art, whereas industry is mechanised to produce unlimited duplications with one mold. The art of idea generation to create differentiation is prevalent in the industrial parameter even if it’s duplicated.
Studying in Paris’ 350-year-old Ecole des Beaux-Arts, the legacy of European art, I stepped into art-sphere, but let me submit that art’s uncertainty of take-home pay drove me into the corporate world to rationalize livelihood earnings for my family. I’ve always carried my corporate strategy work into my atelier (painter studio in French) but with one disparity; as artists we work alone, in corporations we work collectively. Never having abandoned art, I could instill the entrepreneurial spirit when working together with large teams. The consultative approach of delivering big creativity in all customer touch points for the client’s business growth convinced global corporations that art pays. This artistic corporate challenge often took me from country to country.
A case in point is a call from Azim Premji’s office in 1996. Nobody knew me in India then as my first consulting work with Britannia hit the market only in 1997. Mr Premji is known as that hardcore businessman who only loves his company’s growth, growth and growth. But since he found me in 1996, I’ve experienced a certain corner of emotion in my relationship with him. In flashback I marvel at this creative minded person who was so convinced with the work we delivered, he turned his company upside-down to implement the Rainbow Flower corporate symbol with Applying Thought, changing the corporate credo from Beliefs to a Promise system with a set of 4 values as enterprise drive. Wipro’s repositioning work took me 2 years before its 1998 launch. When we recommended different platforms after researching and diagnosing the company, the management team chose the “Caring” proposal with a mother-and-child symbol. I’d explained then that IT is the engine driving Wipro’s future, but the image of all IT companies was boring, very backend industrial blue centric, whereas Wipro stood for “Essential to Intelligent” for human society. To get the whole team’s buy-in for my recommended Rainbow Flower Performing Biz Identity was proving difficult. Mr Premji was the first to totally see its colourful logic from Day 1. But in the umpteen meetings with his management team, his comments stood among other employee versions, not as the promoter’s influence. He never imposed his preference, instead made everyone fight it out. And how they all fought! Even the multi-coloured gay flag from San Francisco’s Castro District was thrown into the Rainbow Flower comparison fray. The team did extensive research with different stakeholders on the Caring and Rainbow Flower symbols, where the emotional connect and reasoning behind the Rainbow Flower proved perfect. When everybody finally converged in acceptance, to those residual dissenting voices during its international roll-out, Mr Premji commented, “You may like it, you may not like it, but you will never forget it.” That showed me Mr Premji’s excellence of emotional balance, and his extraordinary understanding of art through the business window.
So in November 2009, as the Painter CEO initiative was germinating, I zeroed in on Mr Premji. He was travelling, so I waited. Then arriving with painting materials, I readied his corporate dining table for painting. He breezed in jovially, the perfect luncheon host; then stopped in his tracks. Like a child, he immediately threw a tantrum saying he cannot paint. But in time, in-between our usual banter on different subjects, glancing oftentimes in a friendly way at the colours, canvas and brushes I’d laid out, his fretfulness was melting away. With a smile he halfheartedly attempted negotiating, when I asked him what colours he’d like. He boldly replied, “Give me green, white, blue and black.” And then I got to enjoy his self-indulgent innocence as I’ve always done in our rapport. It may be a hidden treasure between him and me. If you look at how he looked at me just after starting to paint (which I captured on video http://www.painterceo.com/participants/2011/Azim-Premji.php) this is the real Azim Premji I know, his eyes telling me, “Shombit, you are asking me to do a crazy job.” I can never forget that instant.
Nobody can imagine Azim Premji this way. He looked very differently intent as he picked up paint, made intrepid application on the canvas. I was the only person devouring his solid brush strokes against a beautiful January afternoon light dappling through bright pink bougainvillea outside the window. Another picture layer was getting crafted, like a painting, with Mr Premji busy at artistic creation against that flowery backdrop. He finished one painting, it was perfect. On his own initiative he took another canvas and started painting again. Now he was fully engrossed. He left well balanced white space around as he very precisely painted a coconut tree in a breezy atmosphere. Not over-painted, very limited strokes, graceful nature clearly emerging. His movements were emotional, indicating where to start, where to finish. Twelve years after we had repositioned Wipro, I found in Mr Premji’s painting the pictorial depiction of the same spirit of continuity of the Rainbow Flower he’d so spontaneously chosen above all else.
In today’s digital world, homogeneity is so strong that business requires huge differentiation to get better net-worth in future. Visual art always contributes towards differentiation. In this parallel I’m making between art and business, irrespective of his being a hardcore global billionaire-club businessman, Azim Premji’s emotion in art will, in my eyes, always raise his value as a man beyond business.
To download above article in PDF Emotion of a billionaire businessman
Financial Express link:http://www.financialexpress.com/news/a-billionaires-canvas/922211/0
From Discomfort Zone column by Shombit Sengupta in Financial Express and Indian Express
Among Painter CEOs who spontaneously painted on my subtle nudge, let me present Jacques Vincent. He’s the key transformer of $26 billion Groupe Danone where I’ve strategized about 200 brands since 1984. One day in 1988, I got a call that Jacques, who’d just been posted back to France, wanted to meet me, but in my atelier, not office. He arrived, and talked about the liberty of expression I’d created in the hardcore strategy of corporate requirement. I later asked what made him come to my studio. Familiar with all the work I’d done for Danone, he knew I’m a painter, so was curious to find my source of creativity. Looking around my personal painting studio, he commented that the freshness in the work I’d delivered to Danone now falls into place in his mind.
