The Five Ws (and One H!) of Creativity by Lucía Bayly Aramburú

T h e F i v e Ws ( a n d O n e H ! ) o f C r e at i v i t y

b y L u c 铆 a B ay ly 路 C o l u m b i a U n i v e r s i t y

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Creativity is intelligence having

fun Al b er t E I N S T E IN

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HELLO! INSTRUCTIONS No need to read this book in order!

“

keep six honest serving-men (They taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When „ And How and Where and Who. - Rudyard Kipling in Just So Stories (1902)

Much like the creative process, this book is inteded to be non-linear.

Curious about something else? Want to go back to a subject to read it with a different perspective of with new-found knowledge? Perfect! Instructions will help you get to wherever you want to go! Draw! Highlight! Annotate! The more, the better.

Tired after failing repeatedly, Louis Daguerre abandoned his efforts in pursuit of fixing images with a camera obscura. Days later, he took the plaques out again, each had a neat image on top; mercury, spilled by chance, had done the trick. The daguerrotype - named in his honour of course - went on to be one of the most important steps in the history of photography Who wouldn‘t want his luck? Luck is great, but depending on it as your source of creative breakthrough, of improvement and innovation is unnecessary. Creativity is not about luck. Creativity, unlike luck, is hardly a matter of I got it and you did not. It is not divine mandate nor gifted madness. The aim of this story is simple: to explore creativity. Through a theoretical and methodological review illustrated by approaches from the most important names in the field and applied to prominent examples in the arts, literature and design, this book attempts to show not only that creativity is hardly restricted to a small set of pursuits or individuals, but that its understanding can be enriched by a cross-disciplinary approach. Should you read it? Probably. Design students and practitioners can benefit from learning about the art of storytelling, of rhetoric and encoding processes in the mind. In the same way, students and practitioners of literature and art can benefit from knowing more about sketching, visual thinking, prototyping and collaborative working. This book seeks to continue the dialogue while providing a narration of interceptions. Provocative proposals - like Richard Buchanan‘s wicked problem - helped push a more integrated way of thinking about creativity and innovation and to close the gap between the sciences and the humanities. This may sound a bit idealist, so I

will defend this from a more pragmatic perspective: successfully C. P. SNOW participating in the post-industrial society in which we live in requires THE TWO CULTURES both a strong analytical capacity and a proficient expressive ability; be it within the humanities, arts or sciences, creativity has a space and Over 50 years ago, the it should not be confined to a only certain situations. English physicist and If one reduces science and the humanities to their most basic elements, one can see that they are not as different as previously thought. Science is a framework used to understanding the physical universe. The humanities are one used to understand our place in it. Obviously these grand narratives are quite reductive, especially when one strives to quantify and predict and the other is more concerned expression and representation of diversity and subjectivity. One is amazed by order and objectivity, the other delights from unpredictability and uncertainty. Everyone wants to be creative. Less understand that everyone. The theory of the five W‘s (and one H!) is based on five questions that one should ask in order to understand a subject in the clearest and most complete way possible. What. Why. Which. Who. When. And How. The importance of each is relative to the other; sometimes the most important thing is the who, the what or the other where, depending on the subject. In the same way, the order is not fixed as there is no default or appropriate succession. What makes them special is that they cannot be answered by affirmation or negation; a simple “yes” or “no” does not suffice and therein lies their power to lead to understanding and information. In the tradition of Hermagoras, openended, fact-seeking questions will lead to knowledge and discovery Creativity is sure to follow suit.

novelist C.P. Snow, presented, in a paper called “The Two Cultures” his concern about the growing gap between the sciences and humanities. He argued that the academy of the twentieth century - unlike the intellectual life of the nineteenth century was divided between the “literary intellectuals” and “scientific”. He argued that: the lack of interdisciplinary collaboration was hindering the creative collaboration necessary to find successful solutions to societal problems. Or at least that is what Snow though.

8 12 18 32 58 62 66 6

WHAT WHY WHICH WHO WHEN HOW WHENCE 7

1 Chapter ONE

WHAT

What is Creativity ?

TO INVENT. TO DISCOVER OR SOLVE. SOMETHING INNOVATIVE. A NOVEL COMBINATION. Creativity is a phenomenon, a faculty of personality, a quality and a process that has so far conceptually defied straightforward definitions. Inasmuch as it can be considered a way to solve problems through recombination, it has also been hailed as the result of unconscious processes made visible. Influenced by a wide range of developmental, social and educational experiences and depending on the context, its definition varies significantly across contexts. According to Robert Weisberg, creativity can be seen as â&#x20AC;&#x153;a person producing a novel response that solves a problemâ&#x20AC;? (p.4). Focusing on the process more than the product itself, he does though emphasize that for something to be creative, it needs to be novel, it must have value. Weisberg argues creativity as a process directed towards intentional novelty. He distances creativity from the idea of the extraordinary and instead conceptualizes it as a quite ordinary thought process geared towards a novel solution. Others, like Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, understand creativity as any act, idea, or product that alters a domain, field or discipline, or that leads to the creation of a new one. Hence, for him, creativity is not an individual attribute but a societal judgment in regards to the act, idea or product. He highlights the importance of considering the social and cultural context when studying creativity (p.198).

Nevertheless, the common denominator - observed across disciplines and manifestations - seems to be the focus on novelty and contribution. Contrary to the concept that creativity is reserved for geniuses or extraordinary individuals, recent literature on the subject actually point to the ordinary thought processes that underlie it; given certain circumstances in regards to the mind, cognitive process, motivation and emotions, we are all - to greater or lesser extent - prone to be creative.

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Creativity is defined as the tendency to generate or recognize ideas, alternatives, or possibilities that may be useful in solving problems, communicating with others and entertaining â&#x20AC;&#x17E; ourselves and others - Robert Weisberg 11

2 Chapter TWO

WHY

Why is creativity Misunderstood ?

FOLLAS NAVAS Rosalía DE CASTRO I can only tell you that my songs rise in confusion from my soul, like a song of deep oak groves at daybreak, a sound which may be the wind’s tease, or the simple but mysterious harmonies which, lost in this sad world, seek a way to heaven. […] No matter that dreams are lies since in the end, it is true that those who die dreaming are fortunate, unhappy are those who live dreamless. But in this sad world it seems all is quickly driven by a reckless force!

