“Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman”: Adventures of a Curious Character

“I always draw directly from a posed model.”

“Well, how did you get Madame Curie to pose for you?”

Around that time the Los Angeles County Museum of Art had a similar idea to the one I had, that artists are far away from an understanding of science. My idea was that artists don’t understand the underlying generality and beauty of nature and her laws (and therefore cannot portray this in their art). The museum’s idea was that artists should know more about technology: they should become more familiar with machines and other applications of science.

The art museum organized a scheme in which they would get some of the really good artists of the day to go to various companies which volunteered some time and money to the project. The artists would visit these companies and snoop around until they saw something interesting that they could use in their work. The museum thought it might help if someone who knew something about technology could be a sort of liaison with the artists from time to time as they visited the companies. Since they knew I was fairly good at explaining things to people and I wasn’t a complete jackass when it came to art (actually, I think they knew I was trying to learn to draw)—at any rate, they asked me if I would do that, and I agreed.

It was lots of fun visiting the companies with the artists. What typically happened was, some guy would show us a tube that discharged sparks in beautiful blue, twisting patterns. The artists would get all excited and ask me how they could use it in an exhibit. What were the necessary conditions to make it work?

The artists were very interesting people. Some of them were absolute fakes: they would claim to be an artist, and everybody agreed they were an artist, but when you’d sit and talk to them, they’d make no sense whatsoever! One guy in particular, the biggest faker, always dressed funny; he had a big black bowler hat. He would answer your questions in an incomprehensible way, and when you’d try to find out more about what he said by asking him about some of the words he used, off we’d be in another direction! The only thing he contributed, ultimately, to the exhibit for art and technology was a portrait of himself.

Other artists I talked to would say things that made no sense at first, but they would go to great lengths to explain their ideas to me. One time I went somewhere, as a part of this scheme, with Robert Irwin. It was a two-day trip, and after a great effort of discussing back and forth, I finally understood what he was trying to explain to me, and I thought it was quite interesting and wonderful.

Then there were the artists who had absolutely no idea about the real world. They thought that scientists were some kind of grand magicians who could make anything, and would say things like, “I want to make a picture in three dimensions where the figure is suspended in space and it glows and flickers.” They made up the world they wanted, and had no idea what was reasonable or unreasonable to make.

Finally there was an exhibit, and I was asked to be on a panel which judged the works of art. Although there was some good stuff that was inspired by the artists’ visiting the companies, I thought that most of the good works of art were things that were turned in at the last minute out of desperation, and didn’t really have anything to do with technology. All of the other members of the panel disagreed, and I found myself in some difficulty. I’m no good at criticizing art, and I shouldn’t have been on the panel in the first place.

There was a guy there at the county art museum named Maurice Tuchman who really knew what he was talking about when it came to art. He knew that I had had this one-man show at Caltech. He said, “You know, you’re never going to draw again.”

“What? That’s ridiculous! Why should I never.

“Because you’ve had a one-man show, and you’re only an amateur.”

Although I did draw after that, I never worked as hard, with the same energy and intensity, as I did before. I never sold a drawing after that, either. He was a smart fella, and I learned a lot from him. I could have learned a lot more, if I weren’t so stubborn!

Is Electricity Fire?

In the early fifties I suffered temporarily from a disease of middle age: I used to give philosophical talks about science—how science satisfies curiosity, how it gives you a new world view, how it gives man the ability to do things, how it gives him power—and the question is, in view of the recent development of the atomic bomb, is it a good idea to give man that much power? I also thought about the relation of science and religion, and it was about this time when I was invited to a conference in New York that was going to discuss “the ethics of equality.”

There had already been a conference among the older people, somewhere on Long Island, and this year they decided to have some younger people come in and discuss the position papers they had worked out in the other conference.