Golf Club Atlas
GolfClubAtlas.com => Golf Course Architecture => Topic started by: Tim Martin on January 26, 2021, 08:43:47 AM
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The quote in the title comes from a Tom Doak post in the “Templates” thread. Although Raynor used a formulaic approach or outline there is certainly artistry in his routings and holes. For the holes to be as compelling and enduring as they’ve been I would brand Raynor more than a civil engineer who happened to build golf courses.
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Quick quote from the author of the March 1918 The Olympian piece on Raynor:
"Mr. Raynor is a man with imagination who already has the new and finished Lakeside in his mind's eye. Indeed, when he left here he was prepared to sit down and make his maps. The holes he sees precisely as a musician sees the notes as they are written in the sheet of music though there is no sheet before him."
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There is a huge difference between having some artistic ability, and having an artistic temperament.
Macdonald turned down jobs, or passed them on to Raynor. He expressed his love and sentimentality for the game of golf and the people in it, in everything he did, whereas Raynor is very rarely quoted about golf at all. Macdonald wrote of Lido, "Altogether my pilgrimage to the Lido brought only sadness to me, and I returned home feeling as if it were love's labor lost." Are there any quotes like that from Seth Raynor anywhere?
Raynor is very easy to project upon, because we know so little about his actual work on site. People love his courses, so they project that he must have known things and felt things that he never spoke about publicly. 99% of the interviews he did with local newspapers just regurgitate that the 1st hole will be a Leven, etc. Comments from him about how a hole at Waialae or Shoreacres might differ from other versions of the same template are rare to nonexistent; all we have are those golf holes to make up stories about.
Having a writer from the club he's planning to work on describe him as brilliant is pretty obviously p.r.
Raynor's versions of the Redan are all different from one another, but there is no real evidence one way or another to what extent those changes were deliberate, and what drove them, vs. just natural variation arising from different pieces of land and different crews building the courses. Whereas Macdonald consistently and pointedly described what was different about his templates, what he didn't like about the original holes they were modeled after, etc.
They were very different men. I'm not saying that Raynor wasn't a great golf course architect, but describing a guy who stuck to the same music as "a man with imagination" is a stretch.
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I’m not looking to go down a rabbit hole about what Raynor did and didn’t feel or better yet didn’t articulate about his work, relationship with MacDonald or the craft in general. To say that he lacked imagination is an assessment I don’t agree with.
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I have heard the story that Hunter and MacKenzie referred to Raynor in a derogatory way as "The Engineer." But I can't give evidence to this story. Anyone know?
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I’m not looking to go down a rabbit hole about what Raynor did and didn’t feel or better yet didn’t articulate about his work, relationship with MacDonald or the craft in general. To say that he lacked imagination is an assessment I don’t agree with.
Is being able to visualize a plan the same thing as imagination?
The definition I picked up of imagination is "the faculty or action of forming new ideas, or images or concepts of external objects not present to the senses."
[/size][/color]
[/size]The use of templates splits that definition right in half. They're not new ideas, but they are not present on a new piece of ground.[/color]
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Tim,
What Tom is basically saying is that since Raynor didn’t write a lot and self promote (like some architects do) he must have just been lucky that his courses turned out so well (the sites and crews were all different and as such so were his copied holes). Lucky guy! It couldn't have been anything Raynor did because he didn't brag about it like others do. Macdonald on the other hand had all the answers and made it clear to everyone that it was he who was making improvements on all those inferior template holes that were based on the originals.
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Is being able to visualize a plan the same thing as imagination?
The definition I picked up of imagination is "the faculty or action of forming new ideas, or images or concepts of external objects not present to the senses."
The use of templates splits that definition right in half. They're not new ideas, but they are not present on a new piece of ground.
Interesting in light of past discussions. I believe there are very few people with creative personalities, and studying them, I believe the mental process of churning and maybe combining ideas from various different places across the universe is the key. Most people, including Raynor and other engineers, are only capable of straight line, point to point thinking, not the kind of internal brainstorming creative people do.
In fact, big corporations and even small designers have brainstorming sessions frequently, as it doesn't necessarily have to be one brain that comes up with the right idea. Many can contribute, sometimes unexpectedly, as in saying something makes someone else think of an entirely different thing that leads to a solution to whatever problem.
Only semi related, but back when I had a bigger staff, we would sometimes look at a supposedly "finished" design and I would ask each what one thing they might do to make the design better without changing the basic idea. Usually, the answers were along the lines of trimming trees back here or there to open up the view, widen the fw, make the bunker more attractive, etc., etc. etc. It was a little easier on the designer's ego if just one specific thing was added. And, for the most part, there quickly came a time where the one thing got close to impossible to name, providing everyone was in the spirit of improving that design concept, not replacing it with one of their pet concepts.
BTW, Pet concepts of different architects also might be a good topic, although from memory, I think we did discuss it once.
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Tim,
What Tom is basically saying is that since Raynor didn’t write a lot and self promote (like some architects do) he must have just been lucky that his courses turned out so well (the sites and crews were all different and as such so were his copied holes). Lucky guy! It couldn't have been anything Raynor did because he didn't brag about it like others do. Macdonald on the other hand had all the answers and made it clear to everyone that it was he who was making improvements on all those inferior template holes that were based on the originals.
Do you have any knowledge of Raynor's thought process?
Did it even involve golf? I know his work as well as you do, and I am not sure of the answer to that fundamental question.
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No, I think that Tom is differentiating the way the 2 individuals perceived the work. It is unfair to suggest his opinion is based on Raynor's lack of surviving promotional or educational materials. I don't know the answer although everything I have read suggests that Raynor viewed the design process as that of figuring out the best way to arrange a limited number of template holes on to a particular property.. I do know that Raynor did an outstanding job in routing his courses to fit the templates into the various sites in a way to create outstanding courses. Whether this skill is indicative of an artistic temperament is beyond me. But I note that the courses that either created the molds or broke them all seemed to have MacDonald's involvement as opposed to those where Raynor acted alone.
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Jeff,
There is an old saying I used often in every business I have run over the years, "If you have seven people in a room and they all think alike, you have six too many people in the room." Diversity of knowledge and experience can lead to many great things especially if that diverse team can channel those differences into decisions that are embraced by all (and no one takes their ball and goes home).
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I’m not looking to go down a rabbit hole about what Raynor did and didn’t feel or better yet didn’t articulate about his work, relationship with MacDonald or the craft in general. To say that he lacked imagination is an assessment I don’t agree with.
