Geniuses.

I've been thinking ever since I read I Capture the Castle. The father in that book is a genius, apparently. What makes him a genius is that he's an innovator. No one quite understands until they see the final result and they feel the emotions he intended them to feel.

What are his mind processes? How does he figure a + z = the alphabet? And why does it end up like that? What was Picasso thinking when he did those crazy portraits? Does insanity make a genius? Are the mentally ill the ones that push our culture along? Or are the deeply sane the ones that do it-- the ones that truly understand the mechanics of how the world works and how the mind perceives things?
I actually started thinking about this when I went to NYC not too long ago. I went to some art galleries with a couple of friends, and we came across this one with giant pieces of rusted metal organized into patterns. I don't really like modern art because I don't understand it-- where is the skill that people put into it? I always think. Why do they price it so high? But this exhibit was different, because I looked at it in a different way than the common modern canvas painting. Did this artist find these metal pieces rusted, or did he rust them himself? Why did he arrange it this way? This was a modern artist that I could respect because he put thought into his thought. He put himself into his work. He was deceiving me with my own questions.

I'm going to work on my bike drawing and do some research on the one catergory of art that I've always tried to evade: Modern art. Not because I think the art is entirely appealing, but because I need to know about these artists and what they're thinking and how they think. I think this will help me find a missing piece of myself.