1414

The work of Galician poet Rosalía de Castro often dealt with an ontological exploration of the poetic self and the human drive for creation. Highly introspective, she frequently pondered on what she referred to as the “dark, hidden movements of her soul”, which she considered the force behind her own creative work. She felt driven to write not by own will, but by the irresistible voice inside her, which constantly tempted her ‘weak’ self to write just like “waves write on sand, wind on lakes and fog over the Sun”. This force – of oneiric source – thus allowed the individual to access an area inaccessible by reason. De Castro was effectively peering – just like Freud and Jung later would - below the threshold of conscious thought. According to Psychodynamic Theory, our conscious occupies only a small part of our psyche, the rest being the unconscious, which itself is split into two. The individual unconscious harbours our experiences and memories, albeit ones not available through introspection. The other, the collective unconscious, houses hereditary information in a manner shared by the specie. Jung argued that the unconscious resides at the margin of rational language and only occasionally breaches into the realm of understanding, where we perceive it as novel thought. It was precisely the uninhibited nature of the unconscious, free from the restrictive chains of logic, which provided such a tempting framework through which to explain the mysterious concept of human creativity; anecdotal accounts of creativity – such as Mozart’s and Coleridge’s regarding the Kublai Khan – frequently connected dreams and sudden inspiration to an unconscious flow. Certainly seductive, this idea, closely associated – sometimes even used interchangeably - creativity and inspiration, two concepts that in reality refer to different moments in the genesis of thought. Inspiration can be said to be an exogenous phenomenon extrinsic to the individual. Creativity, on the other hand, is endogenous to the individual and corresponds to the author‘s own ability or capacity. However, it is “inspiration” precisely the concept that gave root to the many misconceptions around creativity that have endured to this day. The Greeks thought inspiration came from the Muses - daughters of Mnemosyne, goddess of memory – who, with fickleness, bestowed momentary creativity to the chosen few, gifting them with aesthetic sense and creative genius. By giving them access to the divine memory, they would be capable of creating something the mortal world had never seen before. This dependent relationship between divine inspiration and creative output results in

ONEIRIC: Of or relating to dreams.

productive insecurity and reduces the role of the creator to one of mere intermediary 2. However, in the final period of the Middle Ages and later in the Renaissance, inspiration was replaced by personal achievement. As Vasari penned his Life of the Artists and the idea of artistic authorship flourished, the work of the individual - whether in the form of paintings, writings, poems and others - became the responsibility, and consequence, of an extraordinary - and frequently tortured -personality. If one randomly asks people about the field of psychology and the role of those who engaging with it, surely will the following prevalent response be found: to treat and cure disorders of the mind. Certainly, for many years psychology had an almost exclusively pathological focus. This lead to a theoretical framework biased towards the pathogenic study of the human mind, its maladies and malfunction. Unsurprisingly – and fuelled by the “temporary madness” of the muses, the idea of the tortured artist and the stereotype of the mad genius – creativity was scrutinized from a pathological standpoint as well. This focus thus also led to a complex syllogism of premises that disembogued into one damaging notion: just as with mental disorders, creativity is a dichotic, differential characteristic; some have it, some just don’t. Furthermore, research on creativity helped to promote this belief as it focused on identifying personal characteristics, stable and scarcely modifiable, that seemed to be more commonly present in the creative few. For example, towards the end of the 19th century, Italian physician Cesare Lombroso argued that genius and madness were inevitably linked, both being manifestations of an underlying degenerative neurological disorder. Many others followed with similar conclusions and soon, the ‘mad genius’ became an untouchable dogma, deeply entrenched in society yet poorly understood; frequently taken as an empirically-proven fact when in reality, most of the influential research studies quoted to support it are unsound and insufficiently scrutinized (Schlesinger, 2009).

2. Some of the most creative works of art nowadays reside in museums, where works are admired emancipated from their maker. Actually, museums are named after the Museidón, the temple of the Muses and the house of the ‘true creator’.

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Where observation is concerned,

chance favours the prepared mind â&#x20AC;? Lo u i s PAS T E UR

3 Chapter THREE

WHICH

Which models for Creativity exist ? KOESTLER‘S BISOCIATION MODEL Koestler‘s Bisociation Model (1964) is, fittingly, the result of an innovative combination of two theories: Freud‘s unconscious and Poincaré‘s incubation. He believed that whereas solving a problem involves combining thoughts, creative problem solving involves the “novel combinations” of ideas. Creativity is thus the act of associating two ideas that previously seemed to happen in different planes, unrelated to each other. Our mind normally functions on one plane, or matrix, moving - though association - from one idea set to the next related one. Only is the unconscious, unrestrained by this structure, able to move freely across matrices as it responds exclusively to wishes and needs, with little regard to rational association or logic. For Koestler, creativity thus happens when after spending a significant amount of time working on problem, the individual can break away from the brain‘s routine way of operating and move across matrices or planes, though novel combinations, or association, of concepts in order to solve the problem at hand. This he refers to as bisociation or the unconscious act of combining ideas that had not previously been in the same plane. Given the importance of the unconscious for this to happen, he emphasizes dreaming as a crucial state for this to happen, as then we cease to have conscious control over our thought process

and habitual, single-matrix associative connections and are hence more prone to the aforesaid novel combination that results in the creative act.

GESTALT MODEL Another theory that also ascribed the power of creativity to the unconscious is the Gestalt Model of Creativity. Gestalt psychology more broadly deals with the ability for productive and reproductive thought, through which we acquire perceptions from the world and organize it into structures of knowledge. In this context, the meaning we give to each perception determines the possible configurations of it within or structure of knowledge. Thus, creativity involves a form of perceptual reorganization of these stimuli, into novel conceptual structures. It is not the finding of something new, the acquisition of stimuli, but rather the situation when the stimuli is reanalyzed and re-conceptualized though conflict or problem-analysis; through the removal or repurposing of the connecting structures are we able to find novelty, or creative thought. This is why relying on experience or past solutions to solve new problems cannot lead to novel creation. This perceptual reorganization - which they refer to as Spontaneous Restructuring - occurs outside of the individual’s control, is perceived as impromptu and results in the solution becoming clear. Therefore,

the Gestalt Model of Creativity, and Psychodynamic Models in general, emphasize the importance of the unconscious, and the passive, almost trivial, role that the individual plays in creativity.

WALLAS‘ 4-STEP MODEL A later seminal model of creativity is Wallas‘ 4-step Model who conceptualized the creative process as one with four necessary stages - preparation, incubation, insight and verification - that occurred in linear fashion and through collaboration between the conscious and the unconscious. Wallas outlined the four steps:

Preparation: Process of intense conscious work, of collecting information and analyzing the circumstances of the situation or problem. The individual feels compelled to investigate and experience this phase of problem recognition and gathering of any potentially useful elements.

Incubation: The unconscious internalization of the problem and context, this is when the issue becomes anchored in the individual‘s psyche. Since little, if any, external effort is done at this phase, it might seem as if the problem-solving effort has been halted. Indeed, since there might consciously seem as if any progress is being made, many abandon the effort entirely. However, it has been shown that consciously stepping away from the problem can be very beneficial.

Insight: As the problem again returns to conscious awareness, the individual suddenly senses the solution forthcoming, seemingly out of nowhere as connections are made, which brings the individual‘s attention back to the problem*. As the solution arises, it seems to suddenly make sense without extended effort immediately preceding it.

Verification: The final step, also occurring in the conscious state, involves seeing the creation or solution achieved in order to verify its appropriateness to the initially set objective, particularly if the solution is unexpected. Finally, the solutions is validated and adopted.

