How to find humor in life's absurdity | Maira Kalman
Dec 6, 2023
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Maira Kalman, a multidisciplinary artist known for her witty and insightful take on life, shares her unique perspectives on humor and absurdity. She reflects on the joy of simple pleasures like hot dogs from street vendors while tackling deeper themes of life and mortality. Kalman discusses the liberating power of silence and the importance of embracing contradictions through art. Her personal anecdotes highlight how walking can inspire creativity and connection, transforming everyday experiences into profound reflections.
Embracing inconsistencies allows for freedom and the ability to act in different ways.
Painting and writing support each other, bringing both struggles and moments of joy.
Deep dives
Reveling in Inconsistencies and Liberating Notions
The speaker finds freedom in embracing inconsistencies and the fact that individuals are not bound to be one thing. This liberating notion allows for truth-telling or lies, kind or unkind behavior, and selfish or generous acts. Amidst this confusion and chaos, meaningful work becomes a salvation.
The Pleasures of Painting and Writing
The speaker expresses how painting and writing are integral to her life and how they support each other. Both endeavors involve invisible struggles and persistent self-doubt, but they also bring moments of pure joy and the bliss of finding the right color or word.
Walking, Empty Brains, and Women Holding Things
The speaker highlights the therapeutic power of walking, the value of emptying the mind to allow for surprises and ideas, and the pleasure of observing the world through a bus window. Inspired by a woman carrying a large cabbage, the speaker reflects on the many literal and metaphorical things women hold, symbolizing their responsibilities, relationships, and emotional burdens.
With levity and profound insight, artist Maira Kalman reflects on life, death, dinner parties, not knowing the right answers, the joys of eating a hot dog from a street vendor and more. This talk, interwoven with her delightful paintings, is itself an artwork that seems to hold the entirety of life in all its absurd glory.