Another problem with genius 26 August 2009
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Did Hitler’s idea of himself as a creative genius contribute to his rise as a genocidal dictator? Historian Birgit Schwartz seems to think so:
In my opinion, people have underestimated the notion that Hitler considered himself an artist, in fact, an artistic genius, and that much can be deduced from this self-image, this overheated artist’s ego. However, this has hardly played a role in the research to date. . . Hitler’s deluded view of himself as a genius is based on the confused system of thought emerging in the late 19th century, which centered on the idea that a genius — a strong personality who outshone everything else — could do anything he pleased. . . You mustn’t forget that the concept we have today of a genius is so much more harmless than it was back then. We define a genius on the basis of his talent. At the time, talent was not the main focus. A genius had to have a strong personality. He was a larger-than-life talent who was permitted to do anything, including evil things.
Read on at the Art Market Monitor. Or see the interview in its entirety at Spiegel.
Is genius practice, divine spark or somewhere in-between? 20 May 2009
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My dear wife told me at lunch I needed to read the past two blog entries over at Good Letters, the Image Journal blog. (I subscribed to this blog for a while and enjoyed it, but in the interest of time have unsubscribed since it deals mainly with writing and not so much the plastic arts.) Yesterday’s post is an interesting piece on the never-ending debate on what constitutes course language. That is, should Christians cuss? The second is a reflective entry written by a writer on the process of writing, To Write by Ann Conway.
The following is an excerpt from Conway’s entry:
The former is exemplified by what I think of as the “creativity business,” the idea that the untrammeled flow of primal “free” writing—uninhibited by an inner critic—is in fact the best writing. And evidence of the divine within us. This is promulgated by The Artist’s Way and its permutations; it is the kind of writing one practices in the Tuscan retreats advertised in the back pages of Poets and Writers. It says that everyone is a writer, a statement with which I do not entirely agree. But I do agree that there is a sobering amount of talent out there.
A recent New York Times column by David Brooks outlines a radically different slant on the creative process. Offering a contrast to those who see genius as “the product of divine spark,” bestowed on those “who are best approached with reverential awe”—such as Dante or Mozart—Brooks points out that the key element of genius is the repetition of the basic elements of craft. Recent neurological research stresses that simple, unglamorous practice is how one gets better.
The “divine spark,” the columnist concludes, is merely romantic “hocus-pocus.”
Unlike Brooks, however, I do not discount the divine spark. I recently finished the new Flannery O’Connor biography by Brad Gooch. I found the book uninspiring, but I smiled to see how “touched” O’Connor seemed from the beginning—closeting herself, even as a tiny child, with her drawing and writing, imagining a guardian angel who was half-bird, half-man. She was, in a word, weird. And driven.
The word “genius” has so much baggage in our culture, especially in terms of the arts. I’m wondering if we’re not just batting around semantics in this discussion, and that from a Christian point of view “genius” could be equated to a gifting. I don’t think anyone will disagree that some people are born with talents that others do not possess. However, when we talk about a genius in our culture we imply — based on my own understanding of the word — something beyond a God-given talent.
Read the article in its entirety here.
Is an MA in studio art useful? 7 April 2009
Posted by pcNielsen in Art, Art education, Artist as genius, Business of art, MFA, Personal reflection.13 comments
My wife and I continue to be overwhelmed with options and a lack of direction in our search for the next stage in life, as it were. Yesterday her sister — with whom she’s quite close — suggested we move eastward to Muncie, Indiana, so they could be in the same city. That rationale doesn’t hold much water, though, as she and her husband hope to leave Indiana when he graduates in a year.
Regardless, since we have so little apparent direction, I gave my sister-in-law’s idea a few minutes worth of internet research. I learned that real estate in Muncie seems to be very inexpensive (from what a person can tell on the internet, not knowing the quality of a neighborhood and such), and found in particular a swell old house on the historical registry for under $45k.
I also surfed around Ball State’s website and learned that BSU offers an MA in studio art, but not an MFA. This was a bit surprising; I expected a university of that size to offer the latter.
I haven’t given serious consideration to an MA up to now, mainly because it’s not a terminal degree, required for teaching at the college level. I asked a friend at JBU if they’d hire someone with an MA, and he replied “Yes, if they’re working towards a terminal degree.” That makes an MA pretty much worthless to me from what I can tell, unless it counts towards an MFA program in the future — which it might (if you know, please comment!).
I’ve had some conversation about MAs and MFAs with artist Sarah Irani. Sarah has a friend who earned an MFA from the University of Dallas and had a terrible experience. She quotes her friend: “As for grad school, it’s a waste because it is 1% useful instruction on making/becoming an artist and 99% a vetting and indoctrination process to weed out ‘the unworthy.’” I have to hope that my own alma mater, the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, is more than this based on my knowledge of its ceramics department. However, the Art School Confidential stereotype has all to much basis in reality.