Is being able to visualize a plan the same thing as imagination?
The definition I picked up of imagination is "the faculty or action of forming new ideas, or images or concepts of external objects not present to the senses."
The use of templates splits that definition right in half. They're not new ideas, but they are not present on a new piece of ground.
The templates were formulas for specific strategies or shot requirements. The way Raynor routed the holes, found or engineered the most compelling features and built wild free form greens wasn’t due to a lack of imagination. It’s hard for me to mark him down as an architect because he didn’t memorialize everything he did and especially being compared to MacDonald who was the original carnival barker.
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The way Raynor routed the holes, found or engineered the most compelling features and built wild free form greens wasn’t due to a lack of imagination. It’s hard for me to mark him down as an architect because he didn’t memorialize everything he did and especially being compared to MacDonald who was the original carnival barker.
First of all, I am against the idea of rating golf course architects to begin with. And I do rate some of Raynor's courses very highly. I don't want you to "mark him down" or even to mark him at all.
The original post of this thread was about artistic temperament, and now you have switched over to his ability as an architect, which is quite different.
Where I'm getting flak is for daring to suggest that maybe Raynor did not think so much about the golf strategy behind all of his variations on the templates, like you and Mark and many others assume. And I insist that it is an assumption/projection on your part, because nobody seems to have any evidence [self promotional or otherwise] about his thought process. If someone does, I would love to know about it, and it surely won't burst my bubble.
In the meantime, I find more intriguing the possibility that he designed all of these courses that people love, even though he did not really think a lot about golf at all. That would blow a lot of people's minds, but nobody seems to want to allow for the possibility, and I don't understand that defensiveness, especially on behalf of a man who died 95 years ago this week.
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Tom,
All this discussion about "templates" etc. came about because of that threat on Pete Dye selling out on PGA West being a copy of TPC at Sawgrass. I tried to defend the approach saying many architects build great golf courses using a template type approach - Pete Dye being one of them. I asked who else uses that kind of approach or who doesn't and this is where we ended up. You never answered my original question in that regard? But you did seem to throw Raynor under the bus. It should have been a harmless question - Which architects don't use templates or have design preferences that they gravitate toward? You have seen enough to know.
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There’s also a possibility that he thought deeply about everything and never bothered to let on. If his intent was to design and build compelling and memorable golf courses then he succeeded.
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Tom,
All this discussion about "templates" etc. came about because of that threat on Pete Dye selling out on PGA West being a copy of TPC at Sawgrass.
You could at least stick to your own thread with your own questions.
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There’s also a possibility that he thought deeply about everything and never bothered to let on. If his intent was to design and build compelling and memorable golf courses then he succeeded.
Sure. As long as you are clear that is an assumption instead of positing it as fact.
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Would it have been easier to replicate early era templates with the construction equipment available at the time of replification rather than with the bigger machines that were more widely used later on? Subtleties, nuances vrs excess earth moving, over-shaping etc? Just curious.
Atb
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Tom:
Why are you so convinced CBM had an artistic temperament?
He was a finance guy. His first article on the ideal course written in 1907 almost sounds like the work of an engineer, including the 100 point Joshua Cranesque scale he came up with to analyze essential characteristics.
I don't doubt that CBM loved and understood the game of golf, but there is something almost autistic in the way he defined the categories comprising his notion of an ideal course.
What CBM may have had is a notion of romanticism, in that he knew what the game could be like on the right soil and contours, and that such a course did not yet exist in the U.S.
And this is why Raynor could never be CBM. CBM had played the great courses abroad. He knew what he was trying to recreate from experience. Raynor only knew of it second hand.
I think he did pretty well, considering.
Sven
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Sven,
Good point. But, I'm pretty sure Tom had it almost right....he had a temper, if not an artistic temperament.....
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I'm also not sure that we're using the term "artistic temperament" correctly.
Unless I missed it, I don't think Tom meant to have some sort of comparison between CBM and Van Gogh, the most commonly used example of someone possessing this double-edged quality. But then again, maybe CBM was closer to cutting off his own ear than I realize.
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Tom:
Why are you so convinced CBM had an artistic temperament?
He was a finance guy. His first article on the ideal course written in 1907 almost sounds like the work of an engineer, including the 100 point Joshua Cranesque scale he came up with to analyze essential characteristics.
I don't doubt that CBM loved and understood the game of golf, but there is something almost autistic in the way he defined the categories comprising his notion of an ideal course.
What CBM may have had is a notion of romanticism, in that he knew what the game could be like on the right soil and contours, and that such a course did not yet exist in the U.S.
And this is why Raynor could never be CBM. CBM had played the great courses abroad. He knew what he was trying to recreate from experience. Raynor only knew of it second hand.
I think he did pretty well, considering.
Sven
Sven,
Forgive my ignorance, but did Raynor never travel across the pond?
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People with artistic temperament know what TD is saying.
Jeff, you say " I believe there are very few people with creative personalities," do you really think that...come on man?
-----I like Raynor for the most but I'm betting you he stacked his quarters on the dresser, folded his underwear and was much more organized than CBM...
And... is a rectangular picture frame a template?
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Sven,
Forgive my ignorance, but did Raynor never travel across the pond?
Maybe before working with CBM, but not after.
Sven
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People with artistic temperament know what TD is saying.
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
Indigo Montoya
Artistic Temperament - A disposition towards obsession and extremes of emotion, especially depression and anger.
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People with artistic temperament know what TD is saying.
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
Indigo Montoya
Artistic Temperament - A disposition towards obsession and extremes of emotion, especially depression and anger.
I understand what it means..
As Larry McQuire says:"
"Artistic Temperament And The Challenge Working With Others I'm gonna let you in on something… sometimes I don't work well with other people. Maybe it's my artistic temperament or maybe I'm just an asshole.
I have a tendency to get under people's skin, make them uncomfortable, frustrated, upset or at worst, even angry.
When I lead a project I have an idea of how the end result and the route to that result should look. In the interim, I can become irritable, blunt and intolerant with others who are not up to speed.
The outcome of these working relationships is usually that these people either leave or comply with the standards I need.
This has caused me problems in the past. However, although many people find it difficult to handle an uncompromising approach, it's great when a collective effort works out."
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But is that what Tom was describing with respect to CBM? Or was he describing the man's love for the game and how that enhanced his work.
