Ceativity and courage
Art critic Robert Hughes aptly titled his book and BBC documentary The Shock of the New. It’s a long time since I picked up this book, or saw the series. The book is about contemporary art. Many people scratch their heads when looking at a work of art hoping to understand its meaning as if it were a signpost the understandable. It’s not unusual for some of us to get quite upset when we encounter a concept or object that doesn’t fit into a pre-existing category. The new is destabilizing. We have to make room in our conceptual system and reevaluate what we know. Scary stuff!
To understand is to put the object of our attention in context. We can’t make sense of the new.
Fine art is purposeless. Commercial art used to be called the servile art because it was seen as inferior, only serving a secondary purpose. Yet art, whether music, dance, sculpture, or painting, has no other purpose than to exist: to be what it is. However, art of the fine variety influences everyday commerce. Those dazzling Op Art creations of Bridget Riley soon became high fashion for women’s clothing in the 1960’s.
Most of us consume art as a finished product. We don’t see the process, the rehearsal, the innumerable wrong turns of the storyline, the throwaway sketches. To engage in this purposeless activity, taking time to manipulate a medium, requires courage. The blank canvas, the white sheet of paper, can be terrifying. This is true if we are goal oriented, or in managementspeak, “results driven.” Being focused on the outcome can destroy the creative way. Not knowing and acting despite despair is the subject of Rollo May’s classic psychological text, The Courage to Create.
Innovation, by contrast, is limited to a purpose. It improves something already in existence, or creates an alternative. David Edgerton’s, The Shock of the Old: Technology in Global History Since 1900, cites many examples where old technology, once seen as obsolete, has been put to innovative purpose. The condom lost favor as a birth control device when the pill became available. Now, the condom has a new purpose as a barrier against new sexually transmitted diseases. Edgerton believes that the most innovative time came in the early twentieth century. Those inventions continue to have a continuing impact on the lives of people around the world.
According the Economist this week, Sweden, Finland, and Japan were the only countries out of the 30 rich countries of the OECD last year who spend more than 3% of GDP on research and development.
Actions that lead to a clear purpose are easy to accept. But encouraging the messy creative process that could well generate value (or not) is a much harder sell.
“Art” is a topic I am fascinated by. Its processes, its products, theories behind it. I do, however, sometimes find it to be something which is difficult to talk about, on account of its ambiguity. But then I suppose that’s the point! It is difficult to define, pin down… What *is* fine art? What is commercial art? How do the two differ? I recently watched a TV documentary which spoke (in a nutshell) of the increasing commercialisation of so-called “fine” art. If fine art is becoming more commercial, then is it ceasing to be fine art?
Definitions!
Let’s do away with them.
I find that the best way to *understand* art is to stop trying to understand it. It is what it is. There is no fine art or commercial art or flibbertigibbet art… there is just art. Do we need definitions beyond our instinctive understand of what it is? It is, after all, “meant” to make us think/feel beyond our normal boundaries of perception… Let’s turn that concept back on itself and plunge headlong into the scary sea of non-definition!
I concur regarding the value of a lack of focus. As may be sometimes evident, I try to take this principal into my writing! Despite this, however, I will contest the notion (as purported above as well as in the aforementioned TV documentary) that “fine art is purposeless”… It exists, therefore it has a purpose! Even if that purpose is applied retrospectively…