Sarah has an MA. She listed her reasons for not getting an MFA in an email:
* I was working at a college that offered an MA. I got tuition reimbursement for working there.
* I didn’t want to deal with the crap that they dish out at art schools.
* I was working as an apprentice to a sculptor on big commissions from the time that I graduated until after I was married. There was no sense in paying to get an MFA when I was operating my own studio and getting paid to do big sculptures.
* By the time I was done with the commissions, I was married and wasn’t in the position to move to be close to a school. I could have driven over an hour each way to Baltimore or Washington, but the expense would have been unbearable.
* The expense. My friend who went to University of Dallas is so overwhelmed by student debt that she’ll never afford a home. I do not recommend getting into debt with an MFA. It doesn’t pay off.
“All of that being said, an MA works for me and my situation. What are your goals? If your goals are anything other than being a college professor, I say skip the MFA. It is probably a waste of your time. If you want to be a professor, then you more or less have to go,” she continued, and then suggested Notre Dame, which apparently doesn’t charge MFA students tuition. Sounds too good to be true, but I plan to look into it anyway!
Of course that’s just what I need, another option.
Sarah reminded me this afternoon, as we chatted via Gmail, that such a circumstance as my wife and I find ourselves in is also an exciting time. She quoted her father, who used to tell her “that if I didn’t have a word from God, to move in the direction of my desires and trust God to care for me.
Not my selfish desires, mind you.”
Inventive creativity vs. artistic creativity 16 March 2009
Posted by pcNielsen in Art, Artist as genius, Business of art, Modern culture.2 comments
My wife and I watched the film Flash of Genius twice this weekend, though not necessarily by choice. It’s not a good film — the timeline is horribly disjointed — but the subject matter was quite intriguing.
Flash of Genius is based on a 1993 New Yorker article of the same name. I actually took the time to read the well-balanced twelve page article which included interviews and a brief history of patent law. The term “flash of genius” was issued by the Supreme Court in 1941 case to help define what an invention is, something that patent law has never really be able to do in a concrete way.
Discussion stemming from the film, between my wife and I and later with our friends, came to a mostly unanimous conclusion: The creative process of an inventor and an artist are very similar. Just like an artist, an inventor works from a set of cultural, social and technological tools.
Of course, the end results are of a different character. Inventions are generally functional solutions; paintings and sonatas are communicative reflections on an artist’s observations. I suppose this is why inventors’ intellectual property is protected by a different system, patents, than artists who use copyrights.
Both systems are somewhat outdated minefields, however. Copyright has done little or nothing to adequately keep up with digital technology, namely the internet. Likewise patent law, from what I understand, struggled to adjust to a tidal wave of electronics in the 20th century.
As I’ve noted before, creativity comes in different forms and by all kinds of processes. In my own work as a graphic designer I’ve experienced flashes of creative genius, but this doesn’t happen with every project. Other creative acts require patience — such as Alfred Stieglitz waiting three hours in a blizzard for the above photograph — and sometimes outright failures. Edison reportedly made 300 attempts at the light bulb before getting it right.
The New Yorker article quotes Henry Ford: “Progress happens when all the factors that make for it are ready, and then it is inevitable. To teach that a comparatively few men are responsible for the great forward steps of mankind is the worst sort of nonsense.” While I don’t agree with everything I’ve read about Ford, these two sentences speak clearly and accurately (although in context, as I recall, he’s essentially discounting individual inventive effort altogether, something I’m don’t necessarily agree with). There is nothing new under the sun.
Image from Wikipedia.
An artist’s job 16 February 2009
Posted by pcNielsen in Art, Artist as genius, Business of art, Craft.3 comments
A slew of articles on how the economic downturn is effecting the business of art are popping up in publications all over the internet. I’ve ignored almost all of them, but for some reason I partook this morning of an article from the New York Times titled The Boom is Over. Long Live the Art!. From the article:
Every year art schools across the country spit out thousands of groomed-for-success graduates, whose job it is to supply galleries and auction houses with desirable retail. They are backed up by cadres of public relations specialists — otherwise known as critics, curators, editors, publishers and career theorists — who provide timely updates on what desirable means.
I didn’t know it was my job as an [aspiring] artist to supply galleries and auction houses with art. Hm.
“Quality,” primarily defined as formal skill, is back in vogue, part and parcel of a conservative, some would say retrogressive, painting and drawing revival.
I can agree that there is a certain contingent (properly lampooned in the film Art School Confidential) who consider quality and skill retrogressive. Such people, in my opinion, have no sense of history, and probably suffer from the modern artist-as-genius syndrome.
