In the mid-19th century, American artist James McNeill Whistler spent a short—and academically unsuccessful—period of study at West Point, the United States Military Academy. It is said that when he was asked to draw a bridge, he depicted an ornate stone bridge spanning the grassy banks and two small children fishing from it.
- Get the children off the bridge! This is a purely engineering task! - the instructor asked him.
Whistler removed the children from the bridge, set them fishing from the shore and again showed the drawing. The angry instructor yelled:
- I told you to remove the children. Fully! Get the kids out of the picture!
But Whistler could not extinguish his creative fire. In the next version, there really were no children in the picture. They were buried under two small gravestones on the river bank.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru