I've been reading The Idea Agent: The Handbook on Creative Processes, by Jonas Michanek and Andreas Breiler, for a grad class this summer. Today's question:
Why Does No One Appreciate My Brilliant Idea?
In
my mind, that translated to "My Brilliant Creation," which got me to
thinking about a rather existential concept of self-fulfillment vs. the
need for societal approval. What causes people to create? Sometimes
it's boredom, sometimes necessity, sometimes intentional. Let's assume
that any creative energy expended for no reason other than personal
satisfaction stems from boredom. (No extrinsic reward - no grades, no
compensation). Necessity would be the opposite. Assignments for
school, work, or something that ultimately results in an item or idea
worthy of sale, would fall in this category. Intentional creativity
would be akin to that classic scene in Apollo 13 where the engineers in
Houston were challenged to use existing materials on the rocket to
create a round filter from a square one.
This all left
me wondering whether creativity requires an audience. (Insert
tree-falling-in-forest analogy here.) I've done millions of doodles in
margins of agendas during meetings, some of which weren't immediately
crumbled and filed in the circular file. I've made play-doh snakes
and LEGO creations and sand castles, and other temporary creations, only
to crumble, crush, or break them apart, with few, and in some cases no,
people viewing, appreciating, or critiquing the item.
In 2002, I travelled to NYC to the Whitney Museum, to view the Gee's Bend quilt exhibit. The quilts on display had been made in the early 20th century in a small African-American community-Gee's Bend, Alabama (Arnett, Wardlaw, Livingston, & Beardsley, 2002).
While it was a fascinating collection of quilts, and the power of women
to create out of almost nothing, there was literally NO CREATIVE
INTENTION in terms of style, color or form, on the part of the makers.
One "quilt" consisted of a blue and white ticking fabric that had been
part of a mattress, where someone had obviously given birth. The giant
stain left on the mattress had made it unusable, and the fabric had been
re-purposed into a quilt. It was rather gross. Yes, the quilts "spoke" about the ingenuity of the maternal spirit, and the task and lengths these women went to making something out of virutally nothing. But nobody considered them to be artistic endeavors. In fact, there were videos playing throughout the exhibit where these women talked about how
much they DETESTED sewing, and how amazed they were that anybody would
want to even SAVE these quilts, let alone hang them in a museum and
charge people to view them. How could something be viewed as creative
-- as art -- when the actual creator of the item didn't view it with that lens?
Art,
creativity, and the creative spirit seem to be intertwined. There
really isn't, in my mind, a test worthy of a quantitative measurement of
creativity -- despite Torrance's attempts to say otherwise. What
resonated with me was the last paragraph in Chapter 8; the single most
important reason to engage in creative activity is tied to the
individual "happier and more fulfilling life" that can be found in the
creative process.
Because maybe, just maybe, that Kickstarter project that
went unfunded this year will be celebrated in another form by another
generation, much like those quilts. And, if the creator saw value and
worth in the creation and received fulfillment from the process, then it
was already worth it, right?
Arnett, W., Wardlaw, A. J., Livingston, J., & Beardsley, J. (2002). Gee’s bend to Rehoboth: The women and their Quilts. United States: Tinwood.
Michanek, J., & Breiler, A. (2013). The idea agent: The handbook on creative processes. London, United Kingdom: Routledge.