He wasn’t finished exploring the creative aspect, he said. Jacques always wanted my perspective on marketing through art. He asked me to present him how art is culturally associated with food, the parallel between the evolution of classic to contemporary art and the last 100 years’ human consuming pattern. I organized our next meeting in Foundation Cartier, an artistic seminar place in Paris’ outskirts. That he agreed to spend the whole day away from his corporate world to view business through art’s fresh perspective proves that Jacques’ business success comes from lateral thinking. I gave him my take on the trajectory of art, food and how they mesh in Western society’s culture, adding that marketing would be socio-cultural rather than statistically-driven in future. This subject snowballed in my subsequent meetings with Jacques over the years. It’s important to append here how luxury brand Cartier promotes various artists in a large gallery of collections in this sophisticated contemporary art museum. Foundation Cartier shows how business can go beyond industry to support art that’s timeless.
Another sudden call from Jacques in Brazil I’ll never forget is his asking if I could design the dress “with your type of colors” he’d wear for his daughter’s wedding. I was nonplussed. Was this hardcore Western corporate gentleman joking? I made my wonderful assistant Caroline check with Jacques’ secretary. Yes! That’s exactly what he’d requested! Some other work was bringing me to Bangalore then, so I picked up violet raw-silk material and had his suit custom-tailored in Paris. I hand-painted his tie, silk coat-pocket handkerchief and socks. He accepted everything exactly the way I’d designed them.
Can you imagine Jacques, whom everybody’s seen in corporate formal dark colours only, wearing this violet suit? People at the wedding were wide-eyed in admiration. All I can say is that it clearly exposed Jacques’ creative and daring mind, the quality that allowed him to turn around BSN of 14 verticals into Danone, world leader in dairy products today. Jacques asking me to design his dress the way I do my paintings was an incredible demand from the Vice Chairman of a global company. I’ll always treasure this emotion. Pinned up in my office is a photograph of violet-suited Jacques hugging his beautiful daughter wearing a white wedding gown. This poignant father-daughter relationship really looks like a piece of my painting.
So when in 2010 Jacques re-visited India, and I’d helped him find some direction for Danone’s expansion here, our first year’s Painter CEO calendar was already out. Sitting in Jacques’ chamber at Shining Consulting, Bangalore, where we’ve allocated him a regular office as he prefers to conduct business from here whenever he’s in India, I invited him to join the Painter CEO club. “What’s that?” he asked. I explained my belief that CEOs are perforce creative as they magnificently manage diverse situations and people while striving for that bloated bottomline. Connecting to this credence, he readily agreed to paint in my Bangalore studio this time. I video-taped him (http://www.painterceo.com/participants/2011/Jacques-Vincent.php ) as he carefully chose brushes, colours and concentrated in painting. His attentive stance reminded me of our many meetings in Danone when he’d listen intently as I spoke on consumer value and social trends. In fact in 1995 when Jacques asked me to work for Britannia where Danone had a share then, it was the first time I was coming to work in India. From Charles de Gaulle airport to Mumbai he made me talk continuously on cultural aspects of different societies I’d worked with in the globe, and took specific notes with multiple geometric shapes. Our discussions always veered on how art and culture can influence marketing.
After painting he said it was tough, very unlike his 40 management years. “You get inspiration when you put the brush in water, the colours you see and don’t see. It’s exciting the first 15 minutes, then there’s anxiety, and creativity rises again.” Jacques’ outstanding determination came through in seamless strokes he confidently made, leaving white space at the bottom, and converging power at the top. Twenty-two years after he’d visited my atelier for the origin of freshness, his painting revealed he’s still carrying freshness, as also unique focus with which he’d made Danone deliver healthy dairy and water globally.
Wait, Jacques’ artistic inclination doesn’t end there. After painting, Jacques told me his retirement plan was starting an art gallery. I was there when his Art for Smile Gallery on 28 Quai du Louvre (www.artforsmile.com) was getting its interiors done. This incredible gallery is just behind Louvre Museum on River Seine, Paris, opposite to my art college Ecole de Beaux Arts. It has many fascinating styles from artists around the globe. When people buy a painting, part of the proceeds go to CARE France, an NGO.
Different CEOs often ask how I generated the Painter CEO idea. I’ve spent a lot of time with Jacques Vincent; this incredible story of a high level corporate leader retiring into the brightness of colours and milieu of artists is an inspiration, among others, that I’ve inherited from French society since my early career. Painter CEO is a truthful manifestation of CEO creativity which has immense value in society, much beyond their professional lives.
To download above article in PDF Art sustains beyond a distinguished corporate career
Financial Express link:http://www.financialexpress.com/news/art-sustains-beyond-a-distinguished-corporate-career/919837/0
From Discomfort Zone column by Shombit Sengupta in Financial Express and Indian Express
After 1991 economic reforms, we’ve heard many different stories on new India’s corporate battlefield. Everyday’s news upto 1997 was of tie-up after corporate tie-up. Then tie-breaks with mismatch of cultures and business intent. Most dramatic was the IT industry growth. Next, family business was breaking up for professionalism to take over. Corporate houses were making visible their big size by inventing organized retail without much experience. Most lost money like crazy, many have folded, others are awaiting multi brand FDI opening in India to sell and earn huge valuations. Among these activities, the corporate world saw no adventure in the artistic domain. Tirelessly in business was emerging the word differentiation. But differentiation is an art, so amidst it all, I was propelled into my quest for discovering art amongst business leaders.
Through my fine arts background, I’ve entered industrial business these last 34 years to deliver strategy to execution to companies across the globe. Art helped me to see end-customers in a very creative way, to disrupt my strategic delivery in branding, retail design, industrial design and upto creation of the corporate business identity that transforms a company’s outlook. One day in 2009 I was introspecting about how I’ve been selling my disquieting ideas to different CEOs worldwide. I understood then that CEOs are extremely creative. Otherwise they’d not have so liberally accepted my radical outside-in, from-the-public-park-bench ideas that invariably turned their companies around towards high growth. My analysis was that CEOs had to have creativity and caliber to orchestrate different kinds of people, employees, investors, consumers and suppliers. Handling human beings with their different quality, aspirations, requirements, while bringing high financial results, is already an art by itself. The immense chance I’ve had of working with global CEOs gave me the insight that unfurling the creativity hiding behind them would be extremely fascinating.