For a while we heard a lot about the radicalism of Beauty; lately about the subversive politics of aestheticized Ambiguity. Whatever, it is all market fodder.
How much attention should an artist pay to the art market? On one hand, it’s a good thing to be in the know from a business perspective. On the other, doesn’t an artist do his or her best work when drawing from their own training, talent and inspiration — not so influenced by what’s popular?
It’s day-job time again in America, and that’s O.K. Artists have always had them — van Gogh the preacher, Pollock the busboy, Henry Darger the janitor — and will again. The trick is to try to make them an energy source, not a chore.
I’m hard-pressed to believe so many recent graduates possessed such a fairy-tale image of the art world that they figured on jumping right into a profitable art-making career. Then again, my own art schooling seems to have been much more realistic than many others. Exaggeration or not, I suppose schools such as the one depicted in Art School Confidential do exist.
Frank Lloyd Rat and what the economic downturn means for architects 8 January 2009
Posted by pcNielsen in Architecture, Artist as genius.add a comment
Pearls Before Swine has been taking jabs at superstar architects this week, and today’s strip was particularly humorous in my opinion.
I feel the need to add that I was thrilled, in this day and age of old media hanging on to the last vestiges of archaic copyright laws, to see this in the FAQ of Comics.com:
Q: I want to embed a copy of a certain strip on my Web Site or Intranet. Is that ok?
A: Not only is it okay, it’s awesome! In fact, it’s not just awesome, it’s kind of what we built the site for!
Finally, a company that realizes the power of blogs and small websites as marketing and not infringement, unlike others such as NPR or so many professional photographers.
In other architecture related news, Architecture + Morality posted an interesting article on how the profession deals with economic downturns. An excerpt from the piece (which I haven’t finished reading yet):
For many architects this quantitative view pales to their concern for quality. Success is seen differently by many of us, who would rather be proud of a beautiful project done during a time of scarcity than collecting year-end bonuses for voluminous yet mediocre work delivered during times of plenty.
Staying true to one’s convictions in the face of financial hardship is a perennial romantic ideal among ’serious’ architects, even as it is a major cause of why the practice of architecture is comparitively unprofitable (Rand’s The Fountainhead, anyone?).
Humorous Hirst anecdote 9 December 2008
Posted by pcNielsen in Art, Artist as genius, Business of art, Sculpture.2 comments
Damien Hirst complained recently of a 16 year old’s collages that incorporated photographic images of Hirst’s sculptures. The collages were being sold online for 65 pounds. The British superstar artist demanded the collages be removed from the internet gallery and that the 16 year old pay restitution of sorts for money made off of the works.
This could be the start of the kid’s career as an artist. What better marketing than to have one of the biggest names in the art world say anything about your own work.
The Independent points out the irony in the entire fiasco. Three weeks after Hirst’s diamond encrusted skull was revealed to the public, sculptor John Lekay claimed that he’s worked on bejeweled skulls since the early 90s. Lekay and Hirst were friends, reportedly, from 1992-94.
Perhaps Hirst is making a distinction between inspiration (what he presumably took away from his friendship with Lekay) and photographic reproduction? I can’t really think that it’s anything but a double standard, unless Lekay is lying — which is possible. There isn’t really any way to prove that debate though, while the evidence of the 16 year old’s commentary, or incorporation of images, whatever you want to call it, is obvious.
Jasper Johns on artists 12 November 2008
Posted by pcNielsen in Art, Artist as genius, Painting.1 comment so far
This is taken from a recent post on Makoto Fujimura’s Refractions blog.
The aim of an artist as a creative individual, Jasper Johns suggested recently, is to do ‘something a little more worthwhile than oneself.’…To be worth more, you would need to change in a fundamental way — change your life — or, at the least, experience change and become a channel for its communication.
The quote was taken from a Richard Shiff essay for the Gray Exhibit catalog. Fujimura correctly notes how this humble (and, I would add, charitable) approach to art-making flies in the face of the egotism found in today’s art world. He then goes on to laud humility as a way to open up new vistas of creativity for an artist.
Image from Wikipedia.
Genius Grants 2008: Weaving straws and grass 24 September 2008
Posted by pcNielsen in Abstract art, Art, Art vs Craft, Artist as genius, Craft, Fiber, Found objects, Installations, Sculpture.add a comment
I suppose I should mention this year’s genius grants, awarded this week, since this blog contains a category called Artist-as-genius. Regular readers know that I hold a certain disdain for the term. I haven’t entirely fleshed that disdain out properly, but a very good example of where it came from can be seen in the somewhat raunchy film Art School Confidential.