This model was very influential on subsequent research regarding the creative process. Even though this model has not been conclusively and empirically verified - incubation is still a poorly understood concept -, practically this model led to a heightened interest in exploring creativity.

To the top is Koestlerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Figure 8 (The Act of Creation, p. 107). Using Archimedes to explain bisociation, we remember he climbed into his bath, and noticed the water level rising per usual While ideas about volumes

Besides Psychodynamic approaches, Psychometric Models focus on the ontological problem of creativity. Some authors grant creativity a unitary existence, while others consider it a conglomerate of interrelated traits. A third possibility, which many support, is one in which creativity comes to be an arbitrary label given to a phenomenon that cannot be empirically measured. Nonetheless, many sough to specifically explore whether certain aspect of the creative process could be measured in order to potentiate training efforts.

were in Matrix 1 (M1) ideas associated with bathing were in M2. He realized that if he completely submerged himself in the water, the amount of he displaced could only be equal to his own volume. So this was a simple way of figuring out the volume of the crown! Here, bisociation involved the permanent coming together of the two matrices.

GUILFORDâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;S DIVERGENT THINKING One of such psychometric approaches is Guilfordâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;s Divergent Thinking. Based on the idea of a common factor g that underlines intelligence, he argued that individuals differ in their sensitivity to presented problems in a given area or subject and that this was mediated by certain intelligence traits. Guilford spent years analyzing the role each played in the creative process and found that, given a certain absolute intelligence threshold, the capacity to generate ideas or have flexibility of thought generally led to more creativity. Such type of thinking is what he refers to as divergent thinking, which is characterized by producing outcomes that are not know beforehand,

whereas convergent thinking is the type of thought process that occurs in a finite, well-defined problem with a pre-stated solution. This comes to be a non-rational free association thought process and requires the individual to have fluency, flexibility and originality; that is, the capacity to generate original ideas, the ability to produce great variety of ideas from multiple knowledge categories and that such ideas are statistically atypical, hence creative.

OSBORN’S BRAINSTORMING Another model of creativity is Osborn’s Brainstorming, a group dynamic intended to accelerate the generation and increase the number of ideas in a creative process. Through the use of divergent thinking and collaboration amongst individuals, Osborn attests that a chain reaction, where many viewpoints stimulate thinking though association, can be induced in order to maximize creative responses or solutions. Unlike the concept of the ‘mad genius’, brainstorming assumes everyone is capable of creative thought. Osborn believed that we unfortunately restrict our creativity for fear of judgement, so in order to unleash it, a collaborative space free of criticism where even the wildest ideas are accepted should be fostered. According to him, it is crucial to produce as many ideas as possible, as it is though quantity that chances of finding a creative solution increase. Since its publication, the model has been widely used, from academia to the corporate world. However, its efficacy is still contested. Some studies have failed to find that it makes a difference compared to traditional problem-solving methods and other have concluded that group collaboration might even produce less creative solutions than individual work (Weisberg, 1986).

WHERE SHOULD YOU GO? Are you finding this interesting? Then just flip over to the next page! If you’re already over theory and models already and prefer to see creativity in practice and by WHO - go to page 34.

Want to read about literature? Then head over to page 44.

WEISBERG’S APPROACH Creativity has also been studied by analyzing the personal traits or characteristics that seem to be more closely associated with it or that seem to mediate the creative process. This approach conceptualized creativity as a behaviour and, like any other talent, it is not fixed, can be developed and depends on a variety of circumstances. Thus, identifying the individual predispositions – innate characteristics that influence creativity. Under this approach, creativity would be considered as a stable construction that could be related to the various domains of personality, whether cognitive, affective or behavioural. Weisberg maintains that the thought processes underlying acts of creation are indeed similar to those found in quite ordinary activities. He argues that the trait differences between the ‘creatives’ and ‘noncreatives’ are due to learned skills; expertise and levels of motivation, rather than an innate creative ability most commonly refer to as ‘genius’. Indeed, Weisberg argues that genius is not a stable individual characteristic but instead a societal judgement conferred to an individual due to his or her innovative output.

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS Moreover, functional neuroimaging studies have demonstrated the existence of specific activation in certain structures and neural networks during creative processes, mainly the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DL-PFC) and the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC), both of which are associated with decision-making, performance evaluation, conflict monitoring, cognitive flexibility, memory and motivation. On of the most revolutionary advances in neuroscience in the past few decades has been the experimental study of neural plasticity, that is, of the brain’s ability to reorganize and regenerate itself in response to injury, disease, experience or other changes in its environment. Although Garlick’s research on neural plasticity deals with intelligence more broadly, his findings suggest that early experiences are particularly influential and mediate some of the differences in information processing found in adults. Children who develop a highly adaptive neural network will be more likely to be efficient at information processing and complex executive functions as adults. If this language sounds familiar, it is because those abilities are closely associated with what is now considered the creative cognitive process.

CSIKSZENTMIHALYI’S SYSTEMS MODEL Csikszentmihalyi’s Systems Model posits that creativity is the result of the interrelationship between three systems:

domain

individual

field

contains the symbolic rules

brings novelty to the symbolic field

validates the act, idea or performance

SYSTEMS MODEL

FOR

C R E AT I V I T Y

DOMAIN

CREATIVE OUTPUT

FIELD

INDIVIDUAL

In essence, the individual utilizes the symbolic information provided by the culture and transforms it for its own creative endeavour. If this transformation is deemed valuable or appropriate, it is included in and expands the domain. The actions of all three systems are needed for creativity to occur. Therefore, creativity is not an isolated process, but is actually the interaction between social systems and individual production. This model particularly altered the notion that creativity’s value was self-contained by instead highlighting the extra-personal factors and sociocultural elements that influence what comes to be considered creative. Domain: The reference and existing pattern. Thus, the domain represents objects, rules, representations and notations. Creativity occurs when a person makes a change in the domain that will be transmitted in time. Field: Refers to the ‘gatekeepers’ of the domain – the professors, critics, judges, experts – who, given their knowledge of the domain, have the authority to impose judgment and decide whether a certain act, idea, product or performance is valuable and worthy of being included on the domain. Individual: Through a creative endeavour, the individual manipulates, utilizes of recombines the contents of the domain into a novel creation. This creation, in order to be creative, must be validated by the field and included in the domain to be transmitted over time.

THE PROBLEM SPACE A problem space comes to be what lies between the initial state – the representation of the problem and the goal state or solution. Governed by a set of constrained sequential operations, it is in the problem space where the search for the novel solution takes place as the individual considers and tries out various solutions intended to reach the goal state. Problem-Solving Models of creativity deal with two kinds of problems: well structured and ill structured.

WELL-STRUCTURED PROBLEMS

ILL-STRUCTURED PROBLEMS

are ones in which all the information necessary to solve the problem is given and a solution path is clearly defined. In such problems, no creativity is required to reach the goal state as, given the correct application of the algorithm given, the right answer will be reached. For example, converting quantities from the metric to the imperial system constitutes a well-structured problem.

provide insufficient information to reach the goal state or fail to yield a well-defined answer. When approaching an ill-structured problem then, the individual must make judgments to resolve the internal inconsistencies and external conflicts in order to propose a solution. Thus, to be solved, ill-structured problems demand a novel path through the problem space; they demand creativity.

