Creativity

<p>Checking back Charles I realise that you are correct, my word game was not described with any purpose other than just playing it for its own sake - sorry.</p>

<p>Fred - I've always found art history interesting and taught it for many years, it can be done in a variety of ways, my own particular method relied to a large extent on trying to impart to my students a sense of the time, a kind of overview of how society was changing and how those changes manifested themselves in art. I have always found the convenient sequential run of one after another art movements approach quite unsatisfactory - for the simple reason that many of the movements were actually concurrent. As time goes on many of the reasons for change in art are often forgotten and edited, German Expressionism, just gets shortened to Expressionism. And then we have to acknowledge that many of the names of the movements were coined by people other than the artists themselves. We can also add that quite often the artists didn't sign up in any formal way to the movements they are often associated with - and in some notable cases were very upset by this.</p>

<p>Advances and charges in science had a far greater effect on art than is commonly stated - the idea that matter was composed of empty space and moving particles had a profound effect on realist painting - the question of how you might "truthfully" paint a table (or anything for that matter) in light of the new information meant that many art minds clicked into full forward and set out to "solve" these problems.</p>

<p>The thing I like about Clive's word game is that it's cooperative and there are no winners in a world where so many games are geared toward winning and one-upsmanship.</p>

<p>I think the cultural and cooperative aspects of creativity are significant. Without that, it's too ego-driven, which is probably part of the cause of an artist's dismay at being considered part of a school or movement he didn't formally sign up for. Most of us are part of something greater than ourselves even though we often fool ourselves into thinking we're the center of the universe.</p>

<p>And I certainly don't mean to minimize individualism. Chopin and Liszt, contemporaries, were in so many ways as different as night and day. I mean really, really different. Yet, when we step back and compare them to the Classical composers who came before them and the Impressionists who followed, we can also see the ways in which they were incredibly similar and shared a musical vocabulary.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>A great example of Clive's brainstorming group practice is in Suzi Weissman's interview with We Five's Jerry Bergen about 20 minutes in here: <a href="http://archive.kpfk.org/m3u.php?mp3fil=23131">http://archive.kpfk.org/m3u.php?mp3fil=23131</a> , talking about how We Five brainstormed to interpret Sylvia Tyson's country song <em>You Were On My Mind</em> into their rock version.</p>

<p>Ian and Sylvia's original <a href="

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We Five <a href="

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<p>Here the crow has learned dog language: the crow gets on its back in mock surrender to temper the mock aggression of the puppy. And at the end of the video: to the puppy the crow signals its playful intention with a dog style play bow. I'm sure this has something to do with creativity, I just don't know what.</p>

<p>We do have to ask how we could ever manage again without youtube and the like! it was very interesting to hear many of the words that were being used to drive their creativity, I too made that transition from student to artist in the 60s and can fully identify with what was said. It is pretty amasing that we can sit at our computers in different time zones around the world and share information about creativity and illustrate it with examples that can quickly give us some confirmation that our ideas are on track. Probably most interesting for me is that as soon as we've listened to those musicians we can transpose their actions into something useful for photography. </p>

<p>Sort of driven by a "what if - why not" philosophy it took them to places they couldn't have imagined - but of course they had to be very receptive to even realise the full extent of their inventions. Art schools used to work on that principle back them, sadly its changed a great deal since then, now students are made to write proposals and success is seen as matching their work to what they said they were going to do. Thanks for those Charles - the puppy and the bird - will take me some time to "work out" but I'm sure you're right it is instructive re: creativity.</p>

<p>Yes and that kid of makes it come together for me to see photography, a more individual activity, as a collaboration of sorts when considering that there is, through work that is shown, a dialog going on between artists.</p>

<p>I must get on with whole lot of jobs today! but your mention of "dialogue" is very timely - it is a word that gets used a lot in art schools, not only in terms of a dialogue between artists or even disciplines but within the artist's own work.</p>

 

<p>Sure sounds like We Five changes "When I" to But in When I woke up this morning. If I'm hearing it right, that would explain the upbeat peppiness increasing in the song. Going to the corner still left her waking up in the morning with 'you on my mind'. So instead of easing her pain getting drunk and sick, she resolves to ramble and walk her blues away, rambling tempo then increasing in the song. The Ian and Sylvia performance has that tempo shift too. So it's upbeat about being unhappy momentarily, showing a creative attitude change as I hear it. And that change to the word But from When I is nice work, emphasizing with a word the change that is also reflected in the tempo in both versions.</p>

