Sunday Salon: Why questions about art and creativity can be tiresome
In a recent post on the import of biographical context, and Proust’s negating of it in his essay Against St. Beuve, I conclude with the fairly simplistic, but true observation that "Text and the social life of the author may never touch in Proust’s cork-lined world, but they do, I’d say, in the normal, communal one in which most authors and people live. It seems to me that the more facts one can solicit in the search for truth, the better one’s chances of finding it."
The essence of art, the essence of true creativity, what makes Proust Proust and Bach Bach is, according to Proust, something that can never be found in those facts about an artist. It is something that an individual creates as if ex nihilo… That is why a "crude" person can create a sublime art, and a most refined be sterile…
He continues: "How can we approach this essence and how might it help us in this destitute time? As I recovered from my recent misfortune on a country road, these questions became less pretentious and more urgent."
What makes Proust Proust? What is the irreducible in art? as Mark Thwaite asks in a comment on the same post…
…I think the problem we run into here is that, okay, great artists have unique gifts and talents…God given, innate. Svetlana’s remark has me recalling Salieri in Peter Shaffer’s fictitious Amadeus…the pain he felt, knowing, unlike the rest of the court, that Mozart was a true genius despite being a crude little buffoon.
Surely, the ‘essence’ that makes Bach Bach, Proust Proust etc., although obviously important, is something beyond description, or comprehension. It is in fact a tautology, a conversational cul-de-sac, a dead end just as the wholly subjective appreciation of art is…the ‘I know what I like’ thought stopper.
As soon as you try to define what the essence of creativity is, some sort of context or comparison is required if you want any interesting discussion. Why did Picasso depict women in such ugly, distorted ways in his paintings? Because Picasso is Picasso? Or because he treated women like tissues…soiling and discarding them in his wake. As Jean-Paul Crespelle writes in his book Picasso and his Women:”…Just as he kept old matchboxes or pencil stubs, so he kept his old mistresses ready in hand. Just in case…” Which is the more interesting response?
It’s all very well to ask big questions about the essence of creativity, or Why Fiction is, for that matter; pondering them can be valuable. But after a while, when it becomes evident that these questions lack answers, or are answerable only self referentially, it all becomes a little tiresome. Especially given that artists themselves, in the case of creativity, rarely know how their original ideas arise. It’s all a big mystery.
March 31st, 2008 at 7:54 AM
That’s generally the problem with something deemed to exist ex nihilio or to be irreducible; it’s an eminent candidate for ‘of what we cannot speak, we must remain silent.”
March 31st, 2008 at 10:11 AM
[...] in Wordpress on ‘Naipaul’ I see there is a bit of a debate going on. Nigel Beale in Sunday Salon: Why questions about art and creativity can be tiresome , refers back to his first post, Author vs. Work; Sainte-Beuve vs. Proust; Dorothy vs. Dan. Stephen [...]
March 31st, 2008 at 10:28 AM
I like Wittgenstein’s "must" there. Alternative rewording, based on my real-world observation: "Of what we cannot speak, we must babble incessantly." I include myself in that "we", unfortunately.
March 31st, 2008 at 11:28 AM
You posit false, or at least, misleading alternatives. Either "define" by what you believe to be "facts" (nevermind how many questions are begged in those two ideas alone) what this so-called genius-an-sich thing is, or get on with what we all really want: tawdry gossip to alleviate the anxiety of facing stuff we can’t pin answers to.Sure, if you’re looking for answers, definitive or otherwise, to what makes Picasso Picasso, you’re going to end up talking about how he treated his mistresses. How convenient. Forget the paintings. Forget whatever it is that gives them their power to engage us. Thinking about art and literature involves thinking about our own response, but thinking that moves beyond "monadic subjectivity." We perceive, think, feel and respond not as individuals entirely self-contained, but as individuals in relationship to the work, to our knowledge of works of the past, engaged out of the place we have taken in culture and history. This is what we are challenged to think about when we want to think about literature–the fluid and changing configurations that make up our engagement with the works in our mediating relationships with them. That we must either have "answers" to our questions (dead-stop, end of discussion… which is what an "answer" is), or we are left with nothing more than "I know what I like"… this is absurdly simplistic. The useful questions are those that examine the whole range of our response to the work; and what we seek are not "answers," but ever more informed <i>responses</i> to what is before us.
March 31st, 2008 at 11:45 AM
Poor Wittgenstein, for his "of what we cannot speak. Poor Coleridge, for his "suspension of disbelief." Like finger nails on slate, the endless misappropriations of these lines.
March 31st, 2008 at 2:01 PM
"Forget whatever it is that gives them their power to engage us." Yes. We should categorically forget that. We should forget get it because the implied ‘us’ in that sentence is at best meaningless and at worst leads to a form of criticism which genuinely does sound like nails on slate; the critic who mistakes his subjective predilections for the universe.
April 1st, 2008 at 12:20 AM
You read my comment with about as much attention as you evidently give to Wittgenstein–which I suppose I should take as a compliment. I categorically excluded such a naive and simplistic idea of "subjectivity," the subject as a monad, as though an individual responds in a vacuum.Either way, your either/or leaves us little more than gossip. Why bother?
April 1st, 2008 at 6:36 AM
Thanks everyone for your feedback.
Jacob R re: "You posit false, or at least, misleading alternatives. Either "define" by what you believe to be "facts" what this so-called genius-an-sich thing is, or get on with what we all really want: tawdry gossip to alleviate the anxiety of facing stuff we can’t pin answers to."
I don’t believe I’ve posited a false dichotomy. I’ve simply said that there are certain ‘big’ questions whose ‘answers’ are tautological. I’ve also said that pondering them, to a point, can be valuable. That point is arrived at when nothing ‘new’ can be said. Most of the big questions were asked by the Greeks.
Re: responding “as individuals in relationship to the work…
You are talking here about specific questions…the answers to which are not tautological, but which incorporate knowledge, culture and history, as you say. Context and comparison as I say. I agree with you that the useful questions examine a whole range of responses to the specific work. I simply say again that some broad questions, after due consideration, do nothing to further ‘inform our responses.’
April 1st, 2008 at 9:59 AM
Without reference to actual works, I would agree. What is there to say?<br> But even theoretical considerations arise from knowledge of actual works, do they not? How else does one confirm or challenge their formulations? It seems to me that this is the more productive response–to apply theory to actual cases, rather than issue announcements on the death of metaphysics. A complete digression… I first wrote "How else do you confirm… then changed "you" to "one." I once had a most unfortunate exchange that began with a misreading of the American convention of the impersonal "you," rather than the more common British, "one." It went on and on. I couldn’t understand why my correspondent had taken such offense–as though I had issued a personal attack, when my complaint, whatever it was, was on an entirely general level. <i>"One"</i> sounds quite unatural to me… but sometimes, for prophylactic reasons, it’s better for one to adopt the conventions of one’s interlocutors.