Robert Henri on universal artists

    Robert Henri once wrote that anyone could and should be a universal artist: one who, most anywhere in the universe of vocations and avocations, works as artists do:
    Art when really understood is the province of every human being.
    It is simply a question of doing things, anything, well. It is not an outside, extra thing.
    When the artist is alive in any person, whatever his kind of work may be, he becomes an inventive, searching, daring, self-expressing creature. He becomes interesting to other people. He disturbs, upsets, enlightens, and he opens ways for a better understanding. Where those who are not artists are trying to close the book, he opens it, shows there are still more pages possible.
    The world would stagnate without him, and the world would be beautiful with him; for he is interesting to himself and he is interesting to others. He does not have to be a painter or sculptor to be an artist. He can work in any medium. He simply has to find the gain in the work itself, not outside it. (Quoted from The Life of the Creative Spirit, p. 242.)
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    Robert Henri is known for his portrait paintings. We are thinking of two in particular we’ve spent time with, one in the collection of The Museum at The Art Institute of Chicago, and one in the collection of the Carnegie Museum of Art, in Pittsburgh. For a brief biography of Robert Henri, click here. For an essay about his painting, click here.