<p>You Were On My Mind lyrics</p>

<p>Ian and Sylvia<br /> <br />Got up this morning, you were on my mind, and you were on my mind.<br />I got some ache's and<br />I got some pains and<br />I got some wounds to bind.<br /> <br />Went to the corner just to ease my pain, it was just to ease my pain.<br />I got drunk and<br />I got sick and<br />I came home again.<br /> <br />I got a feelin, down in my shoes. it's way down in my shoes.<br />I got to move on.<br />I got to travel.<br />Walk away my blues.<br /> <br />Got up this morning, you were on my mind, and you were on my mind.<br />I got some ache's and<br />I got some pains and<br />I got some wounds to bind<br /> <br />We Five as I hear it<br /> <br /><strong>When</strong> I woke up this morning<br /> You were on my mind<br /> And you were on my mind<br /> <br /> I got troubles, whoa, oh<br /> I got worries, whoa, oh<br /> I got wounds to bind<br /> <br /> So I went to the corner<br /> Just to ease my pains<br /> Yeah, just to ease my pains<br /> <br /> I got troubles, whoa, oh<br /> I got worries, whoa, oh<br /> I came home again<br /> <br /> <strong>But</strong> I woke up this morning<br /> You were on my mind and<br /> You were on my mind<br /> <br /> I got troubles, whoa, oh<br /> I got worries, whoa, oh<br /> I got wounds to bind<br /> <br /> And I got a feelin'<br /> Down in my shoes, said<br /> Way down in my shoes<br /> <br /> Yeah, I got to ramble, whoa, oh<br /> I got to move on, whoa, oh<br /> I got to walk away my blues<br /> <br /> <strong>But</strong> I woke up this morning<br /> You were on my mind<br /> You were on my mind<br /> <br /> I got troubles, whoa, oh<br /> I got worries, whoa, oh<br /> I got wounds to bind</p>

<p>Charles - I reckon this may appeal to you - here's a British comedian, Peter Kay, who's act is based entirely on song lyrics - I find his accent a bit hard to follow but once you get it, it all works quite well. A perfect example of creativity............something that we all knew about taken by someone with a very imaginative mind to a place that we most likely would never think of.</p>

<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cylsLhQaPFw">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cylsLhQaPFw</a></p>

<p>The thing in the We Five interview that intrigued me was the fact that they knew they had a winner but the issues like drunkenness could spoil its chances of success, so they set out solve these problems without cheating by substantially altering the writer's original lyrics. Quite often people's personal sense of integrity can drive creativity.</p>

<p>Before I forget - I remembered something that may have a direct relationship to photography, one of things I noticed over the years while teaching life drawing was that many students tried to draw in a way that was the exact opposite to their natural inclination. There many approaches that work but the most common are "line" (a clean and careful approach) and "tone" (dramatic and often messy) you'd be surprised how many "tone" drawers wanted to be "line" drawers and visa versa.</p>

<p>I suspect the same kind of thing goes on in photography. The creative breakthrough usually comes when people begin to comprehend what their natural inclinations actually are.</p>

<p>Clive, I see creativity, at least within myself and I suspect in others as well, as a dialogue (and you mentioned self dialogue recently which I agree is important) or tension or some sort of counterpoint between exploring and honoring natural inclinations I have and a desire to break free of those. I think some of the authenticity of art, the sense of its being genuine and not phoned in, does come from being "true" to oneself, as you're suggesting, and also from exposing or revealing oneself, etc. At the same time, the risk can be vital and can involve leaping beyond where one is and sometimes daring to become someone new, something unfamiliar and unknown. Working against type might not be productive if it's done in a state of denial. But I think the more self aware I become, the more I can tempt myself also to be someone else. Maybe art and creativity, just as my own life, is as much about becoming as being, as much about who I have yet to be as who I am.</p>