I have to admit my experience with Western society CEOs is that they’re always inspired by my artistic background. In many cases they’d want to have meetings in my painting studio instead of the office. Or just drop by to look at my paintings as their personal involvement with art is quite deep. One such visit was from Romain Nouffert, the chief of Lu Biscuit company. After we finished the work connected with the strategic platform for a new category of biscuits, he came to unwind in my studio in Paris. As he looked around, one of my paintings caught his attention and he asked, “Why aren’t you testing this one with the new concept?” So finally the product came out with my painting.
Victor Scherrer, CEO of Grand Metropolitan, once invited me to a restaurant when we were working on a pan European project. He’d brought along some textured sketch paper, brush and black ink. While eating, he suddenly displayed everything on the table and said, “Don’t hesitate to sketch whenever you want.” Sitting at Le Doyen, one of Paris’ most renowned restaurants in Champs Elysees, he knew exactly how to tempt me to create. Later, visiting his beautiful chateau I found he’s a great collector of art, but here he wanted to experience an instant art session on the dining table. I’d gone to the restaurant in a corporate mindset, but he turned it around to become totally creative. Our discussion on the project thereafter took on quite a new and lateral angle, all because we both went into a tangent, spellbound with art over dinner.
My Christmas gift to my client CEOs one year was a sketch book and set of sketch pens. My message was, “Design yourself.” You can’t believe the response I got. Many of them expressed how positive and different they felt drawing sketches, and most of them sent me their striking creations. These instances of interfacing Western world CEOs with art culminated in my strong belief that CEOs would surely have some painting talent. That started my Painter CEO journey (www.painterceo.com). In the last three years, we’ve been honoured with 36 CEOs participating in an adventure to discover their creative expressions. They were initially quite anxious, but their wonderful artistic output validates my belief about their creative abilities. Let me share their painting sessions so you can imagine them beyond the corporate world.
Arriving in Mahindra Towers, Mumbai, pulling my big trolley suitcase, got me bemused looks. Upon reaching Mr. Keshub Mahindra’s office, I had to convince all who wanted to help take the suitcase away for safekeeping while I met the Chairman, that I absolutely wanted it in his room. They indulged me. Mr. Mahindra, totally surprised to see the big suitcase, joked in his genial way about bringing in the holiday spirit. When I spoke of a painting session, he thought I’d come to show him how I paint. I proceeded to his table, cleared it up to accommodate the canvas, colors and brushes. “You want me to paint?” he asked incredulously. When I smiled in the affirmative, he continued looking at me, at a loss for words. Then slowly, very deliberately, he took up the brush, started with colors, and was lost in high engagement in his painting session. He created a human attitude with multiple layers of soft colors. He left a lot of white space at the edges, concentrating on the subject that looked quite dreamlike. I captured his absorption with my movie camera, moving from here to there. He was so engrossed, he wasn’t looking anywhere else. He did exactly what we artists do in the atelier, he even wiped his face with the small towel I’d given him to wipe the brushes. At the end he said, “I’ve never done this before in my life.” The whole painting reflects his generosity, his focus and the incredible humane behaviour of Keshub Mahindra.Take a look at him in this link http://www.painterceo.com/participants/2010/Keshub-Mahindra.php. I’ll promise you more instances of Painter CEOs in the coming weeks.
To download above article in PDF CEOs are fabulous painters
Financial Express link:http://www.financialexpress.com/news/ceos-are-fabulous-painters/916859/0
How can you create an apparel brand that commands premium price and gains the consumer’s high pride of ownership so she/he returns to it and influences others in society? Visual art is the only tool that changes the character of fabrics. It embellishes the shopper’s mind with bigger than life images to create the lifestyle trend. Anybody in the world can do apparel business with 5 elements, fabrics, limited texture, color, cut and fit. But unless fabrics are transformed into the imagination metaphor, it’s not a fashion brand. Most Indian apparel brands suffer from missing out on this visual art effect.
Genesis of dressing style: Fashion as we know it today originated from European monarchy’s obsession with visual art. Royalty patronized art and desired differentiation from their subjects. France’s 18th century Queen Marie Antoinette wore strikingly different dresses with daily advice from designer Rose Bertin, known as Minister of Fashion. The Queen’s radical, often disturbing fashion gave her visible force and autonomy outside tradition. Her provocative "robe a la polonaise" had a bosom-enhancing bodice, billowy, ankle-baring skirts, a 3-foot powdered hair "pouf" decked with plumes and veils. Even when she rode to her death by guillotine, Marie Antoinette wore a brand-new white chemise she had secretly saved, a white fichu around her shoulders, and a pleated white cap to dazzle the thousands of citizens who watched in stunned silence. Her exquisite sense of visual art made her apparel sophisticated and visually differentiated from the masses and this left a grand memoir of fashion.
Democratization of fashion: In Paris in 1846, Englishman Charles Frederick Worth democratized royalty’s search for individualism by starting haute couture, the ultimate in high fashion for royals and the rich. The haute couture label belongs to France, possibly because it was invented from French monarchic heritage. Today, haute couture dresses have been known to take upto 900 hours (100 days) to create, with multiple interventions by artistic craftsmen working with the principal designer to show that single dress on the fashion ramp for just 120 seconds. Visual art is exposed in every square inch of such a dress, with beads, sequins, different textured embroidery and blend of colors. Visual art then takes that garment into another sphere for public presentation to create an impact beyond imagination.
