Anaïs Nin on Love, Hand-Lettered by Debbie Millman

“Anxiety is love’s greatest killer… It makes others feel as you might when a drowning man holds on to you.”

Revered as one of the most dedicated diarists in literary history, Anaïs Nin has given us a wealth of poetic and poignant meditations on life and the human condition. This first installment in an ongoing collaboration with creative polymath Debbie Millman — whose own poetic and poignant meditations you might recall from recent Literary Jukebox editions — captures one of Nin’s most timeless insights on love, culled from her many volumes of diaries and her love letters with Henry Miller. Drawn in Debbie’s singular style of artful lettering, the artwork is available on Society6, with proceeds benefiting A Room of Her Own, a foundation supporting women writers and artists. Enjoy:

UPDATE: Happy news! Part 2 of the series is now available.

Previous Brain Pickings artist series have included Susan Sontag on art and on love by Wendy MacNaughton, Anaïs Nin on life by Lisa Congdon, and Salvador Dalí’s “My Struggle” by Molly Crabapple.

See more of Debbie’s beautiful visual essays and poems online and in print, and follow her on Twitter.

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Susan Sontag on Art: Illustrated Diary Excerpts

“Art is a form of consciousness.”

Earlier this year, I asked artist extraordinaire Wendy MacNaughton to illustrate Susan Sontag’s meditations on love, based on my collected highlights from the second volume of Sontag’s published diaries, As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980 (public library). Today, we’re thrilled to release our second collaboration, this time highlighting Sontag’s reflections on art — adding to history’s most timeless definitions — which I culled from more than 1,000 pages of diary entries from both the same volume and the one preceding it, Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963 (public library). Enjoy.

The artwork is available on Etsy as an 11×14″ print on heavy cotton rag paper with razored edges in a limited edition of 300, signed and numbered, bearing a hand-stamped inscription on the back. We’re donating a portion of the proceeds to A Room of Her Own, a foundation supporting women writers and artists.

The excerpts:

All aesthetic judgment is really cultural evaluation. (9/3/1956)

All great art contains at its center contemplation, a dynamic contemplation. (9/10/1964)

Modern aesthetics is crippled by its dependence upon the concept of ‘beauty.’ As if art were ‘about’ beauty—as science is ‘about’ truth! (9/10/1964)

Art is a form of consciousness (11/1/1964)

Art is a form of nourishment (of consciousness, the spirit) (11/25/1964)

Could get a new art movement every month just by reading Scientific American. (3/26/1965)

Art is the production of mental events in / as a concrete sensuous form (12/4/1979)

Why has there been no new international style in 50 years? Because the new ideas, the new needs are not yet clear. (Hence, we content ourselves with variations + refinements on Art Deco and, for refreshment + fusions, parodistic — ‘pop’ — revivals of older styles.) (8/8/1975)

The only interesting ideas are heresies (6/30/1975)

Both volumes of Sontag’s diaries are unspeakably excellent. Sample them with her thoughts on writing, censorship, boredom, aphorisms, and freedom, her beliefs at age 14 vs. 24, her 10 rules for raising a child, and her list of “rules and duties for being 24.”

See more of Wendy’s magnificent work on her site (designed by the inimitable Kelli Anderson), find her prints on Etsy and 20×200, and follow her on Twitter.

Donating = Loving

Bringing you (ad-free) Brain Pickings takes hundreds of hours each month. If you find any joy and stimulation here, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner:

♥ $7 / month♥ $3 / month♥ $10 / month♥ $25 / month

You can also become a one-time patron with a single donation in any amount:

Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter and people say it’s cool. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week’s best articles. Here’s what to expect. Like? Sign up.

My Struggle: Salvador Dalí’s Credo, Illustrated by Molly Crabapple

“Against simplicity/ for complexity . . . against the collective/ for the individual.”

After Susan Sontag on love illustrated by Wendy MacNaughton and Anaïs Nin on life illustrated by Lisa Congdon, the initially inadvertent but now steadfast Brain Pickings artist series of literary illustrations continues with Molly Crabapple and her stunning visual adaptation of Salvador Dalí’s “My Struggle” from Ramon Gomez de la Serna’s Dalí, created exclusively for Brain Pickings — a rare synthesis of the legendary surrealist’s creative vision and personal credo, and a fine addition to these favorite manifestos for the creative life.

Molly’s new book, Devil in the Details, a darkly whimsical illustrated meditation on the absurdities of modern life from politics to literature, came out last month, on the heels of last year’s Kickstarter blockbuster Week in Hell.

You can follow Molly on Twitter and see more of her fantastic work on her site.

Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter and people say it’s cool. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week’s best articles. Here’s what to expect. Like? Sign up.

Anaïs Nin on Life, Hand-Lettered by Artist Lisa Congdon

“You live out the confusions until they become clear.”

UPDATE: After a flurry of requests, the quotes are now available as prints. Enjoy.

It’s no secret I’m an obsessive reader of famous diaries, most recently those of French-Cuban writer Anaïs Nin (1903-1977), one of the most dedicated diarists in modern literary history. Her sixteen tomes of published journals, spanning more than half a century between the time she began writing at the age of eleven and her death, are a treasure trove of insight on literature, culture, human nature, and the life of meaning.

Earlier this month, I asked the inimitable Wendy MacNaughton to illustrate Susan Sontag’s insights on love, as synthesized from the writer’s diaries. Now, I’ve turned to another extraordinary illustrator, Lisa Congdon (♥ ♥), and asked her to bring to life some of my favorite highlights from The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 3: 1939-1944 (public library) in the style of her lovely 365 Days of Hand Lettering project.

The results took my breath away — enjoy:

You can find Lisa’s stunning prints on 20×200 and Etsy, and follow her on Twitter.

The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 3 is sublime in its entirety — highly recommended.

Donating = Loving

Bringing you (ad-free) Brain Pickings takes hundreds of hours each month. If you find any joy and stimulation here, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner:

♥ $7 / month♥ $3 / month♥ $10 / month♥ $25 / month

You can also become a one-time patron with a single donation in any amount:

Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week’s best articles. Here’s what to expect. Like? Sign up.