“We stopped for coffee afterward, and I asked Jacob why, given his skill at seeing and showing the world as it was, he never wanted to draw the particulars of this world as it is, the world that we found ourselves in, where people met at endless dinner parties. He drew his kids, beautifully, but without their iPods and Game Boys and VitaminWaters. Why not draw as a novelist might write, with the appurtenances and accessories of this time?”

“He looked at me and seemed almost angry. ‘No, that’s – you’ve so absorbed the premises of modern realism into your head that you can’t see past it. Why didn’t Michelangelo draw people buying fish, instead of nudes and gods? He was looking for some idea of beauty, rooted in this world’ – he made a gesture around the coffee shop, taking in everything, light and time and the human forms seated there – ‘that didn’t need an iPod to justify it. He really had an idea of timeless beauty. Why is beauty less interesting to you than journalism?’“

– Adam Gopnik, 
What I Learned When I Learned to Draw, 
June 27, 2011, New Yorker