Creativity

“ As they are the inlets of some of the most exquisite pleasures we are acquainted with, men of warm and sensible tempers have sought means to recall the delightful perceptions they afford, independent of the objects which originally produc'd them. This gave rise to the imitative or designing arts; some of which, like painting and sculpture, directly copy the external appearances which were admir'd in nature; others, like music and poetry, bring them back to remembrance by signs universally establish'd and understood. ”

“ By such a curriculum, potential creativeness, if it exists, will surely be evoked in its own good time. It will, at first, attempt no commonplace drawing-master themes, but will essay the highest that the imagination can bode forth. It may be crude and lame in execution, but it will be lofty, perhaps grand; and if it is original in consciousness, it will be in effect. Most creative painters before twenty have grappled with the greatest scenes in literature or turning points in history, representations of the loftiest truths, embodiments of the most inspiring ideals. ”

“ This desire for expression is the driving-force of the artist; it informs, controls, and animates his method of working; it governs the hand and eye. That figures should give the impression of life and spontaneity, that the sun should shine, trees move in the wind, and nature be felt and represented as a living thing—this is the firm ground in art; and in those who have this feeling every effort will, consciously or unconsciously, lead towards its realisation. ”

“ This productive activity of the imagination by means of which the artist gives, by a process of elaboration to that which is essentially rational in its nature, a real embodiment, a creation more his own than anything else—this is what is usually summarized as genius and talent. ”

“ The action of painting, sculpting, dancing, performing, or writing poetry or a novel is simultaneously an action of constituting oneself as artist or writer and projecting this self, as it results from the practical experience characteristic of such an endeavor, into the social space of interactions. This is why art is in the first place expression, and only secondly communication. This is also why looking at a work is to constitute the individual experience of context, in the first place, and only secondly to conjure and assign meaning. ”

“ But I should be more proud of having imitated, however faintly, weakly, and at a distance, so masterly a pattern, than to enjoy the entire merit of invention, unless I could have marked my work with genius as well as with originality. ”

“ And even so far as you were creative, so shall your work be informed by you, and not mere dead pigment and dried oil and dull canvas be your autograph, but the vivid and inspiring blazon of an inspired idea shall glow life-like on some friendly wall, and in its turn inspire some other soul, whose light within needs but the breath from without to burst upward in clear flame. ”

“ And yet, I say, how have we of these latter days treated the beauty of the earth, or that which we call art?
Perhaps I had best begin by stating what will scarcely be new to you, that art must be broadly divided into two kinds, of which we may call the first Intellectual, and the second Decorative Art, using the words as mere forms of convenience. The first kind addresses itself wholly to our mental needs; the things made by it serve no other purpose but to feed the mind, and, as far as material needs go, might be done without altogether. ”

“ Art
Because the soul is progressive, it never quite repeats itself, but in every act attempts the production of a new and fairer whole. This appears in works both of the useful and the fine arts, if we employ the popular distinction of works according to their aim, either at use or beauty. Thus in our fine arts, not imitation, but creation is the aim. In landscapes, the painter should give the suggestion of a fairer creation than we know. ”

“ Such is the plan and the moral part of the Author's invention; the technic part, and the execution of the artist, though to be examined by other principles, and addressed to a narrower circle, equally claim approbation, sometimes excite our wonder, and not seldom our fears, when we see him play on the very verge of legitimate invention; but wildness so picturesque in itself, so often redeemed by taste, simplicity, and elegance, what child of fancy, what artist would wish to discharge? ”

“ Now the expression of vision, of reality, of beauty, at an artist's hands--the creation of new life in all forms--has two factors: the living moulding creative spirit, and the material in which it works. ”

“ The creative power enables us to refashion that world and to put it forth again out of ourselves, as it was originally put forth out of the life of the divine artist. The creative process is, therefore, a double process, and culture and genius stand in indissoluble union.
The development of the imagination, upon the power of which both absorption of knowledge and creative capacity depend, is, therefore, a matter of supreme importance. ”

“ Between the mechanism of instinct and that of imaginative creation there are frequently great analogies but not identity of nature. Every tendency of our organization, useful or hurtful, may become the beginning of a creative act. Every invention arises from a particular need of human nature, acting within its own sphere and for its own special end.
If now it should be asked why the creative imagination directs itself preferably in one line rather than in another—toward poetry or physics, trade or mechanics, geometry or painting, strategy or music, etc.—we have nothing in answer. ”

“ In attempting to bring such a theme within the compass of the powers of expression which art possesses, he strove to give speech to the unutterable, and to imprison the unsubstantial, so that it is no wonder if, although the fertility of invention and power of drawing which he displayed, and the variety and richness of effect which he obtained, made his work a masterpiece of art, yet much of what he intended to express is not readily comprehended. ”

“ Methods of expression, conventions alter as each artist, each age seeks some new interpretation of nature and the imagination—the well-springs of artistic life, and from these reviving streams continually flow new harmonies, new inventions and recombinations, taking form and colour according to the temperaments which give them birth. ”

“ The complete mastery of technique, the dignity and dramatic force of the characters, the beauty of the language and clear directness of the style together with the vivid imagination needed to portray so strikingly the renaissance spirit and atmosphere, make the work one that should last. ”

“ How true it is that art expressions are the mute speech of genius, and genius is but another name for inspiration. It has been said "back of the artist is art, and back of art is that which men name God." ”

