First I would like to say that the dichotomy between artistic
and scientific creativity is false. Artists, scientists and
indeed philosophers are all engaged in evolving new descriptions
of the world that are more enabling than the pre-existing interpretations.
We should be considering 'what is the point of creative thought
and action' as opposed to repetitive actions resulting from
an unquestioned acceptance of already established concepts.
The dictionary gives as its first definition of art: that which
is not nature.
It
is perfectly valid to start by questioning what the point
is of the entirety of human culture: from Plato to pottery
and from armchairs to atomic theory. Those who deny value
in activities that lack utility are often unquestioning
in their assumption of value in other activities. I recently
saw the Gombi chimps on T.V. (studied by Jane Goodall for
the last 35 years) they appear to be perfectly fulfilled without
culture, "taking no thought for the morrow", and
only in fact threatened by ourselves and our own culture.
We have an even closer relative in the Bonobo or pygmy chimp,
an animal that replaces the violent social interactions of
the common chimp with erotic social interactions. Although
these primates use rudimentary tools no animal other than
ourselves has a complex conceptual or material culture nor
do we in fact need one in order to exist.
So what is the benefit that has caused culture
to survive. In psychological terms, each new advance in our
material and conceptual culture provides a brief appeasement
of our innate desire for comfort and security. However we soon
become used to any increase in our power over resources or our
assumption of understanding at which point our insecurity returns.
If we view 'culture' within the terms of reference of biology
it can be argued that our human culture gives us the advantage
of greater adaptability. This is why we have become so widely
distributed over the Earth and why there are so many of us compared
to our nearest animal relatives. However all human cultures
suffer from a tendency to cultural ossification. To speak figuratively
cultural mores can become rigid like the shell of a crab that
prevents it from growing or changing. From time to time a crab
must split its hard shell open and expose a new soft shell capable
of allowing growth.
Fine artists (that is artists whose work
is principally intended to affect and satisfy the mind or the
spirit rather than to fulfil a utilitarian function) are a major
factor in cracking the shell of cultural rigidity and restoring
the adaptability to changing circumstance on which our survival
depends. As they do so, along with theoretical scientists and
philosophers they are also creating the new shell, art and science
function as the growth point of culture. Let us consider how
creativity works. How artists, or scientists, do it? Basically
the creative process is a matter of what Arthur Koestler calls
biassociation. That is simultaneous awareness in two or more
pre existing matrices or patterns of conceptual apprehension.
Let me explain this a little further. In culture as in nature
all new things come from recombinations and new syntheses of
what already exists.
I will take an example from science. Einstein
developed his theories of relativity from the starting point of
biassociating time and space, before he did this time and space
were distinct and independent conceptual interpretations of our
experience of reality. After the development of Einstein's theory
we had the new concept of four-dimensional space-time, a concept
that enabled mankind to assimilate a larger experience of the
universe.
Let us consider how creative individuals differ
from others. The biological 
process
by which we have all been distinguished from our common ancestor
whom we share with chimpanzees is referred to as neoteny. Neoteny
means the retention in the adult individual of infantile, larval
or embryonic characteristics. In the case of humans the effects
include: hairlessness, a flattened face, an extension of the period
of rapid brain growth and perhaps most importantly an extended
immaturity with the ability to play. Many of you will have noted
a resemblance between baby Chimpanzees and very old men. In a
way that is exactly what they are. If we were to suffer the reverse
evolutionary process of geronteny we would become something similar
to the other great apes.
While neoteny properly refers to a physical
process I would argue that creative individuals are psychologically,
perhaps even neurologically more neotenous than the rest of humanity.
With an increased ability to play and discover, and an enhanced
degree of freedom from cultural conditioning and preconception.
This is the point of the famous anecdote concerning Pablo Picasso:
attending an exhibition of his own work he overheard a women saying
" my five year old daughter can paint like that" he
is said to have replied "Madam if she can still do it when
she is fifty then she will be a genius". In other words genius
consists of the ability to apply a child's freedom from prejudice
to an adult's experience and accumulated data. Or to quote the
bible you must become as little children to enter the kingdom
of heaven (Matthew 18 v3).
I am aware that in some circles concepts such
as the strongly individuated creative genius or the authorial
presence in literature are currently disapproved of, the artist
is expected to function as a mirror or a sounding board for their
society. I obviously do not concur. I believe this attitude is
a manifestation of an attempt to restrict art to reinforcement
of a collective cultural prejudice, intentional 'shell hardening'.
If the principle value of art lies in increasing our adaptability
by providing new apprehensions of reality then it must reflect
the perceptions of individuals who have avoided the conventional
assumption as in "we do it like this because we do it like
this and always have done it like this".
There is of course more than one aspect to art
to return to my metaphor of the crab there is not only shell breaking
but also the shell making. We feel the need for an interface of
interpretation between our own being and the amorphous cosmos.
An articulation of the relationship of the self and the rest.
This is the magical aspect of art as invocation and intercession.
This is also the point where the artist is in greatest danger
of producing not art but kitsch.
We must remember that numerically most paintings,
sculptures installations performances etc. will always be kitsch.
Let me try and define the difference. Art has an essential quality
of truth to nature, in terms of an integral ambiguity not in terms
of mimesis (imitation of appearance of one thing by another).
Kitsch makes definitive and dogmatic statements that confirm cultural
prejudice, as in "it is thus" not "is it thus"
or "it can be thus and also thus". That is why kitsch
is so often highly finished there is no openendedness left for
the viewer to come to a personal interpretation. Because kitsch
is defined by the ambient cultural prejudice, at the time of its
creation, kitsch of the past can challenge the culturally conditioned
prejudice of our own time and almost function as art except for
that lack of essential integral ambiguity. Similarly great art
of the past can be 'kitschified' as essential references are lost,
it is reproduced inappropriately and finish is added by repetition:
examples, Renoir on a table mat, Native American masks made by
modern artist's lacking the ambiguities of the original.
A current post modernist slogan is "context
is everything" like all clichés it is an oversimplification
the physical or cultural context of an artwork is certainly very
important but it is not 'everything'. Not very long ago a well
known London dealer found a valuable Persian carpet in a skip
in the street, it had been ignored by hundreds of passers by,
but what was significant to its finding? Not a change in its physical
context but the educated perceptions of a particular observer
able to recognise qualities inherent in the carpet. More importantly
I would argue that we all share with any artist at any time or
place the context of the human condition and of a shared original
basic human culture. Thus the observer, listener, reader etc.
does have the potential to read levels of meaning intrinsic to
a work although it may be rendered obscure by more superficial
alien cultural references. I am not saying that this is easy.
Or possible in every case for every observer but I do dispute
the deconstructionist argument that denies meaning to art works
independent of their context or the specific cultural references
of the observer, an argument that I believe to have been itself
distorted by the racist concepts endemic in the cultural context
of that arguments creation.
© David Watson Hood 17/7/1998