Looking at the list of winners yesterday afternoon I was a bit surprised. They’re all over the place. The stage-lighting designer, music critic and architectural preservationist were pleasant surprises.
Two artists will be taking home the $500,000 purse, a sculptor and a fiber artist.
The fiber artist is another surprise. Mary Jackson is a basket weaver. How wonderful that such a traditional and humble craft is included in this list, a list that might commonly include the rocket scientists we so like to mock.
In contrast to that is Tara Donovan. I mentioned Donovan with some skepticism in this January post. Donovan’s work is sometimes mass-produced and makes use of common household objects.
I like the above work by Donovan, titled Haze. It’s made from drinking straws. I wonder what Mary Jackson could do with drinking straws. Weave them, I imagine, as she does with grass. An interesting connection between two very different artisans.
Art for Art’s Sake: Enjoying it 18 September 2008
Posted by pcNielsen in Art, Art for art's sake, Artist as genius, Business of art, Criticism, Intentional observation, Living incarnationally, Modern culture, Painting, Sculpture.4 comments
I’m resurrecting this draft in light of a Telegraph article that laments the commercial nature of the art market in 2008. In the article, Australian critic Robert Hughes claims that the price of a work of art is, unfortunately, more significant than its meaning. He’s speaking specifically of Damien Hirst, whose auction at Sotheby’s this week exceeded all expectations by garnering something like $222,000,000.00. That’s two-hundred twenty-two million clams.
“The idea that there is some special magic attached to Hirst’s work that shoves it into the multimillion [dollar] realm is ludicrous,” Hughes says. “[The price] has to do with promotion and publicity and not with the quality of the works themselves.”
Amen to that. Hughes traces this Mona Lisa Curse, as he calls it, to the 1960s when da Vinci’s Mona Lisa visited the U.S. People came to see the painting not to see the painting, Hughes claims, but in order to say that they’d seen the painting. From then on collectors began to buy art as an investment, not because they necessarily liked the sculpture or canvas.
Collectors these days are driven by the almighty dollar, and way too much emphasis is placed on trendiness and novelty in art. Can I get another amen. I haven’t liked everything I’ve read from Hughes, but he’s pretty much spot on as portrayed in the Telegraph’s article. These same investor-collectors bid up new works by artists whose works they already own in order to drive up prices. A fine business tactic, I suppose, but one that rightly creates a foul odor among art critics. Further, such practices put the price of new art out of the reach of public museums.
It seems all too easy to fall into the mentality described above, even for those of us who are merely artists or connoisseurs.
Art junky #1: “Sure, I’ve seen that Monet.”
Art junky #2: “Yeah, well I’ve licked that monet.”
Art junky #3: “Ha! My uncle’s cousin’s brother’s niece bought that Monet at Christie’s for more money than the GDP of your stupid little country.”
Apparently this super-riche portion of the art market is quite the juggernaut. Investors seem, Hughes suggests, to possess an eternally optimistic outlook on their purchases. They believe the art they buy will only increase in value. Golly-gee, sounds a little bit like how people thought of real estate two years ago, dunnit? The Australian critic doesn’t fail to point out one Guido Reni, an Italian renaissance painter. Reni was considered by the late 18th century to be near or equal in greatness to Michelangelo. By the 1950s, however, you could buy a ten-foot Reni canvas for a scant $600.
How can we get back into enjoying art? Can we? Or is art just another commodity in our capitalist cultures? Writer and philosopher Francis Schaeffer, in his powerful little treatise Art and the Bible, said plainly that art should be enjoyed.
This is, as I already eluded to, difficult for us. We move too fast. We don’t stop and smell the roses; in fact we mock such platitudes, despite the truth in them. We’re afraid the world is going to pass us by. We need more beer gardens in America, with sculpture in the midst of them.
While there’s certainly something to be said for the industriousness and work ethic of our culture, we lack balance. Regardless of the silly art market and it’s millions of dollars, those of us clinging to the bottom rungs of the economic ladder are equally as guilty as those at the top — those taking part in the Sotheby’s auctions and trading paintings like stock certificates of yore. We’re caught up in our digital technology, making money, advancing our careers or social status etc.
How do we manage to take back the skill of intentional observation? How do we get out of the technology zone in order to slow life down?
There are, of course, multiple answers to those questions. Simply, thus, I end here with a solemn and earnest plea to myself and anyone who ever happens to read this post: Stop and smell the roses. Stop in the park and run your fingers over the stone on the fountain or the bronze sculpture. Maybe you don’t even like the sculpture. Take a break and give it a once-over anyway. Take the time to look at the brushstrokes on the painting in your living room.
And if the painting in your living room doesn’t have tactile brushstrokes, go out and buy one that does.