There is a difference. And if it is the latter, I'll stand by my earlier post.
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But is that what Tom was describing with respect to CBM? Or was he describing the man's love for the game and how that enhanced his work.
There is a difference. And if it is the latter, I'll stand by my earlier post.
I can't speak for TD...
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With respect to Raynor being adept at self-promotion, there was really no need. You can easily make the argument he worked himself to death (remember, travel was train and boat) and died at an early age. Banks ended up finishing quite a few courses after Raynor passed, so not sure they could have taken on many more new design commissions.
Referencing the 1918 Olympian Interview, my recollection is the writer strongly implied Raynor was a taciturn subject. BTW, since I am the one who may - or may not - have swiped an original copy of the magazine out of our archives, Raynor was planning on building a "west coast" Lido . . . . . . when WWI ended, there was a golf boom and the club decided it needed 36 holes, not 18.
To this day, his plans hang on our clubhouse wall, sticking their tongue out at me every time I walk into the locker room. When the club was considering a complete redesign of our Ocean Course, I insisted those plans to be a fantastic starting point, even though the orientation and topography would have to be altered quite a bit.
Our GC at the time: "Who is Seth Raynor? And what is a "Lido?"
That was the day I mostly hung up any hope for us . . . . . .
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I have funny feeling some of the above confuses "artistic temperament" with being an "artist"...and some people think people who are very organized and think in very clear patterns are not creative. The world is full of geniuses and I believe they act in ways that are very different from other geniuses.
The disorganized ones (generally viewed as those with an "artistic temperament") start with at the disadvantage of have to get some organization to their output or it stays a jumbled mess...but with an advantage in that they are more likely to be able to "think outside the box". While the well organized ones (some of the posters here tend to refer to these folks as "engineers") are the opposite...that does not mean they cannot "think outside of the box".
And BTW...if Raynor created one or two great golf courses without thinking about golf or understanding the game...that might be luck. But if he created 10+ great courses without thinking about golf or understanding the game....from a probabilistic standpoint that is NOT luck, that is a sign of a TRUE genius! Just because others (including a good number of us) do not understand how he "got there" does't carry much weight, at least to moi. If you have ever known many brilliant mathematicians or physicists, you many notice many of them tend to be deep on the "spectrum". That is because to develop the thoughts they think, they have to see things the rest of us mortals cannot visualize. If we cannot visualize these thoughts, no way can we conceive of the thought process of their minds and we have a difficult time recognizing their genius.
One last note...the differences between extroverts and introverts exacerbates the above "difficult time". If a genius is an introvert, they tend to not give hints about their thought processes...and folks on the spectrum tend to be introverts (and have a higher propensity for genius that the rest of us mortals).
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With respect to Raynor being adept at self-promotion, there was really no need. You can easily make the argument he worked himself to death (remember, travel was train and boat) and died at an early age. Banks ended up finishing quite a few courses after Raynor passed, so not sure they could have taken on many more new design commissions.
Referencing the 1918 Olympian Interview, my recollection is the writer strongly implied Raynor was a taciturn subject. BTW, since I am the one who may - or may not - have swiped an original copy of the magazine out of our archives, Raynor was planning on building a "west coast" Lido . . . . . . when WWI ended, there was a golf boom and the club decided it needed 36 holes, not 18.
To this day, his plans hang on our clubhouse wall, sticking their tongue out at me every time I walk into the locker room. When the club was considering a complete redesign of our Ocean Course, I insisted those plans to be a fantastic starting point, even though the orientation and topography would have to be altered quite a bit.
Our GC at the time: "Who is Seth Raynor? And what is a "Lido?"
That was the day I mostly hung up any hope for us . . . . . .
I know Raynor dies earlier than what we would have expected I checked a couple sources and someone born in 1874 had a life expectancy of 39.4 years of age. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1040079/life-expectancy-united-states-all-time/
Now the Spanish flu (we know about that now) and WW1 were the main culprits, but Raynor actually dodges some bullets to live to be 51.
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I have funny feeling some of the above confuses "artistic temperament" with being an "artist"...and some people think people who are very organized and think in very clear patterns are not creative. The world is full of geniuses and I believe they act in ways that are very different from other geniuses.
The disorganized ones (generally viewed as those with an "artistic temperament") start with at the disadvantage of have to get some organization to their output or it stays a jumbled mess...but with an advantage in that they are more likely to be able to "think outside the box". While the well organized ones (some of the posters here tend to refer to these folks as "engineers") are the opposite...that does not mean they cannot "think outside of the box".
And BTW...if Raynor created one or two great golf courses without thinking about golf or understanding the game...that might be luck. But if he created 10+ great courses without thinking about golf or understanding the game....from a probabilistic standpoint that is NOT luck, that is a sign of a TRUE genius! Just because others (including a good number of us) do not understand how he "got there" does't carry much weight, at least to moi. If you have ever known many brilliant mathematicians or physicists, you many notice many of them tend to be deep on the "spectrum". That is because to develop the thoughts they think, they have to see things the rest of us mortals cannot visualize. If we cannot visualize these thoughts, no way can we conceive of the thought process of their minds and we have a difficult time recognizing their genius.
One last note...the differences between extroverts and introverts exacerbates the above "difficult time". If a genius is an introvert, they tend to not give hints about their thought processes...and folks on the spectrum tend to be introverts (and have a higher propensity for genius that the rest of us mortals).
So he was a genius.....
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So he was a genius.....
no question IMHO
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"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
Indigo Montoya
Artistic Temperament - A disposition towards obsession and extremes of emotion, especially depression and anger.
Sven:
That's a definition written by someone who was not an artist.
IMO, the two things go hand in hand. Most of the artists I know are motivated and driven by emotion far more than the average person. Some have a genius, too, but they also have a passion for their work and in many cases they have a hard time letting go of it for that same reason.
It is also possible to be very successful at golf course design without that, certainly. From what I have read of him, I don't think Donald Ross had that sort of temperament, or Harry Colt or George Thomas, and from meeting them I would say the same of Robert Trent Jones and Tom Fazio and Jack Nicklaus.
On the other hand, Alister MacKenzie surely had an artistic temperament. Tom Simpson certainly did. And Pete Dye absolutely did; that was who I learned it from.
P.S. to Paul R: I went to M.I.T. briefly, too, so I have met a few of that sort of geniuses, and I think you are right that Seth Raynor would probably have fit in very well with them. But then you would agree with me that he did not have an artistic temperament, which is the statement that Tim called me out for in this thread.