<p>In another thread, John Cage's 4'33" was brought up and I was reminded that Cage actually based this musical piece on the white canvases of Rauschenberg. Just as Rauschenberg's canvases are not blank, since they are painted white and also change as the light and shadows in the room and of the viewers change, Cage's piece is not really silent, as the ambient sounds in the room become part of the performance. Here's Cage talking about it, my own bold emphasis added:</p>

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<p><em>"Actually what pushed me into it was <strong>not guts</strong> but the example of Robert Rauschenberg. His white paintings [...] when I saw those, I said, 'Oh yes, I must. Otherwise I'm lagging, otherwise music is lagging'."</em></p>

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<p>Influence, homage, dialogue, perhaps even a bit of friendly competitive spirit.</p>

<p>Good point - Cage's mention of "lagging (behind)", a very common topic back in the early 60s was the Avant Garde, or the concept of being - ahead of the game, and the race was well and truly on with people like Cage and Rauschenburg - a hugely influential little book back then was a Calvin Tomkins work that, if I remember correctly came out with 2 different titles <em>Ahead of the Game</em> and <em>The Bride and the Bachelors</em> - hardly an artist I knew didn't have a copy of either. The book has 4 chapters, one on each of these revolutionaries. Cage, Rauschenburg, Duchamp and Tinguely.</p>

<p>Of course the concept of the avant garde has been soundly trashed over the decades - but the idea of there being a game/competition still persists and just about any mid-career artist will know the painful feeling of being chopped off at knees by the next generation's ideas.</p>

<p>I've often found it amusing at just how excited we could all get at things like Cage's so called invention of silence when if we looked dispassionately at the whole question we'd soon realise that silences between musical notes had been with us since the beginning of music! and we'd have to acknowledge the huge influence that Ad Reinhardt's black paintings had on Rauschenburg's white ones.</p>

<p>I also think that we may concentrate too much on these radical concept based, and dare I say it, low artistic skill, acts when talking about creativity because they tend to be unhelpful "so what" dead ends.</p>

<p>Cage turned his own and the listener's attention to silence in ways that hadn't been done. Yes, composers and savvy listeners were very much in tune with using silence and pauses. I doubt most listeners noticed it or gave it a thought though, of course, they were experiencing it in all kinds of music. Verdi's <em>Traviata</em> is a masterpiece for so many reasons, not least of which are the several abrupt and poignant pauses throughout the Opera when he puts a halt to a melody in midstream. A recent production I saw had the chorus make a very obvious grand sigh during a couple of those pauses, almost as if the conductor couldn't deal with those gaps and had to fill them in with his own punctuation marks, a misstep in my opinion though still an attempt at creatively doing a little something different with the piece. Silences between musical notes is different from what Cage was turning our attention to, which was a kind of meditation on ambient sound and a sense of the space which a background of timed silence can create.</p>

<p>Concept-based art has been significant in moving our understanding of art and our experience of the world itself forward. The artistic skill involved in Cage's conceptualizing a timed musical piece that instruments don't play or that Duchamp utilized in finding a urinal and having the guts to place it in a museum isn't a matter of the kind of handiwork we might typically think of as "artistic skill" but is a matter of breakout thoughtfulness and an imaginative nudging to the context, history, and purview of art and to our relationship to what's in the world and how we experience it, which is artistic skill of a different sort.</p>

<p>Even so, Cage etc., the new interpretation of pain that is <em>You Were On My Mind</em> in both versions (new for the ego that experienced the change from drinking pain away to walking pain away) and the new attitude emphasized by the creative use of the word 'but' has more meaning overall for me at least, and <em>Traviata</em> more meaning than Cage, who tended toward new for new's sake maybe without enough meaning to hold our interest over centuries.</p>

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<p><em>"The artist must yield himself to his own inspiration... I should compose with utter confidence a subject that set my musical blood going, even though it were condemned by all other artists as anti-musical. Stupid criticism and still more stupid praise."</em> —Giuseppe Verdi</p>

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<p>Charles, I included Verdi's last sentence not to say your criticism or any criticism of Cage is stupid but rather to agree with Verdi that sometimes art is simply beyond the care and imposition of criticism or competition. Sometimes it's just a matter of non-judgmentally and non-competitively appreciating each moment as it comes to us, which I actually think is akin to what Cage was getting at, which was an invitation to experience and a kind of meditation on negative space, as it were.</p>