T H E P R O B L E M S PA C E CONSTRAINTS

INITIAL STATE (PROBLEM)

GOAL STATE (SOLUTION)

CONSTRAINTS

FIGURE 1

WEISBERG’S INCREMENTAL MODEL Weisberg’s Incremental Model refrains from characterizing creativity as ‘aha’ moments of insight that suddenly produce something greatly novel. Rather, he prefers to conceptualize it as a series of sequential steps directed towards solving a problem or reaching a final goal state. Starting within a field of knowledge, the individual will embark in a problem-solving process, which, as problems are encountered and solutions are tried, reduces the search space until a solution is reached. Creativity here then involves a trialand-error process, where the individual is able to associate remote ideas, gain insight from failure and adjust to improve or even to reconceptualize an ill-defined problem. For Weisberg, creative output is always rooted in existing work – be it the individual’s or others that is further developed. (p. 14). Creativity may seem extraordinary and mysterious when only the initial state and the solution are considered; no wonder creativity was conceived as “great leaps of insight” (p.3). Indeed, Weisberg proposes that creativity happens at even the small steps when a novel solution brings the goal state closer. Given the nature of this process, Weisberg affirms the importance of personality factors in his model. Faced against repeated challenge and failure, motivation in particular – given its effects on concentration and knowledge acquisition - becomes crucial for creativity and it is it, paired with experience, which generally lead to domain-changing creative output. Nevertheless, Weisberg dispels the idea that some extraordinary ability is necessary. Quite the contrary, a closer look to the thought process behind creative ‘geniuses’ reveal quite ordinary cognitive processes.

REITMAN’S CONSTRAINT MODEL Reitman’s Constraint Model also conceptualized creativity as A progression towards a goal state or solution, where problems (or constraints) constantly push for novel solutions which in turn lead to new constraints. The result is an ever-contracting breadth of possible paths towards the goal state. Whereas Weisberg focuses on the ANISOTROPY: anisotropy of the creative process, Reitman model instead seeks to describe the functional relationship between a creative endeavour and having properties that differ the constraints around it. Every ill-structured problem has attributes based on the direction of that constrain the process and the possible solutions. As components measurement. of the problem are left open-ended, context-dependent judgment is required to “close” them until a solution is reached.

STOKES’ CONSTRAINT MODEL In Stokes’ Constraint Model open constraints are progressively resolved, each step towards the goal state results in new constraints, whose function is two-fold: inasmuch as they limit or restrain the solution sphere, they also promote or signal alternative paths (Fig. 2). According to Stokes, the domain is constrained by three factors: subject, goal and task. Subject constraints limit the content of the problem. Goal constraints specify the style of the process. Task constraints specify the materials or resources available in the problem space. Thus, domain constraints define the structure of the problem and delimit the possible solutions available to get to the goal state. In this model, creativity happens – contrary to the popular saying – inside the box, where a strategic use of constraints can help preclude typical solutions and promote novel ones. This dual-action by paired constraints not only increasingly particularizes the solution, but also helps to pinpoint a substitute for a problem standing between the initial and the goal state. This iterative series of substitutions lead to new paths, which eventually lead to the solution or goal state. But then, what is the box? The box here comes to be the expertise, the previous knowledge held by the individual that allows for an informed use of constraints and decision-making throughout the process. Stokes also mentions that as much as the box conveys certain rigidity, the box can get bigger through borrowing, novel association of ideas, collaboration and knowledge acquisition. In short, the more tools in the box, the more solutions are available. Stokes thus states that expertise – tools - is a necessity for creativity so “thinking outside the box is an oxymoron” (p.278).

“

Constraints for creativity are most succinctly and completely defined as tools that come in pairs which are hierarchically organized and specific to domains.” Patricia STOKES

ERICSSON’S EXPERTISE MODEL As previously discussed, expertise is crucial to produce the novel resolutions and influential solutions that characterize creativity. Ericsson defines expert performance as the level reached by an individual after a merely cognitive or associative phase regarding an activity or discipline has been surpassed. A situation of advanced skill acquisition, it is the result of a gradual, time-consuming improvement within a domain. With every new skill we develop, eventually we reach a point where the activity becomes automatic and high levels of control over the performance are attained. Most individuals nevertheless experience very little, if any, improvement past this phase. According to Ericsson, moving past this – reaching an expert level of performance – require on average ten years of experience in the domain. Additionally, expertise also depends heavily on deliberate practice and not merely on ‘hours clocked’. Deliberate practice involves the intentional, concentrated practicing specifically geared towards improving one’s performance and ability. Tasks involved in deliberate practice are very specific to the domain and to the individual’s necessities, generally through successive refinements involving feedback. Only through the repeated and deliberate practice of challenging domain-related tasks is expert performance achieved. In regards to creativity, Ericsson posits that there seems to be no particular stage in expert development where creativity is possible as the average peak performance age differs greatly between domains – consider a gymnast against a scientist. It seems though that in order to make creative contributions, it is essential to have knowledge about the domain in order to be able to produce ideas that will be novel and rewarded within the domain itself.

WHOâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S NEXT ? Ideas about creativity have traditionally been supported by the axes of the artist as an individual with special natural ability and that of the work of art as a supreme achievement that spurs out of a somewhat enigmatic artistic process that occurs under the mechanisms of inspiration and leads to self-expression of the creator. Gratefully, this has long ceased to be the only or the most accurate reading. Recent times have seen the appearance of artistic practices characterized by interconnection and mutual contamination that have radically affected the very concept of art; it is not uncommon to see performance, video installation and other artistic hybrids predominating contemporary art scenes. Mixing and blending. Contamination of media, languages, materials, procedures and problems tackled from optics that see no sense in confining to the rigidity of the classical categories of drawing, painting and sculpture. Yet this is not a recent trend. Artists in the first half of last century were already experiencing with the use of different media, materials and processes in order to advance their own artistic pursuits and expand the understanding of their practice and field. In the following decades, new paths continued to be forged as creativity found a particularly privileged habitat in art and literature.

WHATâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S NEXT? Are you curious about how all of this relates to art and literature? Just keep on reading! If youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re curious about the definition of creativity again - or have one for yourself! - then go back to page 4. Want to read about a newer way of conceptualizing creativity and innovation? Head over to page 64.

4 Chapter FOUR

WHO

Who is Creative ?

MATISSE. Early in his career, Matisse’s work is characterized by his bold strokes of unblended, pure colour, which – precluding the use of contour lines - he uses to give shape and explore his subject. Each touch of the brush flows onto the next, figure and landscape seamlessly interwoven, barely made different by changes in pattern and arrangement. Although paintings in this style, like Landscape at Collioure and Woman Besides the Sea, were already departures from the academic style conventions Matisse trained in, he did not settle on this innovation as the solution in his search for pure colour and line. His work, inextricably bound to the creative process, continued to evolve as he constantly encountered new solutions to ill-structured problems through substitution.