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"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
Indigo Montoya
Artistic Temperament - A disposition towards obsession and extremes of emotion, especially depression and anger.
Sven:
That's a definition written by someone who was not an artist.
IMO, the two things go hand in hand. Most of the artists I know are motivated and driven by emotion far more than the average person. Some have a genius, too, but they also have a passion for their work and in many cases they have a hard time letting go of it for that same reason.
It is also possible to be very successful at golf course design without that, certainly. From what I have read of him, I don't think Donald Ross had that sort of temperament, or Harry Colt or George Thomas, and from meeting them I would say the same of Robert Trent Jones and Tom Fazio and Jack Nicklaus.
On the other hand, Alister MacKenzie surely had an artistic temperament. Tom Simpson certainly did. And Pete Dye absolutely did; that was who I learned it from.
P.S. to Paul R: I went to M.I.T. briefly, too, so I have met a few of that sort of geniuses, and I think you are right that Seth Raynor would probably have fit in very well with them. But then you would agree with me that he did not have an artistic temperament, which is the statement that Tim called me out for in this thread.
What I called you out on as you did in turn with me is that neither of us has enough anecdotal information to make that judgement.
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What I called you out on as you did in turn with me is that neither of us has enough anecdotal information to make that judgement.
Fair point. It's others who have argued over the definitions.
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That's a definition written by someone who was not an artist.
Search around, I think you'll find that you're not using the term the way it is commonly used. The difference is the inclination towards the borderline between sanity and chopping off your own ear.
In any case, I'm still not sold that CBM had what you are calling an artistic temperament (at least you haven't proven it to me yet).
Here's that 1907 article in full. Reads much more like a piece written by someone driven by logic rather than emotion.
That's not to say that CBM didn't have an emotional attachment to his work, especially when they were his projects ala NGLA. But that is a far cry from him being "driven by emotion far more than the average person."
Jan. 1907 Golfers Magazine -
(https://hosting.photobucket.com/images/cc435/snilsen7/CBM_Ideal_(1)_-_Golfers_Magazine_Jan._1907.png) (https://app.photobucket.com/u/snilsen7/a/acf16c8f-790e-4e37-bce1-74b1fd7e6a8b/p/559a4b22-c939-4958-81cd-f30827176645)
(https://hosting.photobucket.com/images/cc435/snilsen7/CBM_Ideal_(2)_-_Golfers_Magazine_Jan._1907.png?width=1920&height=1080&fit=bounds) (https://app.photobucket.com/u/snilsen7/a/acf16c8f-790e-4e37-bce1-74b1fd7e6a8b/p/5c37823b-ad8f-4277-83d7-55ac440fd4d8)
(https://hosting.photobucket.com/images/cc435/snilsen7/CBM_Ideal_(3)_-_Golfers_Magazine_Jan._1907.png?width=1920&height=1080&fit=bounds) (https://app.photobucket.com/u/snilsen7/a/acf16c8f-790e-4e37-bce1-74b1fd7e6a8b/p/aa0a808d-20be-489b-bfb8-5a8915faeb05)
(https://hosting.photobucket.com/images/cc435/snilsen7/CBM_Ideal_(4)_-_Golfers_Magazine_Jan._1907.png?width=1920&height=1080&fit=bounds) (https://app.photobucket.com/u/snilsen7/a/acf16c8f-790e-4e37-bce1-74b1fd7e6a8b/p/99ed7184-79ab-46af-b368-56e6f2903a94)
(https://hosting.photobucket.com/images/cc435/snilsen7/CBM_Ideal_(5)_-_Golfers_Magazine_Jan._1907.png?width=1920&height=1080&fit=bounds) (https://app.photobucket.com/u/snilsen7/a/acf16c8f-790e-4e37-bce1-74b1fd7e6a8b/p/d0f6ef75-9161-4936-83ed-377f7131febe)
(https://hosting.photobucket.com/images/cc435/snilsen7/CBM_Ideal_(6)_-_Golfers_Magazine_Jan._1907.png) (https://app.photobucket.com/u/snilsen7/a/acf16c8f-790e-4e37-bce1-74b1fd7e6a8b/p/0a57b020-dc5c-467e-b9ab-cd824e4cacc5)
(https://hosting.photobucket.com/images/cc435/snilsen7/CBM_Ideal_(7)_-_Golfers_Magazine_Jan._1907.png) (https://app.photobucket.com/u/snilsen7/a/acf16c8f-790e-4e37-bce1-74b1fd7e6a8b/p/ade48f83-dca2-4cc4-b786-7e15db2829be)
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Tom and Tim (and others posting here)--
After reading this thread around midnight last night I was too tired to figure out who said what!! In any case, it seems clear to me that we can only guess about the temperament (given how that world is pronounced and constructed I cannot for the life of me understand that the "a" is doing in it!!) of Raynor, CBM, Ross or any of the other great architects of 100 years ago as no one live ever met them and golf architecture was not important enough to generate a burst of biographies (not the case with folks like Edison, Frank Lloyd Wright, Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Churchill, Wilson, Roosevelt etc.).
That is not to say w should not muse about it or debate the questions...just to say do not expect definitive answers. And I agree w Tom D. that Raynor probably had an "engineer's" temperament and not an artistic one. My guess is that he was an introvert a a bit "nerdy" (not at all meant as an insult...these days nerds rule the world) ;D
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Sven,
I enjoyed reading that again. TD seems to be against almost any form of codifying ideas and preferences, it seems like most of us like to do it. I've never found a philosophy of no philosophy to be particularly useful in design.....In a way it makes sense. Human nature seems to be to try to organize things, rank them, evaluate them, etc. While rankings are public, gca's internal thoughts about what drives their designs usually isn't.
A basic philosophy isn't a bad thing. Many think if it is too rigid the gca can't ever or doesn't look hard enough for those occasions when it makes sense to break the rules. I think I can. Or, as I once joked, "I have a ten commandments of golf course architecture, but in design, as in life, I have trouble ever following more than 8 at one time."
And, didn't Ron Whitten explore the right brain left brain split among gca's? It's there, and maybe TD is just projecting his strongly held opinions as fact across the gca universe. Also a very human trait!