Haute couture is always presented as a piece of visual art on a model in the catwalk. To make a statement about the intellectual-artistic construction of a particular idea, the designer plans the order in which each model walks out wearing a specific outfit in his collection. It is then left to the audience to visually deconstruct each outfit, appreciate its detail and craftsmanship, and understand the designer’s thoughts. Contemporary designers produce their shows as theatrical productions using elaborate sets of artistic technology components with live music to make the garment totally hallucinating on the fashion ramp. You may say the dress is just a single element in the show, but this is not true. Represented with visual art, the dress on the model becomes so powerful that it stays on in people’s mind even if they cannot afford it.
Sketchy visual art for fashion: Dressmaking was not fashion in the 19th century, it was considered low class, just a matter of cut and fit. In the 1920s when European fine art was booming, visual art brought fashion onto the drawing board. Designers like Gabriel Coco Chanel made drawings and sketches of garments for selective society. Her 1931 sketch “White Satin” shows how she generated fashion through visual art. Yves St. Laurent was inspired by Pablo Picasso’s paintings, Coco Channel’s designs among other contemporary art influences. His 1976 collection is based on the 1920s abstract costumes created for Ballet Russe by painter Leon Bakst. The illustrative drawings of Chanel, Dior, YSL transported fashion from royal individualism to a larger clientele.
Industrialization of fashion through visual art: Everybody cannot afford haute couture which is fashion’s window to just build a brand’s image. Prominently using visual art, these styles are made into prêt-a-porter (ready-to-wear) through industrial production systems for mainstream markets. In 1971 the first St. Laurent Rive Gauche (Left bank of Paris) showroom opened to woo less affluent consumers. In today’s huge market of mass fashion, even low cost brands are injecting high aspiration by creating outstanding trendy looks with visual art.
Visual art for mass fashion: Mass fashion brands like FCUK, ZARA, H&M among others do not have a designer’s name. To compensate that, every customer touch point at the retail store, such as visual merchandising, façade, shelf, fixtures, is interwoven with visual art. In New York’s Fifth Avenue, a jewellery store in a high rise building has colourful balloons and huge metal cones, atop which are finger rings that sparkle in laser lighting. Shoppers cannot see the rings from 200 meters, but the display looking like a modern art painting, attracts them.
From Marie Antoinette to haute couture, prêt a porter to mass fashion, it all happened with visual art, drawings and sketches that have nothing to do with measuring and fitting. Visual art conceptualized fashion, translated fabrics to style, made a grand spectacle with models catwalking the ramp in the backdrop of technology, music and mood. Even at the retail, from in-store ambience, lighting, character of mannequins, the bag shoppers will carry home the garments in, all comprise visual art that defines the brand’s personality. A shopper pays a higher price, particularly in men’s apparel, from the visual art impact he carries in his mind as pride of ownership for the brand. A fashion brand that’s associated with regularly changing visual art makes the shopper feel he’s wearing this unlimited creative sense in his body. This is what transforms fabrics into a fashion brand.
Shouldn’t Indian apparel brands incorporate visual art as part of their strategy too? They need to exit the vicious cycle of improving backend management with fabrics, limited texture, color, cut and fit to price engineer the product for hard discount sales, and instead enter the unlimited avenue of visual art in fashion.
To download above article in PDF Please Visual art transforms fabrics to fashion
The Indian EXPRESS/ The Financial EXPRESS article
“Your article seems to reflect 3 stages of your life,” wrote a reader of my last column piece, Culture Connect Marketing. That has inspired me to write personal life-stage experiences in my next three articles: this first one on the struggling artist; second, the stupid NRI; and third, my consulting intellectual blah-blah stage.
From experiencing Kalipodo Dey’s miraculous ointment in Kolkata’s crowded suburban train, I landed into the Paris metro in 1973. Rushing in, I stepped on a passenger’s toe, very apologetically looked at her and said, “Merci.” When she frowned, I suddenly realized my blunder; I was supposed to say “Pardon,” the other French word I’d learnt. In complete embarrassment I longed for the station, abruptly got off to escape her, and continued my journey in the next train.
To fulfill my artist’s dream, I convinced my mother to buy me Air India’s Rs 2,700 youth fare Delhi-Paris-Delhi ticket. In those days, India government allowed $8, and $200 called FTS, for traveling abroad. I could only afford $8. To collect the foreign exchange I had to take my passport to the Reserve Bank. Being unsure how to handle things, I asked a Kolkatan classmate to accompany me. Our art college had 2 types of students, villagers like me, always very shy and scared of making mistakes, and the savvy Kolkatan who knew everything. My classmate insisted on taking Kolkata’s only automatic elevator installed at the Reserve Bank, but I refused. I’d been observing small town people like me bravely trying to get on, hesitating, failing and timidly taking the staircase; I didn’t want to become the public laughing stock too. But little did I know then that on disembarking in Paris, direct from my refugee colony outside Kolkata, I’d face a similar problem. This time it was a flat, automated moving road inside the airport terminal. With a thumping heart I’d awkwardly advance my leg on it, and retreat immediately in fright. Several Air India air hostesses passed me by without paying any attention. I didn’t speak any French, only tattered English. Suddenly a French woman appeared, held my hand, and taught me how to walk on a road that moves relentlessly.