EARLY PERIOD TO MIDDLE PERIOD (c 1914) Although Matisse’s style evolution is hardly discrete in nature, The Red Studio (1911) provides a clear example of a significant departure from the latter. Though a studio interior is hardly a novel subject, Matisse brings something decidedly new. The particoloured surfaces seen before have been replaced by a diagrammatic composition of monochromatic expanses; shape given though black lines or through the use of negative gaps. The sketch, precluded in his early compositions, is back, this time however not necessarily as a preliminary step, but as part of the end product. Something essentially graphic emerges, a quality that now is forever associated

Below: Woman Besides the Sea (1905)

CONSTRAINT MODEL

EARLY PERIOD

CONSTRAINT

• Pure line and colour • Essential character of art

GOAL

• Specifism • Immediacy • Reactive temporal quality • Fragmented composition.

• Materiality of canvas • Particoloured surfaces • Diapasonic colour palette • Construct with texture, pattern and colour

M AT I S S E

MIDDLE ( c. 1914)

PRECLUDE

• Post-Impressionism • Pointillism

FOR

PROMOTE • Pure line and colour. • Essential character of art

SOURCE

• Cubism • Abstraction

SUBJECT

• Iconography • Sketching • Contemplative temporal quality • Diagrammatic composition

TASK

• Painted expanses • Construct using black lines and negative gaps. • Harmonious palette.

Left: Goldfish and Palette (1914) Above: The Red Room (1911) Below: View of Notre Dame (1914) Right: The Moroccans (1915-16)

DIAPASONIC: A full, rich outpouring of sensation. with Matisse. As space has been fragmented, so has surface been split, and so has time. Lost with them is also the immediacy – so decidedly Impressionistic –conveyed through the use of bare canvas and quick flicks of the wrist perceived in his brushwork. Now, his paintings have a more contemplative temporal quality; it is not longer what he sees, but how what he sees is experienced. As can be seen in The Moroccans (1916), the inchoate distortions are taken a step further in favour of an enhanced compositional tension, thus becoming the true subject of the artwork rather than a tool. Amidst this tension and fragmentation however, balance is never lost; a more harmonious range has replaced his previous diapasonic colour palette, successfully uniting the painting in accord. His use of light becomes more selective, used less as a contrasting force and more as an expression of the new geometric quality he confers to his elements. Indeed, in works like Goldfish and Palette (1914) and View of Notre Dame (1914), Matisse’s agency is no longer acquiescent to sentiment and perception, but insolent. Symbolism trumps specifics as Matisse further distils the complexity of reality until every one of his pieces become standalone assertions of his exploration.

MIDDLE PERIOD (c 1914) TO CUT-OUTS Matisse shattered norms and defied viewers’ expectations with his unique take on mimesis; if his early paintings were affected reality, works like The Red Studio pushed the limits of the domain even further by forcing affected realism and abstraction to coexist, thus utterly upsetting the benchmark for the real. Nevertheless, and however distorted – Matisse retains certain elements viewers would recognize: perspective can be sensed; objects retain a certain particularity and mass is tangible. Namely, his artistic language hence “does not reflect reality; it constitutes reality”1. Matisse’s subjects so far had been pretexts for studying the relationship between line and colour; precluding traditional techniques such as point perspective and chiaroscuro, his figures arise out of one telling stroke or hue. His exploration, always underscored by his strong interest in colour, shows recurring elements being expanded and simplified towards new pictorial conclusions. In his middle period (c. 1914), he abbreviated his verbosity by precluding range in colour and cacophony for flatness. He abandoned the need to explore every variation to instead

Laurie Schneider Adams, The Methodologies of Art: An Introduction (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1996), 135.

CONSTRAINT MODEL

MIDDLE ( c. 1914) PRECLUDE • Pure line and colour. • Essential character of art

• Cubism • Abstraction

• Iconography • Sketching • Contemplative temporal quality • Diagrammatic composition

• Painted expanses • Construct using black lines and negative gaps. • Harmonious palette.

CONSTRAINT

GOAL

FOR

M AT I S S E

CUT-OUTS PROMOTE • Pure line and colour • Essential character of art

SOURCE

• Specifism • Graphic Quality • Decoratif

SUBJECT

• Memes • Synthesis • Atemporal quality

TASK

38 38

• “Drawing with scissors” • Vibrant colouring • Edge & contrast as agents • Modular composition

synthesize the subjective and promote the economy of means. Matisse succeeds, his paintings acquiring meaning beyond the anecdotal. Matisse’s propensity towards vibrant colour and his proficient sense of rhythm again propelled his artistic pursuit forward. Picking up scissors, Matisse – forever reclaimed the irreparable separation they forge for his culminating realization. Leaving behind traditional paint and canvas, he constrained the task in his search for purity of colour and line. Indeed, the physical nature of his cut-outs is crucial; each capricious curling of a paper’s lip, every crinkle as they hung on the Wall emphasize the sensitivity inherent to the process, hardly as straightforward as one would think. He freehandedly cut his cut-outs, made out of prepared sheets of vibrant colours, and saved both the shapes and the scraps to then – over the span of months – carefully organize them into their end state, until the desired configuration was reached. Precluding even of the contemplative nature of his later paintings, his work now has an extemporal, enduring quality. In his cut-outs, Matisse lets go of the symbolic language he had so far adopted in favour of semiotics.

Left: Blue Nude II (1952) Bottom: Memory of Oceania (1052-53).

Edge and contours take precedent as principal compositional agents. Whereas in the initial stages of his career, he abbreviated every tonality into one single brushstroke, he has now reduced each brushstroke into shapes, into memes, pure in colour and line. The cut-outs arise as the ultimate answer in his search: he synthesized sketching to cutting, synthesized colour to the surface itself and composition to the modular arrangement of elements as – rather than in – space itself. In his collages, Matisse achieves – by precluding even from brushstrokes as intermediaries - an interaction between form and colour, a fusion of sculptural action and pictorial expression, to a result that is fundamentally, simply pure.

WHAT SHOULD YOU READ ABOUT NOW? All done with painting? Then try literature on page 44. Are you curious about creativity outside the humanities? Then read about an application used to tackle business problems on page 64

CUBISM The French philosopher Henri Bergson argued that, as observers, we accumulate in our memory a great deal of information about every object in our external visual world. This of course is not about simply storing a reflection of reality, but about grasping an idea of it. Mimesis in Cubism - just as you will read about later in the writings of Byatt, Calvino, Kundera and Dillard - is not based on formal imitation but on a conceptual reproduction mediated by the eye and the artistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s memory. Cubists paint not from models, but from memories. They write about, with and because of memory. Although Cubism corresponds to the field of painting, it represents the climax of a broader and growing concern that new times demanded new way of approaching artistic creation. Cubism rejected the Aristotelian concept of art as imitation of nature, instead proposing an approach where art and nature are different realities. As human beings, we are unable to perceive reality in its full complexity; we see from only one angle when reality has multiple. Art therefore, should look to express reality in a way that is not uni-angular and incomplete to instead move to represent all possibilities of reality; hence, the work of art itself becomes a reality that represents the very process by which nature becomes art. This way, art becomes not imitation but creation. Likewise, the modernist writer, although makes no attempt to imitate a Cubist painter, also addresses this fragmented reality and engages in formal self-reflection; now, what is said does not necessarily prevail over the way it is expressed, which reflects a concern for the creation process itself. If Cubism leaves the uniqueness of angle, literature is ambiguous, ceases to have a linear narrative and sequential dynamic; the plot is fragmented and the resolution does not necessarily mean the end of the story. Like the Cubists, writers understood that the external world has meaning only inasmuch as it is internalized by the eye of the mind.

