#walterisaacson

🎂 Azi îl aniversăm pe Walter Isaacson.

Cărțile autorului au astăzi preț special, cu până la 30% reducere față de prețul afișat.

La mulți ani!

🎂 Azi îl aniversăm pe Walter Isaacson.

Cărțile autorului, au astăzi preț special, cu până la 28% reducere față de prețul afișat.

Leonardo da Vinci av Walter Isaacson

Leonardo da Vincis »Mona Lisa« är förmodligen ett av världshistoriens mest omtalade verk. Med sitt subtila leende, och ögon som tycks följa en genom rummet har hon fortsatt att fånga intresset hos nya betraktare. Men porträttet utgör bara en liten del av Leonardos produktion. Även om han i första hand skulle kunna tänkas att ses som konstnär, var han minst lika mycket ingenjör, arkitekt, naturvetare och filosof. Hans nyfikenhet för världen och människan fick ständigt utlopp genom de olika intressena. Exempelvis kom hans vetenskapliga undersökningar av hur muskler fungerar (såsom de i ansiktet när ett leende formas), samt hans undersökningar kring optiska illusioner, att få utlopp i hans målningar och porträtt. Likväl kom hans otaliga betraktelser och allmänna observationer kring hur rörelse hos en person även ger uttryck för dennes känsloliv att märkas av i hans skapelser. När allt läggs samman, och byggs på varandra, bildas en bredare förståelse för hur tingen fungerar – vilket gång på gång speglas i hans arbeten.

Note on the text: I used Walter Isaacson’s Leonardo Da Vinci as published by Simon and Schuster in 2017

Leonardo Da Vinci was a genius. Reading about just the way in which his mind worked was amazing and what I loved most about him was the way in which he gave himself permission to explore everything he wanted to explore in his life, and how he gave himself permission to be everything that he was. 

No one is one thing and what amazed me about reading this book was just how varied Da Vinci’s interests were. Although he is known mostly as a painter he was also interested in learning about hydraulics, engineering, and how the human body worked. He even dissected multiple bodies (both human and animal) to see how the various bones, muscles, ligaments etc worked just because he wanted to know. Yes he also wanted to create realistic paintings with characters that conveyed a full range of emotions, but that was also something he just wanted to know about. He designed war machines, flying machines, and did various science experiments. He was a true lifelong learner who was more than willing to let life lead him wherever it wanted to him to go, even if it didn’t exactly make sense. 

He had the courage to go wherever life would take him no matter what anyone said. There’s a story that he tells of a time where he stumbled upon a dark cave while hiking around Florence. Upon seeing the cave there arose in him “two contrary emotions, fear and desire- fear of the dark threatening cave, desire to see if there were any marvelous thing[s] within it” (28). On that day desire won out and he went into the cave to discover that there was the fossil of a whale. That one incident taught him to never let his fear of the unknown keep him from doing anything. Now it wasn’t all peaches and cream, and not every one of his adventures resulted in success. He was a human just like the rest of us. He “was not always a [genius]. He made mistakes. He went on tangents, literally pursuing math problems that became time sucking diversions. Notoriously he left many of his paintings unfinished. . .  As a result there exists now at most fifteen paintings [that are] fully or mainly attributable to him” (8). 

It’s also worth noting that he was born at a time where “the mixing of ideas from different disciplines [had become] the norm” (26). This is important when talking about Da Vinci’s abilities to cater all the different sides of himself- he grew up in a society where he was encouraged to do so. No one is just one thing. We are all made up of many different interests and passions. The problem is that most of, especially when we become adults, fall into the trap of assuming that everything has to have a practical purpose. The idea of learning how to do something just because you want to, even if it has no practical purpose, is certainly not in vogue now. Da Vinci however never allowed something as trivial as practicality to get in his way. He took full advantage of everything that life had to offer him. Sometimes he wanted to learn things that had a practical application for his life, like when he would dissect human bodies so that he could study their muscles and skeletal structure so that he could paint human figures that are more realistic and emotive. Other times he just wanted to know how the beak of a woodpecker worked just because he was curious. These various endeavors, as myriad as they were, served to greatly enrich his life, and, for Da Vinci, that was the point. Life was something to savored and explored in every way possible.

🎂 Azi îl aniversăm pe Walter Isaacson.

Cărțile autoruluiau astăzi preț special, cu până la 28% reducere față de prețul afișat.