“ Although the mind of an author may, at a remote period, be appreciated by a perusal of his works, and the capacity and talents of an artist be judged of by the powers of invention which he has displayed,—by the harmony of his colour and the style and correctness of his lines ”

“ The invaluable suggestions of real practical purpose, the organic dignity of integrated habit and necessity, the safety of tradition, the spiritual weightiness of genuine message, all these elements of creative power are lacking. And in default of them we see a great amount of artistic talent, artificially fed and excited by the teaching and the example of every possible past or present art, exhausting itself in attempts to invent, to express, to be something, anything, so long as it is new. ”

“ We are very sure that the beauty of form, the expression of the passions, the art of composition, even the power of giving a general air of grandeur to your work, is at present very much under the dominion of rules. These excellences were, heretofore, considered merely as the effects of genius; and justly, if genius is not taken for inspiration, but as the effect of close observation and experience. ”

“ This search for beauty—this Psyche of art—is the purely inspiring artistic purpose, as distinct from the technical and useful one, which should, perfectly reconciled and united with it, determine the form of our work. ”

“ It may be, to use the figure of the artist, that the purpose is not solely the production of man, but that the variety and beauty of the natural world is an expression of the joy of the Creative Artist in his work. ”

“ Thus the manifestations of the Creative Spirit, and the operations of His laws in the material world, are no less wonderful and minute than the results are beautiful and complete; so likewise, in the universe of mind and the world of poetry, brilliant effects require for their production the spontaneous impulses of genius, their first cause, together with the combined and often recondite workings of all the agencies which constitute the intellectual being. ”

“ He exemplified rather the talent than the genius of discovery, the patient sagacity which accumulates materials, rather than the fervid enthusiasm which traces the stream of nature's action to its spring, the great Creative Will. ”

“ But all these give only the signs, the little miracles. I am speaking now not only of one who has the vision for creative art, but of the one who has creative vision toward life, toward pure being. He lives it; he is it. ”

“ As superficial, it corresponds to talent, survives and prospers chiefly through the help of circumstances and environment. Here, the orientation comes from without, not from within. According as the spirit of the time inclines rather to poetry or painting, or music, or scientific research, or industry, or military art, minds of the second order are dragged into the current—showing that a goodly part of their power is in the aptness, not for invention, but for imitation. ”

“ Your eyes may criticise and your hands may accomplish art-work, but the inspiration that truly expresses art comes from Mind alone. Thus the finer and more harmonious the thoughts of the mentality that thinks, the more beautiful and perfect will be his achievement in any line of work. ”

“ Now this possibility of storing for later use, of increasing by combination, the impressions of beautiful things, makes art—and by art I mean all æsthetic activity, whether in the professed artist who creates or the unconscious artist who assimilates—the type of such pleasures as are within our own keeping, and makes the æsthetic life typical also of that life of the spirit in which alone we can realise any kind of human freedom. ”

“ If our studies and our work bring us to the point of visual discrimination, to æsthetic appreciation and enjoyment, and no farther, we are distinguished among men. The rarest thing in the world is creative genius, the faculty which creates great works. ”

“ This artistic creativeness consequently encloses within itself, as art does throughout, the aspect of immediacy envisaged with the directness of Nature's own creations, and it is this appearance, which the individual is unable to evolve from himself, but has to find it, if he finds it at all, as immediately presented to him. Herein lies the significance of the statement, and herein alone, that genius and talent are innate. ”

“ To carry out the metaphor, the steam of your enthusiasm, kept in working order by the safety-valve of your experience, and regulated by the ball-governor of your art knowledge—such as composition, drawing, mass, light and dark—is then turned on. ”

“ I find that what your people need is not so much high imaginative art but that which hallows the vessels of everyday use. I suppose that the poet will sing and the artist will paint regardless whether the world praises or blames. ”

“ I know nothing, whatever, of what constitutes excellence in color, drawing, or design. I understand in a picture only what it suggests to my own mind, either as a correct copy of nature, or as originating new trains of thought, new sources of feeling ”

“ It is a well-known fact, almost a rule, that the poet, the novelist, the dramatist, and the musician—often, indeed, even the sculptor and the painter—experience the thoughts and feeling of their characters, become identified with them. There are, then, in this second instance, two currents of feeling—the one, constituting emotion as material for art, the other, drawing out creative activity and developing along with it. ”

“ Art is the path of the creator to his work. ”

“ But the word Art, becoming appropriated to the fine arts, has been treated as if it necessarily carried along with it, and as if works to be called works of art must necessarily possess, the attributes of free individual skill and invention, expressing themselves in ever new combinations of pleasurable contrivance, and seeking perfection not as a means towards some ulterior practical end but as an ideal end in itself. ”

“ Ah! that mighty work, a task to fill a whole lifetime, a task which he must have begun with quiet confidence in his own will and power, drawing, as it were, an entire world from his brain and flinging it there with the ceaseless flow of creative virility in the full heyday of its omnipotence. ”

“ Three kinds of forces virtually determine the general trend of all artistic development as, indeed, of all other forms of evolution—forces which constitute the sum total of those that we comprehend under the joint name of tradition, a sum total of progressive tendencies which we will designate as esthetic ideals, and, mediating between the two, the typical development of the individuals themselves—above all, naturally, individuals of genius who really create literature. ”