Doodles and creativity

Doodles and creativity

Scribbling or doodling on the margins of papers including books - some times called the Freudian slip - has been a pastime for many including yours truly. My post today “Doodles and Creativity”, owes its debt to my friend R G Kulkarni, my Sainik School classmate.

One of the groups among the many that each one of us are a part of, in the social media whatsApp groups, is the Ajeets 77 group. This group was formed by our friends Arjun Misale and Shrishail Deginal to connect the 1970 to 77 batch of Sainik School Bijapur, our cherished alma mater. This morning R G Kulkarni (510), a member of this group, a highly successful businessman and a great achiever and the only scientist nerd of our batch who belonged to the class of “Ranchoddas” of “Three Idiots fame” during the school days, now on a sojourn to USofA and keeps posting images and write up on his visit, posted a wonderful photograph of the Space Needle. His posting of the Space needle image has prompted me script this post.

The Space Needle, an iconic structure that forms the skyline of Seattle, measuring 605 feet tall was built in less than a year. This monumental structure owes its genesis to the humble doodle. It is intriguing to note that the shape of this remarkable structure was conceived by Eddie Carlson in Stuttgart, Germany in the form of a doodle in 1959. Carlson was the Chairman of the Seattle World’s Fair Commission and while he was dining at Stuttgart atop a city’s broadcast tower he got this idea that he scribbled as a doodle. His doodle creation was later given its current form and shape by three architects ; John Graham Jr. Victor Steinbrueck, and John Ridley and built with private funding in record time.

It is interesting note that some of history’s most influential people were doodlers and in most libraries one can notice scribbled figures that decorate the margins of the books. Notable doodlers include some of the U.S. presidents and legendary authors and our very own Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore, whose paintings owe their debt to his doodling habits. Some may say doodling is kid stuff produced while not paying attention. The truth is your daydream drawing gives you an unobstructed view into your own mind. It was perhaps this day dreaming that led to the discovery of the Ulam Spiral.

Doodling has left an indelible mark in mathematics as well. The Ulam spiral, a popular visual aid for mathematicians, was developed by the mathematician, Stanislaw Ulam, based on a doodle that he made while listening to the fellow mathematician at the mathematics conference in 1964. Ulam was an important mathematician of the twentieth century. Born in Poland in 1909, he was a key player in the Manhattan project. In his doodle, Ulam drew the positive integers on a square spiral of the number line, with 0 at the center. Then he marked the primes on this folded up number line and immediately noticed that under this unusual transformation, many primes tend to fall on diagonal line fragments. Ulam explored his curious doodle a bit further using one of the very first powerful computers and went on to produce some of the very first purely mathematical computer graphics. Ulam wrote a short paper titled "A Visual Display of Some Properties of the Distribution of Primes" in 1964 and used the computer images to illustrate his findings.

Rabindranath Tagore’s artistic adventure began with doodles that turned crossed-out words and lines into images that assumed expressive and sometimes grotesque forms. I was privileged to host the 150th birth centennial exhibition of Tagore at the NGMA Mumbai during April 2013. “The Last Harvest” (aptly titled since the paintings were his last creative constructs that he began to paint at the age of 60 plus) exhibition developed under the auspices of the 150th birth anniversary celebrations of Rabindranath Tagore, showcased the paintings by Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore at the age of 67, to use his own words, "fell under the enchantment of lines" when he discovered that his hand was moving automatically across the pages of his manuscripts transforming the scratches and erasures (doodles) into designs. For the next 12 years of his life he harnessed his new-found love for painting and produced nearly 2,000 paintings all of which owe their genesis to his doodling. Tagore’s paintings are now the national treasures.

These days doodle has found its way to the hearts and minds of most netizens courtesy the Google Doodles. The humble Google Doodle has become synonymous with Google as a company and a brand. Important commemorative events are marked by unique designs (Doodles) that appear on Google’s homepage. There is also an interesting history to the usage of doodles on the Google home page. The first Google Doodle appeared on Google’s front page on August 30th 1998. It was used as an out of office marker by Google creators Larry Page, and Sergey Brin.

Thank you RG for sending the image of the Space needle, which prompted me to write this post and take some inexcusable shelter that I too possess some artistic talents since I too have resorted to doodles some of which have found place in the margins of books that I possess and also in those books that I read and returned back to the libraries in the college. Most times I used to feel guilty that a person who is more or less unlettered in the field of practical art has been given the unique responsibility to be the Director of one of the premier art institutions of the country the NGMA Mumbai, but then from now on I shall take shelter to my habits of doodling and try and not be guilty about my inability as an artist.

Happy doodling to one and all cutting across ages.