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With respect to Raynor being adept at self-promotion, there was really no need. You can easily make the argument he worked himself to death (remember, travel was train and boat) and died at an early age. Banks ended up finishing quite a few courses after Raynor passed, so not sure they could have taken on many more new design commissions.
Referencing the 1918 Olympian Interview, my recollection is the writer strongly implied Raynor was a taciturn subject. BTW, since I am the one who may - or may not - have swiped an original copy of the magazine out of our archives, Raynor was planning on building a "west coast" Lido . . . . . . when WWI ended, there was a golf boom and the club decided it needed 36 holes, not 18.
To this day, his plans hang on our clubhouse wall, sticking their tongue out at me every time I walk into the locker room. When the club was considering a complete redesign of our Ocean Course, I insisted those plans to be a fantastic starting point, even though the orientation and topography would have to be altered quite a bit.
Our GC at the time: "Who is Seth Raynor? And what is a "Lido?"
That was the day I mostly hung up any hope for us . . . . . .
I know Raynor dies earlier than what we would have expected I checked a couple sources and someone born in 1874 had a life expectancy of 39.4 years of age. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1040079/life-expectancy-united-states-all-time/ (https://www.statista.com/statistics/1040079/life-expectancy-united-states-all-time/)
Now the Spanish flu (we know about that now) and WW1 were the main culprits, but Raynor actually dodges some bullets to live to be 51.
What brought down the average life expectancy in 1874 was the child (under five years old) mortality rate of 32%.
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On the other hand, Alister MacKenzie surely had an artistic temperament. Tom Simpson certainly did. And Pete Dye absolutely did; that was who I learned it from.
Don't forget Dick Wilson...why do you think Jones couldn't stand him?
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I enjoyed reading that again. TD seems to be against almost any form of codifying ideas and preferences, it seems like most of us like to do it. I've never found a philosophy of no philosophy to be particularly useful in design.....In a way it makes sense. Human nature seems to be to try to organize things, rank them, evaluate them, etc. While rankings are public, gca's internal thoughts about what drives their designs usually isn't.
Jeff:
This conversation is funny to me because I have one foot planted deep in each side. Most everyone who knew me as a kid / teenager would describe me as smart, nerdy, and very much an introvert -- it took me decades to sort out that I wasn't really an introvert so much as I was raised and conditioned to act like one. You yourself described an early meeting with me as that I came across as "aloof" when it was probably just a general wariness of people I didn't know.
When I was 18-22 years old I was pretty obsessive about making notes about golf courses and analyzing what made them great and ranking them and ranking every hole on them. Mr. Dye drilled that out of me, or maybe I just got to the point where I had internalized it all and to keep doing it was just a waste of time, I'm not sure. You've probably noticed that when you and others start trying to analyze what makes a course great, I'm quick to provide the counter-examples from the top 100 lists, because I've already done the math!
But it's not marketing to say that I stopped wanting to have an "ideal" for design after working on the Stadium course at PGA West, because that's the truth. Mr. Dye was the most creative person I'd ever known, but it seemed to me that his ideals had boxed him into a corner there, as did the change of focus toward thinking about Tour pros in so much of his work.
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Mike,
I always thought it was because he was Jone's biggest competitor, the only one of that era who could really beat him out for a job. I only have gotten a glimpse of Jone's personality from having seen and dined with him a half dozen times, and never really considered that deeply.
Interesting point. I can't even imagine that Jones wasn't a passionate architect, at least when younger. What happens when passion leads to success, and then you have to become a businessman to sustain you in performing your craft? I can say, even from my modest success in the biz, I went from starving artist to supporting the staff by finding the next job pretty quickly. I still have a notepad page with my "business plan" on it. The point I remember most is, "Design at night, when everyone has gone home." Even then, it was hard not to delegate the basic designs (or associated grading plans) to someone else once you got past one big project at a time.
BTW, I noticed you mentioned the "drafting board" in another post. Have you given up on Vectorworks?
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Interesting thread.
I suppose one simplistic definition of an artistic temperament is: 'one who is most of all concerned with making art', rather than, say, making a living or building a career. Yes, many can & do make a living and build careers *through* art, with art as their vehicle to success. But in those cases, the ultimate goal is the success, not the art. There's nothing wrong with that, striving for success, and the difference between these two types of art-makers is sometimes subtle, but think I can see it; with the latter the work tends to be more derivative in nature -- it has more to do with copying than creating. There are many, say, documentary filmmakers these days, working in the 'arts' and doing 'artistic work' -- but look at a hundred different documentaries by a hundred different filmmakers and it's hard to tell them apart: ie at a basic level, they all look & feel the same, using the same proven techniques and organized around the same well-worn narrative structures and following the same well-established template (no pun intended). It's probably a dead-end to try to identify past examples of 'artistic temperaments' and how they stand out from others, but if you've seen the movie I might say it's the difference between a Mozart and a Salieri: both needing to make a living, but one living as a flashing comet of art and the other studying the trigonometry of space flight.
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Mike,
I always thought it was because he was Jone's biggest competitor, the only one of that era who could really beat him out for a job. I only have gotten a glimpse of Jone's personality from having seen and dined with him a half dozen times, and never really considered that deeply.
Interesting point. I can't even imagine that Jones wasn't a passionate architect, at least when younger. What happens when passion leads to success, and then you have to become a businessman to sustain you in performing your craft? I can say, even from my modest success in the biz, I went from starving artist to supporting the staff by finding the next job pretty quickly. I still have a notepad page with my "business plan" on it. The point I remember most is, "Design at night, when everyone has gone home." Even then, it was hard not to delegate the basic designs (or associated grading plans) to someone else once you got past one big project at a time.
BTW, I noticed you mentioned the "drafting board" in another post. Have you given up on Vectorworks?
Yes, wary would have been a better word for you to describe our first meeting, LOL. I stand corrected. ;)
In the end, I don't think we vary too much on the basic thought process. All design is a combination of experience, personality type, etc. We just seem to like approaching it from the opposite end of the spectrums in describing it. And, you tend to emphasize the exceptions that prove the rule every time I mention the possibility of a rule. That's fine, but to me, it still proves the rule....After many posts in another thread, your last one did admit most of us had copied or adapted other ideas, which was my simple point all along, one that seems so obvious that I don't have problems admitting it. I get starting from the viewpoint of questioning everything.
