Creativity Quote by Leonard Baskin

Leonard Baskin’s offhand “of course” is doing real work here: it signals how obvious the practice felt to him, and how artificial the label shift later became. He’s not bragging about range; he’s quietly puncturing a prestige economy. “Graphic design” carries the modern glow of authorship, systems-thinking, and cultural cool. “Commercial art” carries the older whiff of servitude: work made to sell, to please clients, to circulate in the marketplace rather than the museum. Baskin collapses that hierarchy with a shrug, reminding you that much of what we now sanctify as “design” was long treated as skilled labor with an asterisk.

The intent reads as both clarification and mild resistance. Baskin, known for intense figurative prints and book illustration, lived in a 20th-century art world that policed boundaries: fine art versus applied art, the studio versus the job. By naming the same activity under two eras of terminology, he exposes how taste is often rebranding. Nothing intrinsic changed in the making; what changed was the cultural appetite to dignify it.

The subtext is practical, even slightly sardonic: artists have always taken commissions, made posters, designed typography, illustrated books. Calling it “commercial” didn’t make it less rigorous; calling it “graphic design” doesn’t magically make it more pure. Baskin’s line also hints at class and gatekeeping - who gets to be “an artist” versus who gets filed under “useful.” It’s a reminder that the border between art and commerce isn’t a line on the page; it’s a story institutions tell.