OSMOTIC: A subtle or gradual absorption or mingling.

CONSTRAINT MODEL FOR CUBISM ANALYTIC TO SYNTHETIC PRECLUDE

PROMOTE

CONSTRAINT

• Analytic Cubism • Deconstruction

GOAL

• Austere Intellectualism • Avant-Garde

• Abstract Planes of Colour • Objects broken down into components • Destruction of the illusion of vision • Structure is paramount • Intricate geometry

• Paint and canvas • Monochrome palette • Staccato rhythm • Little tonal differentiation • Osmotic delineation • Central density

• Synthetic Cubism • Synthesis

SOURCE

• Social Commentary • Whimsical Aesthetic

SUBJECT

• Standardized Elements • Build-up of representation • Modular geometry • Playful composition • Tightly-fitted shapes

TASK

• Collage/Texture • Papier Collé • Bright colour scheme • Abstract planes of colour as building blocks • Dynamic rhythm • Dark/light modelling • Well-defined planes

MANTAINED: Multiple viewpoints.

JUAN GRIS (1887 – 1927) The most orthodox in his approach to Cubism, Juan Gris remained loyal to the style though his purist and intellectual approach. Whereas it can be challenging to differentiate between Braque and Picasso’s cubist works, Gris’ have distinctness, particularly though his firm structure, harmonious rhythm and delineated forms. As has been said, whereas Analytical Cubists made cylinder out of a bottle, Gris made a bottle out of a cylinder, inverting the concept of synthesis in art. Nonetheless, Gris’ work defies straightforward characterization. Inasmuch as is it cubist, there remains a deep respect for the pictorial tradition – the colouring is reminiscent of Zurbarán still lifes and his quest for the rationalization of congested structure points to his admiration for the 16th century School of Fontainebleau 2. The delicate lyricism of both his palette and his compositions are the result of careful thought around the materiality of the physical object and its place in the modern milieu. Although his style never evolved into another stage, his influence has certainly been felt: Abstraction (Malevich, Kandinsky) and Constructivism. Moreover, Gris’ accuracy and constructive resolution would be decisive for Ozenfant and Le Corbusier, purists that formed as a result of and against, Synthetic Cubism. 2. Mellow, J. - Charmed Circle: Gertrude Stein and Company.

Below: Juan Gris The Open Window (1921) Right: Juan Gris Violin and Checkerboard (1913)

Above: Fernand Léger The Staircase (Second State) (1914) Right: : Fernand Léger The Typographer (1918-19)

FERNAND LÉGER (1881-1955) Léger‘s Cubism tends towards forms of mechanical and tubular appearance. His deep interest in everyday life and the mechanization of the big city leads to his protagonists having an automata character. Léger sought to build an image of modern life though objects, a setting where even humans serve an objectual function. However, far from turning that objectivity into an implicit critique of the inherent alienation of the mechanical-industrial reality, the artist opts for a monumentality that celebrates urban life as the schematically reduced working-man merges with his surroundings. Even his representations of organic motifs – such as water, vegetables and clouds – are in a distinctly mechanical aesthetic. His dynamic intersections of cylindrical, spherical and geometric shapes evoke the accented rhythm of city life. Particularly salient in his work is his use of colour – brilliant and mostly primary- and although he embraced Cubism and its fragmentation, he did retained a certain degree of three-dimensionality in his work Léger‘s unique form of cylindrical Cubism and bright colouring influenced subsequent generation of painters and sculptures, including Henry Moore, Pop artists and his belief that art is a communal

WHAT NOW? Done with art and ready for some writing? Continue here to read about creativity in literature or read my own attempts at writing on page 60. Curious about the definition of creativity now that youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve read about creativity in painting? Then head over to page 20.

MEMORY / MEMOIR How to make sense of the facts of life? Fragmented, is it a series of disjointed actions, a myriad of personal events discontinued from reality? How can we find order within this confusion and chance, harmony and concord from what has been smashed, and disjointed in order to find the necessary or credible out of the nebulous? As with Cubism, memory here is conceived not as a recovery from past events and meanings, but as the raw material that a process of creation and combination. Memory is a representation of the mixture of facts, individual subjectivity, desires and social conventions. Episodic memory allows humans to store and recall events that occurred during their lifetime, whether in the personal, family or social history. It is subject to a temporal-spatial reference as they occur in a particular place and a concrete time-based moment and is used to encode the conscious personal experience. Nevertheless, episodic memory is hardly perfect as it can be distorted during encoding and during retrieval. Factors like level of processing, attention, elaboration, motivation, emotion and mood. The pile-up of memories can greatly affect retrieval efficacy and accuracy; all memory involves oblivion and forgetting as much as it involves reconstruction and remembering. Therefore, in all commemorative memory exercise, lack of memory - forgetfulness - forces us to relate, to look for understanding. In this pursuit, we rely on past knowledge and construct with the familiar - memory is thus an agentic process, biased by the retrieval moment inasmuch as it was by the moment of encoding, patched up by social constructs and metaphoric sources. Indeed, metaphor is used both as a conceptual tool in theories of memory and as a constructing tool in memories themselves. Metaphors represent something to ourselves in order to facilitate comprehension Finally, as we repeatedly retrieve memories over our lifetime, the story we tell influences the memory itself, altering subsequent retellings. Our associative network may even include others memory of the same events, or related events into ours as we become unable to discern amongst versions (Stokes, 2005).

A.S. BYATT (1936 - )

AGENTIC:

Byatt heavily relies on detailed descriptions of scenes and events, rich in sensory information in order to create the allusion of reality. Instead of providing a conducting, explanatory narrative, she instead creates a reality out of her memory, one that will allow the reader to experience it as closely as to how she did. This way, the readerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s interpretation will be as truthful as possible.

The capacity for human beings to make choices in the world. I.e. human agency.

CONSTRAINT MODEL FOR MEMOIR WRITING Precluding of the autobiography, a memoir

subject

is a “snapshot-in-words” and does not set out to be comprehensive, but selective.

Memory becomes the source for the memoir. Nonetheless, this should not be taken to mean accurate as it is influenced by desires, social conventions and time past.