Like your analysis of courses, I still do it to learn. For instance, in the last year, I used a digital level to see what % of slope on a tight cut Bermuda fw would still hold a ball up. (8%, BTW) I also used one on my own project to see just what slope on the edge of a green puts it on the edge of drying out and/or mowing stress (Coincidentally, also 8%) so I don't make the same mistakes again, only new ones, LOL. Again, supporting my view that many people can conceptualize a golf hole, but we get paid to deliver on the details that make it really work for all involved. It doesn't mean I don't start design on a conceptual level, even if that is not what I choose to focus on here.
I have seen you espouse limited multiple tees here, but build them in real life. I wonder what's more conceptually pure - me accepting they are necessary (as a general rule) and incorporating them. Or you saying they aren't necessary, but acquiescing because the client wants them? Ditto with cart paths, avoiding blind shots and a few other hot button issues where you have done well pointing out the contrarian view.
Yes, in part, I come here to provide a more "practical" look at design for the gca fans here. And, to gently tweak you and Mike Young just a bit, hopefully within the confines of friendly banter. Who was it who thought refraining from the frank discussion of others' work wasn't a good thing?
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I suppose one simplistic definition of an artistic temperament is: 'one who is most concerned with making art', rather than, say, making a living or building a career.
Yes, that is a good part of the distinction for me. Of course, some guys have had the privilege, like Macdonald and Pete Dye and indeed quite a few of the famous designers, of not having to worry about making a living. In fact I had that when starting out myself, on a much lesser level. But when I re-read Macdonald's book I see him passionately arguing that "architecture is one of the five arts" and it is not hard to think that he was driven by "art" even if he invented his own templates to do it.
[And actually, I don't think Macdonald thought at all about templates. He was a golfer who had a list of holes he admired. Raynor was the one who had the background to turn that list into reproducible examples.]
And to incorporate Jeff and Mike's discussion about Mr. Jones: reading James Hansen's book, it seems clear that RTJ had that artistic passion at the beginning of his career, but that the Depression forced him to refocus on the commercial realities, and the need to associate himself with people who had the money to support his art. Thus an amateur psychoanalyst might conclude that part of the reason Jones hated Dick Wilson was that Wilson was NOT making the same trade-off.
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Good points, and I have seen that at least the artistic personality isn't really as concerned about money. I think RTJ retained most of his passion. I don't think you spend 300 days a year traveling the world just to make money. Success, practicalities, family, age, etc. all can work that direction, though.
In speaking on all the other gca's retaining passion is something to keep track of. In good times, maybe you could ride it out even if you have lost your passion, I suppose. At worst, being a gca has to beat almost any other job you might find.
Lastly, it's all a grey scale. For instance, if you have been fortunate to have designed, as Mike says, 20-30 new courses, and a master plan for new forward tees is the best opportunity this year, you might consider it a let down after having been in the biz in the good times. But, you might also have to take that as one of your jobs to pay the overhead among hopefully a few more interesting ones.
In fact, isn't the cadre of restoration architects driven by the early ones who had a passion for old courses, even when new courses were available for design.
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Good points, and I have seen that at least the artistic personality isn't really as concerned about money. I think RTJ retained most of his passion. I don't think you spend 300 days a year traveling the world just to make money. Success, practicalities, family, age, etc. all can work that direction, though.
When I went to Mr. Jones' office to interview with him in 1983 [at someone else's behest], on my return from overseas, he made an offer to me and then said to Roger Rulewich as an aside, "Of course he will want to work with the best in the business," referring to himself. Based on that, I've just always assumed that it was the ego driving him at that point, not the money.
I was glad to get to spend a little more time with him later on, to soften my view from that first encounter.
Anyway, he was right to a point; the difference was I thought Mr. Dye was the best.
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I suppose one simplistic definition of an artistic temperament is: 'one who is most concerned with making art', rather than, say, making a living or building a career.
Yes, that is a good part of the distinction for me. Of course, some guys have had the privilege, like Macdonald and Pete Dye and indeed quite a few of the famous designers, of not having to worry about making a living. In fact I had that when starting out myself, on a much lesser level. But when I re-read Macdonald's book I see him passionately arguing that "architecture is one of the five arts" and it is not hard to think that he was driven by "art" even if he invented his own templates to do it.
[And actually, I don't think Macdonald thought at all about templates. He was a golfer who had a list of holes he admired. Raynor was the one who had the background to turn that list into reproducible examples.]
And to incorporate Jeff and Mike's discussion about Mr. Jones: reading James Hansen's book, it seems clear that RTJ had that artistic passion at the beginning of his career, but that the Depression forced him to refocus on the commercial realities, and the need to associate himself with people who had the money to support his art. Thus an amateur psychoanalyst might conclude that part of the reason Jones hated Dick Wilson was that Wilson was NOT making the same trade-off.
Maybe the word “template” is a sticking point but it’s hard for me to believe Macdonald didn’t think at all about them. That he used a bunch of the same ones on all his courses was not random.
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In today's day and age, does the determination that Raynor's courses are "great" and therefore he is a "genius" come before or after learning the golf course is a Raynor design?
Inertia is a powerful force.
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Maybe the word “template” is a sticking point but it’s hard for me to believe Macdonald didn’t think at all about them. That he used a bunch of the same ones on all his courses was not random.
I agree that he used most of the same holes and ideas as a starting point for his designs. I just don't think he thought of things in terms of templates since he had no engineering background. Indeed, I think the engineered look of his and Raynor's courses was not deliberate on his part, but more a function of not having people with golf course construction experience.
When he reminisces about The National in his book, he writes that "The only thing that I do now is to endeavor to make the hazards as natural as possible." And toward the end of his chapter on Architecture, there is this line:
"I should like also to suggest that the construction of bunkers on various courses should have an individuality entirely of their own which should arouse the love or hatred of intelligent golfers."
He sounds like a man who recognized the limitations of templates.
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Good points, and I have seen that at least the artistic personality isn't really as concerned about money. I think RTJ retained most of his passion. I don't think you spend 300 days a year traveling the world just to make money. Success, practicalities, family, age, etc. all can work that direction, though.
When I went to Mr. Jones' office to interview with him in 1983 [at someone else's behest], on my return from overseas, he made an offer to me and then said to Roger Rulewich as an aside, "Of course he will want to work with the best in the business," referring to himself. Based on that, I've just always assumed that it was the ego driving him at that point, not the money.
I was glad to get to spend a little more time with him later on, to soften my view from that first encounter.
Anyway, he was right to a point; the difference was I thought Mr. Dye was the best.