Underprivileged people don’t have much scope or choice in life, so they struggle to take whatever’s easily available. For 95% of such people, it’s very difficult to take a visionary step to create a new scope. Being part of this situation, an art student with no promising future, I had to take the big risk to venture out of struggling times. I left for Paris with $8 in my pocket, courage in my heart, an ambition to be an artist and earn to improve my family’s living condition. I didn’t know a soul in Paris, but had heard of a Bengali scientist called Dr. CK Pyne who didn’t know me at all. After negotiating the airport’s moving road, I directly arrived at Dr Pyne’s laboratory on a cold November day. I’ll never forget his incredible generosity. He heard my story and gave me shelter without questioning who I was; it turned out he was an art lover too. Had he been on holiday that day, I don’t know where I’d have been today.
Living in Dr. Pyne’s 13th District apartment in rue Champs de l’Alouette, I went out the next day for toothpaste. Dr. Pyne even gave me 300 francs to live on, saying I could repay him when I started earning. At the supermarket I gestured teeth cleaning and was shown Colgate. But I wanted to buy something different from Colgate which I’d seen enough of in India. So I gestured the cleaning action more vigorously with my hands and people directed me to another shelf in the store. I returned with a large sized toothpaste tube and kept it in the toilet. After dinner I opened the packet and found the tube integrated with a brush that was round, sponge type. When I squeezed, the paste came onto this, and I put it in my mouth to clean up. I kept brushing and brushing, but there was no lather, the color was brown, and I was getting a waxy feel in the mouth. I felt shy to talk to Dr. Pyne about this strange toothpaste but mentioned how very different toiletries are in France. “I’ve seen your purchase in the toilet, I hope you haven’t put that into your mouth,” he said. When I asked why, he said I had bought shoe polish.
Everyday I’d go helter-skelter looking for a job, and still couldn’t speak French. In December 1973 I met a man in Alliance Française who promised a job if I went to him the next day at 3 pm. From Dr Pyne’s house my appointment was about 8 kms away, in Pigalle, North Paris. When I reached Pigalle to get my job, I entered a house in a small lane; everything looked quite bizarre, a large room was separated into cubicles with flowing curtains. I wondered if I’d come to the right place, and peeped inside the cubicles. Cubicle after cubicle, all I found were nude couples making love. It was a brothel! I got petrified and didn’t know what to do. I quickly made an exit and stood by the staircase. An old lady came and explained that I should be in front at the lane, from 3pm to 4am. My work would be to bring people from the road to the room, and I would get 25 francs per day, that was Rs. 37 then! With the only objective of making money, I wasn’t thinking of the brothel or the job being offered. I could start right away, she told me, or come tomorrow. I said I’ll come the next day.
I told Dr. Pyne I’d got a job without explaining more; he didn’t probe either. The next afternoon, a freezing winter day, I boarded the metro, dozed a bit and traveled a few stations. A sudden jerk from the metro changing tracks sent shivers down my spine and I hastily got off midway. The uneasy discomfort I’d been feeling told me this was not the purpose of my coming to Paris. At that time I didn’t even know there’s a professional called a pimp! I walked home and didn’t return to Pigalle. I decided this opportunity was not right for me. This is the first episode of my life’s journey from Kalipodo Dey’s dramatic sales pitch in Kolkata’s local train to my mental trauma over a pimp’s job in the Paris metro.
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History has documented different eras that have taken business forward. Technology advancement in the 19th century established the mechanical age, the 20th century belonged to electronic technology while the 21st century is proving to be based on digital technology. Last week, I’d touched upon musical breakthroughs in different eras that contributed to business success. Let’s look at the art scene in the West and find how discomfort has set up new art genres with heavy commercial influences.
Before the advent of photography in the 19th century, paintings had represented reality. If an exceptional painter deviated from reproducing realistic form, he was considered anti-society or just plain crazy. The fear of photography replacing an artist’s livelihood created great discomfort among Western artists. This led to art’s first evolutionary form in Expressionism, followed by Impressionism.
Expressionism is the artist’s interpreted form of a realistic subject. It creates a pictorial form in spite of the artist’s imagination twisting it. Vincent van Gogh’s paintings were quite realistic when he was in his motherland, Holland. Look at his Potato Eaters, painted in 1885. It’s dark, reflecting his background amongst the working class miners. He came to France in 1886, and his palette changed radically. His Sunflowers painted in 1888 is bright and cheerful.
His failure was van Gogh’s discomfort, which fuelled the paintings to be hallucinating in expression. Society did not recognise his genius. During his lifetime, he sold just one painting. He committed suicide in 1890 at the age of 37.
Europe’s openness towards artistic talent is interesting. After his death, van Gogh’s work was discovered. The extremely high value of his paintings today has created wealth for van Gogh’s collectors and museums in different parts of the world. This creator of discomfort left behind an avant-garde vision of colour with brushstrokes on canvas. Can business be compared to van Gogh? Are we capable of reviving a neglected dead shell of a brand or company after its tangible presence is gone?
An Impressionist painter executes reality in a semi-abstract form. Unlike Michelangelo who was a realistic artist, Claude Monet painted his thoughts. Monet painted Water Lilies in 1897 from his French style country house at Giverny. People visit Monet’s house amidst the wilderness, which is like a canvas that’s said to be the genesis of Impressionism in 1870s.
As the Expressionist and Impressionist art epochs were building, Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque introduced discomfort at the turn of the 20th century by starting the Cubist movement. A totally new style influenced by tribal art, Cubism simultaneously interpreted the essence of an object, human being or nature from multiple viewpoints. Picasso worked with the human character whereas Georges Braque’s Cubism was more with objects and nature.
Braque and Picasso shared a close partnership in the same studio for a few years in 1908–12. Picasso was impetuous and Braque had a sense of order. Their joint ideas unearthed and contributed an immense cultural treasure. Their vision of Cubism created discomfort in the art world.