Sincerity, but not necessarily veracity.

source

A memoir is a peek into how an event was subjectively experienced and personally remembered.

Use of words, particularly mimesis or aiming “directly at truths of things”. Instead of being a passive tool for expression, words become the expressive outlet itself.

task

According to Byatt, we reconstruct our episodic memories by “making sense of them”, but in doing so we give them a “contaminated quality” (15). Since we reorganize the memory of events - as “all narratives are partial fictions”-, thus corrupting the memory, the only truth remains in the “fixed form, the set arrangement” (15). Hence, truthfulness can be reached, as William Carlos Williams said, “no ideas but in things”. Here, the metaphor is a mediator of mimesis, a way of communication open between universes that tend to separate. Metaphor: The title itself. Sugar becomes a metaphor for the “sugar-coating”, the subjective add-on that perception bestows upon memory and a reflection on the relationship between the imaginative and the real. Byatt’s approach to truth in writing thus seems to be condensed in her description of her mother: “[She] had a respect for truth, but she was not a truthful woman…she lied … to make a story better” (215).

PRECLUDE • Virginia Woolf: “memory is a seamstress”.

• Subjectivity • Fiction • Moral and Aesthetic Essence • Autobiography • Documenting a particular Zeitgeist. • Analogy • Passive use of language. • Objective descriptive precision in autobiographies: Byatt writes that they could contain their “ own precise study of the nature of language, of perception. of memory, of what limits and constitutes our vision of things” (REF: Sugar 23). • Straightforwardness. • Imagination as a tool.

CONSTRAINT

PROMOTE

SOURCE

• Iris Murdoch: “the hard idea of truth”. • Robert Browning • Balzác’s Realism • Flaubert’s Cognitive Realism

GOAL

• Relationship between truth and fiction. • Accuracy. • Continuity between language and things.

SUBJECT

TASK

• Memoir • Birth and Death • Inter-generational communication • Mimesis and metaphor. • Structural Patterning: Relationship between words and theme. • Dissociation and Suspension of Disbelief: • Mosaic construction of events: “ the long black shadows of the things left unsaid” (REF). • Stokes: “Byatt‘s scaffolding is metaphoric... metaphor enlarges on mimesis” (REF). • Imagination as the subject: “I select and confect” (REF).

MILAN KUNDERA (1929 - )

CONSTRAINTS MODEL GOAL Initial: Any adherence to dogma and traditional novelistic structure or technique.

Goal: Polyphony of voices in writing, and the ultimate coherence brought upon by thematic unity. To explore the “density of imagination” and seek the “extreme gravity” of questions though an “extreme lightness of the form” (95).

SOURCE

Precludes: Any adherence to dogma and traditional novelistic structure or technique.

Promotes: Dostoevsky and Kafka, whose ”novels are the seamless fusion of dream and reality”(81) and with that a narrative guided by imagination, free from “concerns for verisimilitude” and rational thought. He is also heavily influenced by music and the way musical pieces are structured and composed (Schoenberg and Beethoven) as he is seeks to find polyphony in writing (75).

SUBJECT Ignorance Memory Homecoming and Exile Dreams Nostalgia

TASK Articulation: Short episodes that carry much meaning without being inherently meaningful events.

Tonality: From essay to narrative to even historical and etymological explorations.

Polyphony: To further avoid any adherence to the dogmatic, he promotes a self-reflecting or reflective inner voice that deals with multiple hypothetical and subjective, rather than grand statements of truth - like Dostoevsky.

47 47

MILAN KUNDERA - FROM IGNORANCE (2000) Interwoven with stories of love and chance meetings - and with Czechoslovakia and the Odyssey as backdrops - Kundera explores the themes of nostalgia and memory, of being uprooted, of forgetting and being forgotten. But why Ignorance? What is it that the characters ignore? In Kundera’s world, oblivion wins by default over memory as Irena and Josef discover, much to their astonishment, that their memories fail to match those of their families and friends. Prisoners of their own ignorance, the characters are overwhelmed the nostalgia of leaving a country – and with it the un-returnable past – behind: “You mean this isn’t my home anymore?” Kundera’s poignant examination of ignorance paints a twin picture, where ignorance can be as much the result of our unconscious selective memory as it can be the effect of voluntary action; memories transformed as they follow the relentless pursuit of unattainable certainty. Kundera closely examines two characters: Irena, a woman in her forties, who left for France where she became a young widow and where she now lives a comfortable life, and Josef, a veterinarian who left his homeland for Sweden, where he married and started a new life. Both Irena and Josef show resistance to return, and are forced to return by the pressure of external forces: isn‘t the homeland the vertebrae of individual identity? Their return is thus a return to the individual as such and the individual as part of a larger context. It is precisely that they resist as both Irena and Josef have lost the memory that would allow them a return beyond the purely geographical. Their resistance thus becomes the resistance of memory, the impossibility of going back. Their longing is just a product of nostalgia, experienced only when all is already lost. The ‚Great Return‘, which permeates the fantasies and nightmares of exiles, is a corrupted desire as they are condemned to a solipsistic existence, so local and circumstantial as they live prohibited from shared memory and from the potential to even recognize their past subjectivities, their own autobiography. Josef and Irena are in a state of historical amnesia that prevents them from identifying with the community; even the language seems foreign - too nasal -, doting every linguistic exchange with an unfamiliar artificiality. Thus, even language - the largest depository of institutional memory - is doomed, and with it even the most basic possibility of communication. Every interaction, every moment is treated with acerbity by Kundera, who creates a daily apocalyptic flow of events, where each gesture of indifference, each gaze and wording, exchange and encounter reaches a dramatic dimension of Dostoevskian nature. With almost forensic nuance, Kundera examines the behaviour of the two exiles and probes into their mental states to conclude with one diagnosis: the illness of „masochistic deformation of memory” due to failure of longing”. For Kundera, the problem with nostalgia and memory can be thought of as a mathematical mismatch. The paradox is that nostalgia is at its most powerful in early youth, given the small volume of time gone by, whereas memory is larger at the opposite end of life (77). Even as the ratio between life lived and life stored decreases, nostalgia increases. Thus, the glorification of the past is based on the idea that memory would not be necessary if the past would indeed be something past, yet memory keeps the past as something still present.

STACCATO: Composed of or characterized by abruptly disconnected elements; disjointed. SOLIPCISTIC: Characterized by solipsism, or the theory that only the self exists, or can be proved to exist

Short chapters allow Kundera to frame the story with a seemingly staccato flow of consciousness, doting the telling of an almost dazed journey of the mind, much in the way we all experiences memories. Irena and Josef, although suffering from similar woes, explore different sides of nostalgia. Irena is negating memory in an effort to eschew nostalgia – which she is ultimately unable to as she yearns for the ‘whatif’, her resistance breached by longing images from the past. Josef’s present self on the other hand, is very much entrenched in the past, in his family, his wife and the memory of himself, which he is disillusioned to realize is heavily distorted. Amidst his philological and historical digressions, Kundera oscillates between tones as he narrates the unlikely re-converging of Irena and Josef’s lives as they both become trapped by the impossibility of return. An implacable sentence pronounced by Josef summarizes the feeling of who returns: „He had the sense he was coming back into the world as might a dead man emerging from his tomb after twenty years: touching the ground with a timid foot that‘s lost the habit of walking; barely recognizing the world he had lived in but continually stumbling over the leavings from his life.” Encounters become disenchantments memory becomes the last bastion of personal identity while also responsible for the melancholy of leaving a past that no longer is. The complicity in oblivion, of not knowing from each other, thus becomes the ultimate ignorance.

