Recently, a friend of mine had a project for an art history class he's taking. The assignment was to express a concept through visual art. Most of the students, who - like my friend - were probably just taking the class to fill core requirements, handed in work of the magazine collage variety. Their works fulfilled the requirements, but apparently weren't exactly great feats of creative inspiration.
My friend, on the other hand, poured about 40 hours into a complex, heavily symbolic photographic montage. He knew he could probably receive as good a grade with a lot less work, but that wasn't the point. It was a matter of pride for him to take this assignment as an opportunity to exercise his artistic mettle.
After watching him work on the project, I got to thinking about this whole business of the creative impulse. Growing up with two artist parents, I've tended to assume that the creative impulse is part of human nature. But is it?
Confronted with a classroom full of people who put the absolute minimum of artistic energy required towards an assignment that could have been an opportunity to get beyond the usual rigid confines of the classroom, my assumptions are certainly put to the question. Is creativity natural or taught? If it is natural, why would people avoid opportunities to pursue it?
My first answer came from a religious perspective. Genesis says that humans are created in the image of G-d. One of the fundamental characterizations is G-d as the creator. Further, this passage immediately follows the first story of creation in Genesis. So it is possible that one meaning of this statement is that humans, like G-d, are creators.
As interesting as that may be, it doesn't really prove anything - except perhaps that I'm fond of biblical interpretation. So I continued on to other avenues in this train of thought.
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Children are relatively natural creatures, and are thereby a good - though not perfect - way to examine human nature. I've yet to meet a child who doesn't engage in some sort of creative expression, be it through drawing, creating games, making up stories, playing music on whatever sound-producing objects are at hand, or some other means. If children are anything to judge by, there must be some creative drive that grasps us by nature or through our earliest influences.
Adults, too, seek creative outlets, though not necessarily in the exuberant bursts that characterize childhood. Most adults I've known have some kind of creative activity in their lives.
That activity doesn't always fall into the more traditional art forms - though I do know an awful lot of poets, musicians, and visual artists. People find ways to incorporate creativity into their daily lives, by taking that extra bit of care when cooking dinner, by tinkering with cars, by making furniture or knitting blankets. Such things might not fit the social standards of what art is, but they do reveal the creative spirit struggling to find expression.
Our history and pre-history is one of creative endeavor. Why would people whose lives consist solely of hunting, gathering, and rearing children take the time out to paint caves, tell stories and gaze at the stars if creativity isn't natural?
But if it is natural, why were the people in that art history class so darn lazy?
There are, of course, some obvious explanations. They were too busy. Or visual art doesn't happen to be their preferred means of expression.
I, of course, have another possibility to offer. We students - and I have to include myself in this description - have a way of doing the minimum amount of work we can get away with and still keep up our grades. It's not always true, but it is fairly typical.
Our motivation in the classroom - and often in the workplace as well - is profit, be it in the form of grades or money. Such materially based motivation dictates that we put in the minimum time and effort for the greatest result, thus garnering the greatest net profit, as it were.
If grades and money were the most worthwhile things in life, that would be fine. But in our current economic system, we too often strangle our creative spirit in the pursuit of those things that are necessary to our survival and material comfort.
Somehow, it doesn't seem worth the trade-off. Of course, survival is necessary. But does it really have to be an either/or proposition? Why can't we work towards making our world one where both opportunities for creative expression and physical necessities are available to everyone?
That may be a more long-term project. In the meantime, we can work on nurturing and sharing our own creative spirits.
by Sari Krosinsky
Daily Lobo Columnist
Send creative or not-so-creative comments to Sari Krosinsky at michal_kro@hotmail.com.