One of my great memories is writing to RTJ at about 15 years old (maybe as young as 12) and getting a warm, generous letter back from him, encouraging me. And a few other times when he actually asked to have dinner with me (including that membership incident, but also one year at the Ryder Cup and a few other occasions.) So, my view of him probably started out softer.
That said, I think we all get softer in our views of the world as we age and acquire experience. :D
I also note that Pete went out of his way to be different than Jones, and had a high opinion of him, even if he had the wish to outdo him and be completely different. Ambition is probably the biggest common thread among anyone who has succeeded in this business.
And, by the way, years ago, I was (correctly) chastised by a long departed and somewhat despised member here, who pointed out that the geometric bunkers did really start with Raynor, and CBM did prefer a much more natural look, and that NGLA really didn't have that gemoetry.
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In today's day and age, does the determination that Raynor's courses are "great" and therefore he is a "genius" come before or after learning the golf course is a Raynor design?
Inertia is a powerful force.
Well, sure, but the power of name brands is huge in the modern world and Seth Raynor is by no means the only architect who gains from that.
I remember vividly the first time I heard of Mountain Lake, in about 1987 or '88. Rick Smith, the teaching pro, had just been there and came back raving about it, but he didn't know who had designed it. Fred Muller and I had never heard of the place, but after Rick described some of the deep bunkers, it occurred to me it might be a Raynor design, so I asked if it had a long par-3 with a deep swale through the green. I guess Rick had never seen a Raynor course to that point, and he was very excited about all the holes we know are templates. So to ascribe their popularity to his name is probably a stretch.
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Maybe the word “template” is a sticking point but it’s hard for me to believe Macdonald didn’t think at all about them. That he used a bunch of the same ones on all his courses was not random.
I agree that he used most of the same holes and ideas as a starting point for his designs. I just don't think he thought of things in terms of templates since he had no engineering background. Indeed, I think the engineered look of his and Raynor's courses was not deliberate on his part, but more a function of not having people with golf course construction experience.
When he reminisces about The National in his book, he writes that "The only thing that I do now is to endeavor to make the hazards as natural as possible." And toward the end of his chapter on Architecture, there is this line:
"I should like also to suggest that the construction of bunkers on various courses should have an individuality entirely of their own which should arouse the love or hatred of intelligent golfers."
He sounds like a man who recognized the limitations of templates.
Macdonald and Raynor by most accounts formed a mutual admiration society. That said I don’t believe that someone with the personality and resolve of Macdonald would settle for Raynor’s engineered style of construction if he wasn’t pleased with it. He certainly could have conveyed his wishes to Raynor if he didn’t approve. Finally I think it’s more likely it’s exactly the way Macdonald wanted it.
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I also note that Pete went out of his way to be different than Jones, and had a high opinion of him, even if he had the wish to outdo him and be completely different. Ambition is probably the biggest common thread among anyone who has succeeded in this business.
As Pete described it to me, at the very impressionable age of 20, he had a lot of respect for Mr. Jones's work, but eventually he just thought that, "Somebody has to do something different." I didn't have the sense that it was about competing for work at all; more that he believed that everything was getting homogenized and that was bad for golf, because he recognized that a lot of the courses he admired were quite different from the prevailing style.
That was probably the most significant of all the conversations I had with Pete, and I was still the most inexperienced guy on the crew at that point.
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Macdonald and Raynor by most accounts formed a mutual admiration society. That said I don’t believe that someone with the personality and resolve of Macdonald would settle for Raynor’s engineered style of construction if he wasn’t pleased with it. He certainly could have conveyed his wishes to Raynor if he didn’t approve. Finally I think it’s more likely it’s exactly the way Macdonald wanted it.
Tim:
I was giving Raynor a lot of credit for Macdonald's style there and you took it away from him. Whose side are you on?
My experience has been that most people who want to be a golf course architect have no ideas at all about how to build a course when they start out, and have to resort to trial and error to find something they can do successfully. For example, when I built High Pointe I had never built a flashed sand bunker and struggled to figure out how, even though I had seen a lot of them. It took me 3-4 years to get the hang of them, through studying them and hiring a couple of guys who could do it.
My guess is that Macdonald was no different -- especially since he had way fewer examples to draw from than I did. I'm not saying he wasn't happy with that style, but I'm guessing his use of it had a lot to do with hiring an engineer to help him put his ideas into the ground. And the quotes I provided might indicate to some people that he wasn't entirely happy with some portions of that style, with the benefit of hindsight.
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In today's day and age, does the determination that Raynor's courses are "great" and therefore he is a "genius" come before or after learning the golf course is a Raynor design?
Inertia is a powerful force.
Well, sure, but the power of name brands is huge in the modern world and Seth Raynor is by no means the only architect who gains from that.
I remember vividly the first time I heard of Mountain Lake, in about 1987 or '88. Rick Smith, the teaching pro, had just been there and came back raving about it, but he didn't know who had designed it. Fred Muller and I had never heard of the place, but after Rick described some of the deep bunkers, it occurred to me it might be a Raynor design, so I asked if it had a long par-3 with a deep swale through the green. I guess Rick had never seen a Raynor course to that point, and he was very excited about all the holes we know are templates. So to ascribe their popularity to his name is probably a stretch.
The templates no doubt have merit, however, it wasn't Raynor who came up with the templates, he just implemented them where he could. And, many of the holes on the courses of his I've played that aren't templates aren't that noteworthy.
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Mike,
BTW, I noticed you mentioned the "drafting board" in another post. Have you given up on Vectorworks?
I still have it but most anything now that is not sent to an engineer is done on single hole sheets by hand...
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TD -
for me your story about Rick Smith reflects what, at the end of the day, is the coolest thing about CBM-Raynor, i.e. that a top-flight golfer comes back from a first-time play raving about a long Par 3 with a deep swale through the green. Which is to say: with something akin to a 'beginner's mind' and fresh eyes, the golfer who loves golf will find the essential (if not quintessential) essence of golf in examples of great golf course architecture. It may not be 'art' borne out of an artistic temperament, but it nobly fulfills the primary function of the craft.
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Indeed, I think the engineered look of his and Raynor's courses was not deliberate on his part, but more a function of not having people with golf course construction experience.
I think that was a huge part of it at the time...