Surrealism, which is realism in an imaginative world, and the artistic and literary Dada movement were discomfiting ‘jerks’ in Western Europe in 1916–23. Dadaists wanted to discover an authentic reality by abolishing traditional culture and aesthetic forms. Their disgust for bourgeois values and despair over World War I made them anti-establishment. Evolving through the phases of Cubism, futurism and metaphysical painting, Salvador Dali joined the Surrealists in Paris in 1929. The group comprised painters Max Ernst, Yves Tanguy and Andre Breton, and filmmaker Luis Bunuel. With artistic form that draws upon psychology and weaves into society’s drama, Spaniard Luis Bunuel chose France to locate his masterpieces in. He uncovered French society in surreal dimension. In his film, That Obscure Object of Desire, he wanted to reveal a machismo storyline where a successful businessman narrates his unrequited love for his au pair (live-in maid). The film’s message is when money and sex reign, love and refinement are waylaid.
Surrealism in paintings has a nostalgic character that evokes layers of imagination residing in the subconscious mind. Although Surrealism did not acquire mass appeal at that time, it established itself as the subliminal foundation of the conservative society. Surrealism carried over to modern times and characterised George Lucas’ 1977 film, Star Wars. Stephen Spielberg’s ET, a mega success, also interpreted the surrealist vision of Max Ernst and Salvador Dali.
Surreal influences influenced business too. When Hollywood was turning dull and dreary, Surrealist fiction films changed both the platform and fortunes of the cinema industry worldwide. The art form can juice up a company’s vision into thinking very differently. Even as artists influenced thought processes, manufacturers made surrealist dreams into reality. Surrealism is evident in dream products like Mercedes’ bionic car or a mobile phone-cum-camera-cum-computer-cum-music bank in your hand.
The Western world is intensely involved with the lateral thinking of their artists. These influences reveal continuity and consistency across art, music, film, fiction, industry and business. The imagination of painters has created discomfort, leading to significant human development to enhance the art of life and business.
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Art has been a human right before civilisation started. The earliest cave painters at Lascaux, France, dating back 30,000 years drew animals. The San people in South Africa drew people in 27,000-year-old caves. Ancient Indian cave art 20,000 years ago in Bhimabetaka, Madhya Pradesh, had both animals and people, often fighting wars.
Several civilizations have been lost over centuries, buried under the soil with volcanic or earthquake eruptions, or vanished due to human destruction or negligence. But whatever discoveries have happened, the testimony has always been from art left behind in the form of cave paintings, stone engraving or sculptures with figurative or nature expressions. Art was the first medium of communication in human society. The era of petroglyphs faded to pictograms before logographic writing gave way to the alphabet.
My thought was, if art is so elemental for expression, why is it not better meshed into business? After all, there is great symbiosis between art and business, they share the same five fundamentals of thought, subtlety, elegance, loudness and sustainability. In art, thought translates to a unique idea beyond time, subtlety is subliminal, elegance is being always displayed in a sophisticated place, whereas loudness in art is the shock of the new expression of an artist. Art is sustainable as its monetary value rises with time.
Similarly in business, you need to think how to strategize to expand the market with uniqueness. Subtlety is engraving the product or service into the customer’s top-of-mind, while elegance is being aspirational. Business needs loudness to have all time differentiation in the market while sustainability is business growth with high net worth.
In the last 35 years I have been privileged to spend time with several CEOs, MDs and Chairmen in different countries across 4 continents on business transactions for their growth and increased net worth. Our discussions invariably took place at a strategic and creative level. I found creativity in their thoughts, which inspired me to think beyond expectation on how their businesses can sustain end-customer connect. From such interactions I have long been convinced that CEOs are successful in business because they have a high value artist’s palette in their mind, which is similar to the management palette. So, I’ve strongly believed, a CEO’s performance on canvas would definitely be brilliant.
In an attempt to execute this idea, a unique venture has emerged. We inaugurated in Mumbai yesterday the world’s first exhibition of paintings done by CEOs. For the first time in their lives 26 CEOs took brush in hand and boldly put colour on canvas. You can view their out-of-the-box art from noon to 8 pm at Piramal art gallery, National Centre for the Performing Arts upto 12 March 2010.
This is how the saga started. I asked the 26 CEOs to spend a crazy, creative session with me. I didn’t divulge anything more. I arrived with a large suitcase of acrylic paints, brushes, a color palette and 18”x24” canvas, arranged it all on the CEO’s table, and gestured an invitation. Puzzled, the CEO asked, “Do I have to paint?” The beauty of this initiative is that, to them, my sudden proposition to paint was like an enigma. It’s generally known in industry that I started my management consulting business from a fine arts career, and that I still paint. That’s perhaps why the CEOs spontaneously agreed and immediately became engrossed in painting.
I met them either in office or at home. They could have avoided the painting session, but they seemed to have a hidden urge to express themselves, and chose their colours. Their confidence soared when I mentioned, “You are at total liberty here. There’s no shareholder, promoter, employee or competitor scrutinizing you!” It was just as well that I discreetly captured them with my movie camera as they painted, because people are now asking me if I’ve helped them. This goes to show their paintings are very appealing. The CEOs spontaneity of thought and application was indeed a lesson for me.
Business always runs with rationality and the glamour of numbers. But the tragedy is that business crunched with numbers alone confines you to mere logic in a given blocked system. Shareholders always expect to encash this result of numbers in unlimited multiplication of their investment. Only an empty canvas can inspire you to paint with unrestrained thought for business. A vision with numbers can be foggy, hypothetic, so the next step for CEOs is to go beyond that boundary. When you can paint the vision on canvas, imagination gets concretized and unlimited possibilities morph into visuals that can be actioned. Once the art is done and understood by everybody, application of technicalities is a mere slave.
