“Carl Regehr: The Lost Journals”—Journal entry, January 12 1983

Image from the STA Design Archives

We’ve featured the work of Carl Regehr before in this blog. So we thought it would be fitting to end this month with this piece from a recently published book titled Carl Regehr: The Lost Journals. Regehr was a pioneer in Chicago design history, an honorary member of the Society of Typographic Arts, and professor and design educator at the University of Illinois/Champaign at the time of his passing in 1983.

Thirty years ago this month, Carl Regehr (1919-1983) entered the following passage into his journal, dated January 12 1983:

Review, David Smith Show at Nat’l Gallery, Wash. D.C., 1/2–4/24–’83
Among the pleasures that retrospectives offer is the comforting discovery that artists are not born great. To see a career all in development is to begin to understand what it takes to make raw talent into genius. Many factors influence the process, but one trait keeps reappearing throughout the history of art: 

In the alchemy that transforms promise into achievement, a key ingredient is the ability to handle contradictions and transcend limitations, the artist’s own and those of his time and place. His friend Robert Motherwell, said, “Oh, David, you are so delicate as Vivaldi, and so strong as a Mack truck.” Mary Ann Tighe (1)

1. Best, Marjie, Jana Regehr, and Jack Weiss, eds. Carl Regehr: The Lost Journals. Chicago: The Society of Typographic Arts, 2012. N. pg. Print.