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Macdonald and Raynor by most accounts formed a mutual admiration society. That said I don’t believe that someone with the personality and resolve of Macdonald would settle for Raynor’s engineered style of construction if he wasn’t pleased with it. He certainly could have conveyed his wishes to Raynor if he didn’t approve. Finally I think it’s more likely it’s exactly the way Macdonald wanted it.
Tim:
I was giving Raynor a lot of credit for Macdonald's style there and you took it away from him. Whose side are you on?
My experience has been that most people who want to be a golf course architect have no ideas at all about how to build a course when they start out, and have to resort to trial and error to find something they can do successfully. For example, when I built High Pointe I had never built a flashed sand bunker and struggled to figure out how, even though I had seen a lot of them. It took me 3-4 years to get the hang of them, through studying them and hiring a couple of guys who could do it.
My guess is that Macdonald was no different -- especially since he had way fewer examples to draw from than I did. I'm not saying he wasn't happy with that style, but I'm guessing his use of it had a lot to do with hiring an engineer to help him put his ideas into the ground. And the quotes I provided might indicate to some people that he wasn't entirely happy with some portions of that style, with the benefit of hindsight.
Tom-Like the other point we discussed neither one of us has a definitive answer. The difference between modern day and then was that they were making it up as they went along on the construction side. There was nobody to call in if they got stuck.
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My guess is that Macdonald was no different -- especially since he had way fewer examples to draw from than I did. I'm not saying he wasn't happy with that style, but I'm guessing his use of it had a lot to do with hiring an engineer to help him put his ideas into the ground. And the quotes I provided might indicate to some people that he wasn't entirely happy with some portions of that style, with the benefit of hindsight.
It wasn't hindsight.
Read the very last line of the article I posted above. He went into the whole thing thinking that artificiality should be avoided.
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My guess is that Macdonald was no different -- especially since he had way fewer examples to draw from than I did. I'm not saying he wasn't happy with that style, but I'm guessing his use of it had a lot to do with hiring an engineer to help him put his ideas into the ground. And the quotes I provided might indicate to some people that he wasn't entirely happy with some portions of that style, with the benefit of hindsight.
It wasn't hindsight.
Read the very last line of the article I posted above. He went into the whole thing thinking that artificiality should be avoided.
Sven:
The part he wrote in 1928 surely WAS hindsight, an observation on the work he had done.
That he hoped to do that in 1907 kind of supports my point, that he just didn't know how when he started. [He had already built Chicago Golf Club by then, of course, and quite possibly his goal was a reaction to how it had turned out.] By the same token, I think probably 98% of the golf course architects in history have said that artificiality should be avoided, even if they didn't care at all -- as Jeff B says, that's "just good marketing". But I have no doubt that Macdonald meant it in 1907, and meant in 1928. His goal was to emulate the courses he'd seen in Scotland and England, and many of those were quite natural in appearance.
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I left out the word "just." Should have read "it wasn't just hindsight."
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Wow ;D - anyway, artistic (uncoupled from temperament) can be defined as possessing creative qualities that enable a person to excel at producing creative works...or being aware of, or sensitive to, aesthetic values, et al. I tend to think SR fits into those definitions.
Raynor's seen as a staid, straightforward engineer, yet he is lured by Macdonald into cutting himself loose from what would seem to be a rather unadventurous situation to set about roaming the country, and beyond, to create golf courses...He himself lures the academic, Charles Banks, possibly another 'captive' to steady employment, into joining him on his journey...but he doesn't stop there, he entices Ralph Barton, another academic, to cast off his shackles and throw in with him...that is artistry in and of itself!
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For all the years that I've been hanging out on GCA.COM I've read the many mild knocks on Seth Raynor's work because he "stuck to the same music." The knocks are never too loud, I guess it's hard to argue when his courses are so beloved and he has ten courses in the top 100, including his involvement at Piping Rock and NGLA.
I've always felt these mild slights were unfair. Raynor was hired by guys in New Jersey, Connecticut, Florida, Charleston, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, etc. etc. to build the holes that Macdonald deemed to be the best in the world. He built courses at a time when there was no commercial air travel and getting from place to place throughout the US was not easy. Few people in Pittsburgh would ever expect to play many of Raynor or Macdonald's courses; building one of their own would make perfect sense at the time to the leaders of these golf clubs.
Raynor was never hired to take a piece of land and "find" the best possible holes; he was hired to build in a template-style. Using his engineering skills, he did so in a masterful fashion. An artistic fashion.
He did not play the same music. He used a lot of the same chords, but arranged them beautifully in hundred of different songs. And guess what? People still love his music; it is timeless. If that bothers Raynor critics or even causes some architects to strike out in their career determined to build holes in a non-template approach, so be it!
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1. Bill...I strongly agree.
2. If CBM didn't like Raynor's work, why did he write the Board of Governors of his beloved Chicago GC (which by then had hosted a mere 3 US Opens, 4 US Ams, and 1 US Women's Am) telling them they needed to have Raynor lead the renovation of the course...and they should stay out of Raynor's way when he does it. In that letter CBM says Raynor "has laid out now between fifty and sixty golf courses from Florida and Missouri to Maine; and so far as I know there are no golf courses in the country that compare with his."
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For all the years that I've been hanging out on GCA.COM I've read the many mild knocks on Seth Raynor's work because he "stuck to the same music." The knocks are never too loud, I guess it's hard to argue when his courses are so beloved and he has ten courses in the top 100, including his involvement at Piping Rock and NGLA.
Raynor was never hired to take a piece of land and "find" the best possible holes; he was hired to build in a template-style. Using his engineering skills, he did so in a masterful fashion. An artistic fashion.
Bill
I agree. Accusing an archie for lacking imagination when delevering what the customer paid for is a very harsh take. I think folks need to have a serious amount of knowledge about project instructions etc before damning an archie. There is a very real difference between what was achieved architecturally and the perceived quality/style etc of a golf course.
Beyond all that, how the hell can anyone these days say with any real knowledge which ODG had artistic temperment or not? This is a fool's errand.
Ciao
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When Raynor arrives he builds a series of winners in NGLA, Piping Rock, Sleepy Hollow, St. Louis, Greenbrier and Lido. After the nearly universal acclaim of these courses he is going to flip the script on design principles when he goes out on his own? Why?
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Ińigo Montoya...100% Spaniard (Red and Yellow) Nothing Indigo about him.
This thread grew in interest when Sven jumped in. I'm hoping that the great Northern writer himself (Pietro) jumps in with a take on artistic temperament.