Art circles always critique the craftsmanship and quality of an artist’s painting. CEO Thinker Painters can be considered a new art movement because they took up the challenge at a moment’s notice, made no trial, yet their boldness, confidence and passion on the canvas were outstanding. Asking them to sing or write would not have taken me anywhere, but this adventurous act has proved that the expression of art is an inherent human inclination that demystifies expression. In fact, a few were so absorbed they took the initiative to paint on a second canvas.
Western art has had several collective movements after prehistoric cave paintings. From the Medieval period’s Religious art, the Masters painted Realistic portraits and reproduced real life around 1506. When photography was invented in 1826, it shocked the art world as Realism was no longer required. So artists had to think out-of-the-box and express images in their mind. Art movements have since given a boost for the world to think differently. These movements were Expressionism (1888), Impressionism (1897), Cubism (1910), Surrealism (1929), Abstract (1940), Pop (1960) and Graphic (1965) art to street graffiti (1969), Vanishing art (1994) to Extrapolated art (2006). As no globally renowned contemporary movement of painting has emerged in India so far, CEO Thinker Painters can represent a new, collective, first time effort and movement that can be taken forward to become part of global art history of the 21st century.
Everybody in business talks about creating differentiation. My prime objective of inspiring the 26 CEOs to peel out their creativity was to prove that differentiation is not the buzzword it has become in business today. In this uniform, digital world, differentiation that’s tangible in a product or service will bring business success.
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Fact, fiction or fantasy, my last week’s article, evoked this reader response: “The man belongs to a mad house. He may be eccentric, but misbehaving with his father was bizarre, as is the American public for giving him iconoclastic position in society for the crazy things he did to attract attention. I don’t know what to think, pure fantasy or fiction, but instinct tells me it’s real. ‘Genius’ is mostly flawed they say.” Other readers correctly guessed the protagonist to be artist Salvador Dali, while a few remained perplexed.
What does it all prove? That after 80 years, an artist thinker who had lived 6800 km away, could still make an impact with Surrealism. This disruptive thinking process, phantasmagorical way of life, experiential expressions and paintings together formed an osmosis, a metaphor for a genre that influenced every walk of life thereafter. “I am Surrealism,” Salvador Dali had declared, allowing Surreal philosophy, that is, absence of all control exercised by reason or morality, to possess him completely,
From 1900 to 1945, the turmoil of two World Wars, economic recession to Hitler, left the Western world shattered. But the paintings of those disastrous times were so imaginative they portrayed another world of thought. Fortunately thinkers, Dali among others, were there beyond the distraught social life, to help even the business world do things differently.
Today’s worldwide turmoil is about digital language and globalisation. Digitalization is making the world totally generic, snatching away individual identities, while globalisation is breaking society’s multi-cultural flavour. Since its inception in 1887 upto 1929, the mechanical hand machine gramophone with the same functionality had diverse aesthetics and designs that are identifiable as being American, Italian, French, Swedish, English or German. In the electric gramophone age, from 1930 to 1983, there were a variety of expressions like the record changer, two-in-ones, among others. But the last 30 years of digitalization has made the physical element of music playing instruments look similar, either in a metal or plastic box. Several small companies had to close shop; only those with economic muscle can now dominate the world. Of course the positive aspect is that music became available to the masses at low cost. But we have lost the art of differentiation. Surrealism is required here.
Actually, digital functionality is itself Surreal. Nobody would have believed, 40 years ago, that a mobile phone can connect you to the remotest forest or desert of the world where with your computer you even have your office for a few hours. The problem is that this generic, Surrealistic digital technology sits inside devices like automobiles to electronics, white to brown goods that have negligible difference in identity, making people interact with these devices they do not relate to culturally.
In the late 1970s, Hollywood was becoming boring with historical films like Cleopatra, Ben Hur, Ten Commandments or depicting American social life as in The Graduate or going on a Roman Holiday. After Hitchcock mysteries, John Wayne’s westerns and Clint Eastwood’s spaghetti westerns, the film industry seriously turned to science fiction. Surrealistic paintings were a niche category in 1930s, but the power of Surrealism is so strong that huge money was made by science fiction films like Star Wars that were highly inspired by paintings with Surrealist figures, atmosphere and styles. The masses gobbled up these Surrealistic images in box office grossers like ET and Terminator among other science fiction films.
The 1920-30s Surrealist movement was a great departure for science and business too. The shape of the first nuclear device resembles Elephant Celebes, a 1921 painting by Surrealist Max Ernst. Most art manifestations, from religious to realistic paintings, Expressionism, Impressionism and Cubism, have been left out as high value museum pieces. But Surrealism created disruption in the world by combining thinking with application in mass appeal. Museums sell reproductions of an artist’s painting as souvenirs. But Salvador Dali designed products so people can experience Dali and Surrealism. He reproduced his 1931 painting The Persistence of Memory depicting time in an undulated watch, as a real watch of asymmetric design. No watch brand can imitate that, as they are all symmetric. To sell fragrance, everybody knows the nose comes into play. Dali thought to design a nose-like bottle that’s still among the most famous perfumes today.
In the 1980s, French haute couture designer Jean Paul Gaultier broke all codes of French fashion tradition and protocol through his irreverent style. He put his perfume bottle shaped as a woman’s bust in a pet food tin, a totally Surrealistic thought. This was unimaginable when classic designers like Dior, Channel, YSL were ruling French fashion. Gaultier’s avant garde designs sustain with phenomenal commercial success.
Strategy planning and business vision are inevitably determined with benchmarking or best practices, that is, only looking at what other industries have done. You may never know their thinking process, and having spent millions of dollars, effort and time you may find yourself back in square one. This may be lack of surrealistic thinking, which can be the catalyst of future business success.
