I've read a few good things about creativity.
There's this one beautiful book I have on my shelf here. It's called "The creative process", edited by Brewster Ghislen. It's a paperback that was 99p in a charity shop, published by Mentor. These kind of treasures are rare as pigs eggs. Get it if you see one.
It's a collection of essays by Albert Einstein, Vincent van Gogh, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Fredrich Nietzsche, Cal Jung, Mary Wigman, AE Housman, WB Yeats, Henry James, Henry Moore, Thomas Wolfe, DH Lawrence, Steven Spender Paul Valery, Samuel Coleridge, Max Ernst, Julian Levi, Christian Zervos, Harold Shapero, Roger Sessions, Henry Poincare, Rudyard Kipling, JH Preston, Dorothy Canfield, Katherine Anne Porter, Morton Prince, Herbert Spencer, RW Gerard.
All kinds of weird and wonderful things are thrust into the discussion, issues like family and formative experience, faith, habitat and sleep, diet, motivation, social and cultural relationships... Emotions like joy, frustration, anger, love, and, as they reflect deeper structures of Selfhood, Angst, Kirkegaardian despair, Destiny.
In spite of a relativist position the idea of "a correct interpretation" of creativity is destroyed. It would make the most hardened cognitive scientist take a step back and question deeply all they think they know. Turns out there are as many kinds of creativity as there are minds. That's what makes it creativity.
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On Mon, 20 Dec 2010 08:42:53 -0500 (EST) Mathieu Bouchard matju@artengine.ca wrote:
On Mon, 20 Dec 2010, Chris McCormick wrote:
Ah, sorry for the confusion. I meant it to say that sometimes constraining yourself, as with following the rules for writing haiku, can help creativity. For some artists, there is nothing scarier than a page with no words on it, or a canvas with no paint (or objects) on it. If you start with some rules about what you are allowed to put on the canvas, this can paradoxically enhance your creativity.
It's about making choices. Before an artwork is started, that artwork could be anything. Somehow the artist has to start with something in particular (can't go in all directions at once !). Elements that help define the artwork may additive (you put a box that suggests another box...) or subtractive (you state a rule that filters out some possibilities, or you set some kind of goal).
Well, that's how I see it... at this moment.
| Mathieu Bouchard ---- tél: +1.514.383.3801 ---- Villeray, Montréal, QC