Talking Art with a Young New Yorker

Autumn has slipped away. Returning to my blog drafts, I found an essay that should have been finished in summer and somehow dragged its feet all the way into early winter. My procrastination is clearly in its advanced stage. Still, I should sit down and finish it—let writing become a habit, a small act of self-care against the quiet erosion of age.

Toronto’s summers are never oppressively hot. The air is almost unreal in its clarity—everything you see looks as if a contrast filter has been applied: sharp, pure, almost too bright. Stare at these colours long enough and your eyes grow weary. Much of North America looks like this. It is a novelty for tourists, but not ideal for painters; such relentless clarity dulls one’s sensitivity to the subtleties of what is truly there. Painters long instead for greys—shifting, layered greys. Places like Maine or Nova Scotia, where the Atlantic brings grey clouds, grey meadows, and darkened earth: the world in the palette of Andrew Wyeth.

I cannot simply drop everything and wander to such places. Daily life is mostly made of chores, obligations, and the quiet routines of home. My only escape is the walk I take each evening to the park: clouds on the horizon, a nearby stretch of forest, children tumbling on the grass, young people exercising, middle-aged neighbours strolling, the elderly resting on benches. Usually I find a seat, sit idly, and if someone greets me, we make small talk—harmless, forgettable, but a decent way to practice English.

But on several of these evenings I ended up, under the shade of an old tree, discussing rather heavier subjects with a young man: the principles of graphic design, the history of fashion, the purpose of art—topics far too weighty for casual park chatter.

The young man, Allen, was a relative of my neighbour, a fashion design student at Pratt Institute in New York. He was spending part of his break in Toronto, and this quiet Canadian suburb was no place for someone accustomed to the frenzy of Manhattan. He could only find traces of humanity in the park at dusk—and thus, someone to talk to. Once he learned about my work, he shed all shyness and seized me like a lifeline:

“What do you think the purpose of art is? Why do artists express themselves this way? How can someone…?”

An avalanche of grand questions. I couldn’t help laughing. I had never discussed such things with anyone. These felt like questions too intimate, too private—and if I truly knew the answers, I would probably be famous by now.

Yet his curiosity stirred something in me. It’s rare—among my peers or the younger generation—to meet anyone who genuinely wants to talk about art. Even among artists themselves, conversations drift toward trivialities, gossip, and anecdotes. Talking about art or one’s craft often feels embarrassingly pretentious, as if one were trying too hard. Most young people care more about careers and income, and rightly so—art does not put food on the table. Why waste time discussing it? Still, exceptions appear. This young New Yorker was one of them.

“What do you think the purpose and principle of graphic design is?” he asked again, as abruptly as before.

His question pulled me back twenty years, to my days at the Central Academy of Arts & Design in Beijing. I once asked my professor something similar. His answer was: the purpose of graphic design is to achieve a sense of formal balance.

I recall replying: the purpose of design is to break the existing balance in order to create a new one.

So I passed that same answer to Allen. He looked puzzled, thoughtful. Understandably—such ideas are too abstract, with little practical reference. Yet for me, it still seems right. The history of design is a history of designers breaking one equilibrium only to establish another. It was my youthful attempt to understand design—private, naive, but sincere. Seeing him tangled in the same confusion I once had, I felt an unexpected kinship across time.

Dusk deepened. The sun sank behind the trees. People drifted home. Our conversation ended without conclusions.

The next evening, on my usual walk, he jumped out from behind a tree like an ambush, eager to continue. He was preparing for his graduation project but seemed directionless—too many ideas or none at all, each one discarded by his own doubts. Young artists often oscillate like this: feeling the world at their feet one moment, and swallowed by self-doubt the next.

I know nothing about fashion design and could offer no professional advice. Instead, I told him about a series I’d watched recently—The New Look, a drama about Dior and Chanel. In the tangled history behind their glamorous reputations, they were nothing like the brand names we see today in windows and runways. Their era, their personal lives—these shaped their designs far more than any abstract theory. Their works were simply their responses to the world and to themselves.

Or think of Yohji Yamamoto. The public sees only the spotlight, luxury, and the myth of the designer. But beneath all that, stripped of glamour, a fashion designer is simply a tailor—a craftsman. That’s why he wrote a book titled Making Clothes. Returning to that humble starting point might be a better way to talk about fashion.

And so we talked through several evenings. He agreed with some things, rejected others, still tangled in confusion. As for me, encountering such an inquisitive young mind stirred long-ignored thoughts, before I had the chance to refine them. I poured them out recklessly, almost arrogantly—and felt a faint, amusing shame for doing so.