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I am also addressing this to those half dozen souls who have expressed grave
concern for my intellectual balance. I find I get even more productive when people
question my conclusions. One such comment sent me on a mission to distinguish for
myself the difference between measuring creativeness in some quasi-scientific way in
order to identify it and assessing it through perceptual processes. While I can not
find either method totally satisfactory the following is the result of my effort.
Actually, it was to a great extent the oft repeated assertion that all persons were
creative (“to one extent or another”) and a cautious reaction to an earlier essay on
aesthetics in which I attempted to make a case for the superiority of the non-
objective in art over the narrative, as Herbert Read might have expressed it “the
formal over the informative” which has given birth to this present one.
These two observations stewed for the twenty-one days it takes a chicken to hatch
before the question “why?” could be formulated. The answer to that question is like
the experience of trying to retrieve a dried leaf that has fallen into a mountain creek
and is bobbing away amongst the rapids.
In this case one if the built in difficulties of most psychological testing procedures is
that they, necessarily, take place at a moment in time, a particular moment in time
and the researcher is lucky if the dried leaf in the creek, by virtue of the nature of
the creek, comes close enough for him to snatch it out, and then, of course, the dried
leaf is no longer dry, but wet. And so it is with psychological testing, even creative
people are not what they are 24/7. In the light of all of this awareness how
ridiculously confident psychologists sometimes become. The creative personality
will, I think, always elude the researcher.
There are those who maintain, and apparently with economic success, that it is
possible to stimulate creative responses in the most mundane, prosaic and ordinary
human being. I cannot disagree with that assertion provided if by “creative” one
means to describe those behaviors not usually associated with normal, everyday
social intercourse, but that, we must certainly realize, also includes the truly bizarre
range of behaviors.
However, I must ask myself how normal and everyday are the experiences one has
at the county fair? Which may be one reason why we generally only have them once
a year. It is momentarily a release of social inhibitions and might, therefore, be
mistaken for creative behavior. It is in this category that I would place the results of
the application of exterior stimulation.
Excuse the passionate rant, but it comes from the idea that all are, or can, possibly,
be, creative. It is this same misplaced application of the concept of democracy that
has encouraged the growth of hobbies like finger painting, basket making and
flower arranging and the consequent promulgation of the idea that this is creative
activity. That is appalling. All these activities certainly have their values but should
not be confused with the accomplishments of Michelangelo, Frank Lloyd Wright, or
Mozart. Some definitive cut off should be maintained if only to make differences
more apparent.
It is at this point that I should reintroduce the matter of “form over informed”.
I recently read an interview between the British historian Paul Johnson and the
head of the National Endowment for the Humanities, Bruce Cole <www.neh.fed.us>
in which Cole asks Johnson about his new book “Art: A New History”. I
sympathize with Johnson about the probable desirability of a new history being
written but there is something about the idea of one man presuming to counter
balance the insights of two or three millennia that I find awesome, although I find
myself in the process of doing so myself. Self-confidence knows no bounds.
Based on the interview alone (I am aware that as a serious scholar I should buy the
book, read it, and then comment upon it, but the world, as it has been run by the
uncreative hasn’t allowed me to successfully battle the present-day economy and I cannot
afford it) I am certain that Johnson and I do not agree. Of course, now, in all
fairness to Johnson, he was introduced as a historian and writer and both activities
rely heavily on a linear approach to understanding reality. The painter, architect,
and sculptor, on the other hand, in their most exalted expression, do not.
If one accepts this view, then, those works by artists which some might consider to
be “perfect” ,according to certain technical standards, may not be those areas
where the artists’ creativity has become manifest.
Taking into consideration the focus of some of Johnson’s other comments regarding
his affections for the works of certain artists, such as Winslow Homer, Frederick
Church, and Albert Bierstadt,
all of whom are now dead we must, I think, come to the conclusion that Johnson
really prefers excellence in execution. If this conclusion is correct one wonders how
Johnson might deal with the following phenomena, Vincent van Gogh, Paul
Cézanne, and even, surprise of surprises, Caravaggio when he sometimes appears to
have forgotten what he did.
personalities who inhabit his paintings that singled him out as having introduced a
novelty, although such differences do not make up strong arguments for the
explanation of creative behavior. While that is verifiably demonstrated in his works
it is also true that a deeper level of creativeness he achieved when he managed,
really rather exquisitely, to give vision to his torment at being sexually ambivalent.
Physical evidence seems to have supported that conclusion as well, but it is the way
in which Caravaggio has handled the elements, the formal elements, of his craft that
tells that story more movingly than any contemporary document can do, and therein
lies his significant creativeness.
An astute reader may question as to whether psychoanalytic approaches to aesthetic
matters are appropriate to which I might flippantly respond that it is my creative
approach to art criticism and, therefore, allowable. But I will not do that. Instead, I
will state that, with a reference to Paul Johnson again, those artists he most admires,
such as Raphael and Rubens were not in the totality of their production not very
creative artists. It is true that Raphael died young; I believe he died at 37, but
Masaccio was younger when he died at 27. There are nearly 100 years between those
two deaths, 1428 and 1520, and considering that Raphael had the advantage of
having seen the work of Michelangelo and Leonardo his accomplishments in the
light of his environment do not begin to approach the accomplishments of Masaccio
who pushed the boundaries of aesthetic vision into areas not seen since Classical
times some nearly two millennia earlier. That is a creative accomplishment.