A recent surreal action I took was arriving on appointment at the office of a dozen CEOs with a suitcase full of paints, brushes, drawing canvas and a palette. I proceeded to arrange everything on the CEO’s desk as he quizzically asked, “Do I have to paint?” I replied, “Yes indeed! You are a successful CEO because you carry a high value management palette in your mind. There’s no shareholder, promoter, employee, or competitor scrutiny on this. You have total liberty of expression.” The CEOs, of course, immediately understood that there is no real difference between the management palette and colour palette.
CEOs engaging in painting may have made history unfold. They all acknowledged they were totally engrossed while painting, the proof of which is that each and every painting is out-of-the-box. This shows that CEOs require a divergent atmosphere in the world of business where they can think in an unlimited way to create differentiation that can bring high net worth to their organisations.
The prime objective of my initiative of making CEOs into Painters was to prove that in this uniform, digital world, differentiation that’s tangible in a product or service will bring business success. That’s why I will continue the journey of finding CEO Painters .
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The Indian EXPRESS/ The Financial EXPRESS article
In a small village on the foothills of the Pyrenees was born the second son of a strict, bourgeois notary. At the age of five, his parents took him to his brother’s grave, saying he was nothing more than his brother’s reincarnation. He felt traumatised and outdone.
When he fell sick at childhood, he was packed off to stay with a family on the Mediterranean coast, where he discovered modern painting, and on the sly, practiced how to boost his ego. His Catholic mother enrolled him at Christian Brother’s school. A painting by Millet hanging on the school wall became his obsession. It had a woman’s head bowed, and a man holding his hat in front of his body. The boy’s Freudian interpretation was that the man was seducing her by hiding his sexuality. This inspiration was a constant theme in his later artistic career, and became his icon.
In art college in Madrid he befriended two other equally egotistic, eccentric, out-of-the-box thinkers, one of whom metamorphosed into a famous film maker and the other an influential poet and dramatist. The notary’s son was expelled from this school because he insulted his professors. He said they were incompetent to examine him, that he knew more about art and artists than they did.
Expulsion devastated his father, whose summer home he returned to. But he continued to draw huge public attention with his mastery of painting skills, flamboyant dressing style, long hair and unusually pointed moustache. He realised and implemented deep-dream imagery on canvas. One day a few Parisian friends came visiting, among whom was a French poet and his Russian wife. Our protagonist and this woman, 11 years his elder, fell in love at first sight. Immersed in his magnetic power, she decided to stay back, impelling her husband to return to Paris alone.
For the audacity against Catholicism of taking another man’s wife, his father asked him to leave home. Totally flustered, he sought purity by shaving off his hair to become bald. But realizing his unique talent, she took control of things. She became his business manager, aside from being his muse and inspiration, and went about the task of milking his immeasurable talent for commercial gain.
Living on the shores of the azure Mediterranean waters with no steady income was difficult. So she encouraged a move to Paris, hob-nobbed with nobility and the rich and took a sophisticated place for his painting studio so nobody would know they were penniless.
One evening, the protagonist didn’t want to accompany her for a dinner invitation because he’d started a painting with a stark, wide, expanding landscape and a leafless olive tree, but he didn’t know how to finish it. He was staring at the painting while eating Camembert cheese that melted, creating a stretched chewing gum effect. For him time was like that, not rigid or deterministic. So he hung soft, limp, melting pocket watches on the olive tree branches and called it “The Persistence of Memory.” When she returned that night, her eyes stayed riveted on the canvas, “Nobody can ever forget this painting,” she said. “It is much beyond its time.”
She confided in a few prosperous art lovers that the artist was a genius. To sustain the limpidness of his creativity so he could avoid becoming commercial, she told them she had a plan. Twelve chosen wealthy patrons would help unleash his imagination by financially supporting the lifestyle he chose to live. In return, they will each get a painting from him every year. The chosen patrons were convinced; the couple managed a luxurious living style even as the artist was exceptional and totally weird.
The artist’s father was outraged when he read of his son’s exhibition in Paris of a painting called "Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ" which had a provocative inscription, "Sometimes, I spit for fun on my mother’s portrait". He demanded his son recant publicly, but the son refused. Instead in response, he handed his father a condom containing his own sperm, saying, "Take that. I owe you nothing anymore!"
The artist had bizarre and unreal ways. He believed in transparently painting without censorship of morality and conscience, and ignored doyennes who criticised him for depicting a man with excreta in his pants on a canvas. In fact, his fellow eccentric intellectuals at their 42 rue Fontaine, Paris headquarters put him on trial and expelled him from their society. “I am too intelligent to be a good painter,” he said. “Painters are stupid. Really talented creative artists like Raphael and Mozart died very early. I prefer to live longer and be a bad painter.”
Before the Second World War started, he did not, unlike his other artistic compatriots, condemn Hitler. He refused to do so by saying he was apolitical. He went off to the US where his paintings caused a sensation, and Americans lapped up his eccentricities and strange antics. When the wealthy feted him, he showed up wearing a glass case on his chest, which contained a brassiere. He also took part in Hollywood and was sought after by advertisers to endorse different products like chocolates. He was extremely particular about his creations. When a retail design that he did was changed in implementation, he smashed the window of the shop.
The roaring success of several art exhibitions in the US and Europe made him stand apart from most other artists who never became famous in their own lifetimes. At a lecture in London he wore a deep-sea diving suit and helmet. He had arrived carrying a billiard cue and leading a pair of Russian wolfhounds, and had to have the helmet unscrewed as he gasped for breath. He commented, "I just wanted to show that I was ‘plunging deeply’ into the human mind."
What does this story sound like? I’ve taken the liberty to make you, dear reader, find out how you’d enjoy this, or perhaps feel some discomfiture, were this story fiction, fantasy or real. Tell me!
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