<p>Some of the most significant art is art which will not hold meaning over centuries. Art may often occupy only a fleeting moment. And I'm glad there exists such art both as support and as an alternative to the more lasting works and the more iconic works. It may, indeed, not be remembered, but it will have had some ripple effect, which is all it needs to have, IMO.</p>

<p><em>Traviata</em> may hold more meaning than many other artworks, including <em>4'33"</em>. I wouldn't be moved to make that assessment here but I do assess things as more or less meaningful at times. Likewise, certain brushstrokes in a painting are dominant and certain colors are. Yet, when I step back and view the painting as a whole or view art history as a whole, each stroke and each artwork seems equally important in fulfilling its unique role even if not when compared to other things.</p>

<p><em>4'33"</em> may not be as significant as <em>Traviata</em> in the overall scheme of things. (The way I'd frame it is that it may well be as significant, it's just not as filled with masterly technique and it's more single-minded.) Whatever else it is or isn't, it claims a moment in the ongoing dialogue that is art.</p>

<p>_________________________________________</p>

<p>Dead end? IMO, no.</p>

<p>Yes 4'33" does claim a moment. There was someone offering a criticism of it on PN as a show for slaves to fashion, and I reject that type of criticism though for some it might elicit, as Clive puts it, a measure of so what. With 4'33" I enjoyed the experience and remembered it as both cognitively engaging and experiential what with the ambient noise to attend to. With meanings, I don't know, I'll try and put 4'33" in the same category as the Scholar's Rocks that Clive introduced me to, where nature performs in the space Cage created and there's definitely something about that space to ponder without definiteness as to meaning, still something of substance there. At the other end, too much meaning can cause us to say so what? as well, just a new way of saying the same old and not interesting, kindly, nauseating, rudely.</p>

<p>I do like the way we wander around the subject of creativity, stubbing our toes on some rocks and picking others up to see what lies beneath.......all adding useful understanding. </p>

<p>I really respond to the fact that we can quote Verdi, Cage and We Five almost in the same sentence - or suddenly be reminded of Scholar rocks just after talking about Cage, and put 2 & 2 together to remember how influential the Japanese Zen (rock) garden (and many other aspect of Japanese culture) was on 60's US art - you could even claim that Cage made the western sound version of the Japanese garden. Or that we stumble closer and closer to the realisation that the first thing any art looses is its newness, and after that it has to take its chances with everything else.</p>

<p>And.........that somehow leads to me to one of key concepts in all this, the idea of taking things further.</p>

<p>A Facebook friend posted this and it seems to fit nicely with what we're talking about.</p>

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<p>Clive, I had a friend over last night and was reminded of how difficult it is to present him with a conversational topic that doesn't just remind him of his own existing view points and experiences. He interprets everything in terms of what he already knows and has already experienced. Everything new fits into him as an extension of what's already there, the newness missed, rubbed out, not perceived. But mind extension isn't mind expansion, so as to Huang I see his sculpture as representation art in the Platonic sense, extension without expansion, more of a creative kids game.</p>

<p>So maybe it does come back to</p>

<p>Julie "... and creating a <em>beginning</em> (what Clive mentioned earlier, a new or changed question); an opening, a passage, a fissure, the interstices, window, door; ... whatever stimulation or or provocation or kick in the ass that shifts you off balance, into some place or condition that you haven't been able to get to before. In this case you can never point to anything and say triumphantly or happily, 'there it is!' because what you've been given is access. Serious voodoo. Or not. It's up to you."</p>

<p>Charles- people and their ways! I think creativity frightens many, I don't really know why but suspect it has something to do with a kind of fear, many would say that being creative can provide you with some real highlights to your life and at the opposite end some absolute misery, which once experienced is enough for you to decide to drop both big highs and lows and lead a life that is in the much safer more even middle band. I think this is quite understandable, and respect that choice as long as they don't stridently try to devalue/demolish every view other than their own.</p>

<p>The "Julie Quote" is probably the key contribution to this massive thread, it just nails it for me.</p>

<p>I'm not sure if I care much if the result of a creative process is expanding, extending or both because once you've elected to nurture that side of your personality the journey becomes as interesting as the destination/s </p>