Raphael: Madonna
Masaccio: Apostles
Rubens is a bit more difficult to handle since, as we have learned, he had something
like fifty helpers in his studio. Separating those paintings and those parts of
paintings that are attributed to Rubens’ hand has occupied the attention of many
scholars for as many years. Having such a crowd around me, or around any artist I
have known, would be more than a distraction it would be a disaster, but then,
Rubens was a professional diplomat and crowds probably didn’t bother him that
much and one might suppose, that aesthetic decisions were like diplomatic decisions,
temporary at best and certainly subject to amendment.
Rubens: Crucified Christ
Bernini is a different problem all together and since he had been so very involved in
so much theatricality and with their lavish production requirements he too had
many assistants. He even had a crew of three sculptors assisting him in his sculpture
and, in so far as I am aware, there is little concern among scholars as to which of his
helpers did what in what work. Consequently one might assume that there was little
technical difference in their abilities to do what Bernini required. It may be possible
to credit Bernini with a talent for organization and design concept and certainly a
flair for public relations, but to credit him with a high degree of creativeness
independent of others in the field of aesthetic accomplishment and insight may be
giving too much credence to the influence of a very public style…exciting as that
style may be.
Bernini: Aneas & Anchises
I noticed that in this interview there as no mention of the work of Paul Cézanne
who, recent history reports, was considered the “father of modern art”. In the past
half century I have not come across more than relatively casual references to
Cézanne’s having influenced modern art to the extent that he broke the barrier of
illusionist representation of an external visual reality. From Cézanne’s own
statements I, somehow, feel that that had not been his aim. He clearly stated that he
saw the external world in terms of spheres, cubes and cones. While he certainly
possessed the ability to put that description into literal practice he did not do so.
Others did it for him. What they did I doubt he would have liked. I suspect that he
would have felt their efforts were too superficial.
It is entirely possible; of course, that what Cézanne saw, or felt, was a visual reality
could not be translated into paint on canvas and that the combined efforts of all
others were the closet anyone might come to a realization of what he was talking
about. Perhaps the explanation that Cézanne tried to recreate a visual reality
through the use of color equivalents without chiaroscuro shade is the closest one
might come to an understanding of his efforts.
There is one thing for sure; Cézanne could not draw, at least not in the classically
accepted sense of that term. His attempts to render the human figure are
abominable. Nevertheless throughout all these negative comments about his
disabilities there persists the idea that he was, somehow, on to something but how to
describe that something without recourse to the host of clichés that are available is a
challenge.
The weight of paternal rejection which was probably considerably increased by the
repeated rejections of academic authority figures could very well have smothered a
less determined and obsessive personality haunted by a resistant vision of “a new
world order”. Had he kept different company he might have become the guru of
modern day ecologists and neo-Buddhists with the reported interest he had in
realizing and demonstrating the various balances that characterize our natural
world. It is difficult to say, if not impossible, that he had succeeded in his quest. I am
not able to point to one work about which I can confidently say “this is what he was
after”. In view of that it is more correct to say that this man’s life was a total
disaster, but, in point of fact, it was not as the statements of so many other creative
personalities have pointed out. Cézanne may not have been able to finalize or
culminate, consolidate his vision of an ordered natural universe, but he certainly
fired up the imaginations of others to give the search a try. Consequently, if
heuristic influences might be considered an aspect of creative behavior, Cézanne was
not only highly successful, but successful in a most unusual way.
From this observation I can extrapolate to add the following with some strong
assurance that it is true, that is, that the “new order” to which Cézanne may have
been indicating is that order which emerges in and from their inner consistencies of
certain works of art us an order peculiar to that particular work. In other words,
the excellence of a work of art does not lie in its faithful recording of observed
physical events extant in the outer world, but in the emerging connectedness of its
parts as the mind of the artist works, in an indescribably complex way, with the
myriad of data for which the artist struggles to find a visual resolution. Following
that will be the conclusion that whatever the events are on a canvas or in a work of
art those events are critical to its effective existence and the source of its honor
should it experience any. In short, then, to state that the Sistine Chapel is
“overrated” does injury to the concept of the creative process. To say that Cézanne
did not know how to draw in the classically accepted fashion is simply to point out
that he had rejected that venue as an appropriate one for his research…and
research is what his work is all about.
These observations also suggest that the responsibility of the art critic is not to
determine how well an artist abides by the rules, i.e., Jacques Louis David, but to
determine what the forces which generate artist effort in the individual may be and
how effectively that individual has achieved them.
David: Death of Socrates
In Cézanne we can be forever thankful that he pointed the way, even if, like Moses,
he never reached the Promised Land.
On the other hand, it is possible that Cézanne’s followers were more influenced by
his daring than by his insights. In any event, the world of the visual arts is
undeniably richer because of what he accomplished and on that score alone
Cézanne’s creativity might be assessed.
Paul Henrickson
© 2005