PURSUIT

C E R TA I N T Y

FOR

IRENA

JOSEF

In finding convergence between her memories and others. So, she struggles with the absence of connection and a shared understanding of the past: the “operating instructions”

In finding internal coherence. So, he ignores and negates memories that are contrary - or would disrupt - his own version of nostalgia: his “masochistic memory”, “his memory detested him”.

IMPOSSIBILITY of IDENTITY · Multiple truths

· Failed memory and lies

· Distortion

WHERE TO NOW? Want to read my own story about Africa? I even attempt writing in Kundera’s style! If so, go to page 60. Curious about why all of this matters? Then go back to WHY on page 14.

ITALO CALVINO (1923 - 1985)

“

The Book of Marvels, written by Marco Polo, revolutionized the European imagination about the East. The book - now we know is inaccurate and far from an authentic description of the places he visited. But for the European world who received the manuscript, precision mattered little. It was successful precisely because it was a reconstruction and recombination of paradise and hell, of fantasy and unimaginable lands one could only dream of yet felt had seen, lived or dreamed about. Yet reading about his cities - and about them in Calvino‘s Invisible Cities - is untangling metaphors and in the pursuit of new understandings about the relationship between language and truth and the fragmented and constructed relationship between the past and the now. He splinters the city - Venice - to the bring it into cohesion by the sheer profusion of angles, perspectives and subjective appraisals.

Each city thus is a riddle through which Calvino takes the reader for a walking tour with his vaporous and heterogeneous narration. able to leave a succession Zaira - the city of memory - has a past that it does not communicate of beautiful lies, I want but carries inscribed in its objects and spatial relationships; images become signs and signs become the marks of unwritten history. The to leave the smidgen of lake besides Valdrada invites a plethora of interpretations as it „ At times the mirror increases a thing‘s value, at times denies it ... Not truth that the falsehood everything that seems valuable above the mirror maintains its force of everything lets us when mirrored”. The structure of this novel and its writing shape the cities into something new. The dispute between the closeness suppose we can tell” inherent in the individual experience and the distance required for the - Fernando Pessoa in The conversion of spatial relationships into geometry and surfaces results Education of the Stoic in broken cities, fragmented reflections and pastiches that - as the reader discovers - all source from a single one: Venice.

Since I wasn’t

Calvino seeks to write in a literary style that explores the inner workings of imagination and memory, which is sourced in the direct observation of the real world and in the “phantasmic and oneiric transfiguration [of] the figurative world as it is transmitted by cult re at its Various levels, and a process of abstraction, condensation, and internalization of sense experience, a matter of prime importance to both the visualization and the verbalization of thought” (107).

CONSTRAINTS MODEL GOAL His initial state is fantastique, the French literary genre in which s supernatural phenomena happens in an otherwise realistic world or narrative. But, as opposed to the fantasy genre, in fantastique, the reader is invited to believe what is being narrated happens in the real world and to provide explanations for the occurrences just as is done in ordinary life (71-72). His goal state would be the Italian fantasia and fantástico, a genre, which demands an acceptance that extraordinary occurrences happen under a different logic. Instead of pushing the reader to provide an explanation, it pushes for an acceptance that the supernatural occurrence is precisely supernatural (72).

SOURCE Other Authors: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allen Poe and Charles Dickens, Henry James: painting pictures with words. Corriere dei Piccolo, a weekly children’s magazine that Calvino credits as helping him develop an active imagination. Since he could not read, he would make up stories for and from the images in the magazine. In regards to imagination, Calvino conceptualized it as a repertoire of things that are, were or even can’t or never will be (104). This means that he believes we can source even from things we have not experienced.

SUBJECT Memory: “redundant: it repeats itself so that something will stick in the mind” (19). Imagination: He seeks to extract stories from his memory like one does from the trot, interpreting the same figure in a different way each time” (106). Venice: the city, particularly the “fantastic iconology” of its paintings (106).

TASK Patterns and Repetition: He sought to explore the repetitive – and subjective – nature of memory formation. He believes memory is comprised of images through a process of infinite association. For Calvino, chief to narration is “the order of things” what is central to the narrative, the “extraordinary event produces in itself and around itself; the pattern, the symmetry, the network of images deposited around it, as in the formation of a crystal” (73). Narrative from Images: Calvino starts with a hyperbolic description in order to enhance the poetic image through rhetoric of build-up – “implicit potentiality”(102-3). Then, out of this created image, he embarks on the philosophical interpretation as the written word – the most “felicitous verbal expression” - is what finally leads the reader to the deliberate intent of the story (103).

ITALO CALVINO - FROM INVISIBLE CITIES (1972)

What is the extraordinary event in the novel ?

What is the central visual image ?

There is no action in the novel, merely a dialogue and descriptive text. Personally, the most crucial moment in the novel comes when Marco Polo acknowledges that in describing all of the cities in the Khan’s empire, he is actually describing only one: Venice. Afraid of loosing the memories of his home, he instead preserves Venice in his memory by recombining its elements – the canals, architecture, water and energy – into descriptions of new cities. Nonetheless, as Marco Polo remarks: “perhaps, speaking of other cities, I have already lost it, little by little” . Also, another important moment is when, halfway through the story, the Khan proposes turning the tables around: he will describe cities and Marco Polo will try and find if they exist. Thus, a map of invisible cities made of memory, emerges.

In Invisible Cities, the ekphratic descriptions and Calvino’s narrative style, always suspended in uchronia, allows for a multiplicity of images - of cities - that stand as independent semantic units, each with its own motif within the themes explores (death, desire, signs…). Nonetheless, they all are really providing myopic views of a single image– Venice – thus consigning the invisible cities to exist only in text.

How does Calvino use patterning in the novel ? Cities and memory 1 Cities and desire 1 Cities and memory 2 Cities and memory 3 Cities and desire 2 One example is in his chapter structure. By intercalating the word memory with the word desire, Calvino emphasizes the effect one has on the other; whereas our desires can guide attention and shape memory formation and retrieval, our memories can lead to desire as well..

How does this structure differ from the traditional novel ?:

What is the real subject of the novel ?

Unlike more traditional storytelling, Calvino precludes the use of a logical progression of events that commonly lead to a dramatic discovery or conclusion. The disorderly numbering hints to the lack of successive occurrences; his descriptions, framed by the interludes between the Khan and Marco Polo, invite eternal conversation. He organizes his descriptions into nine chapters and each city belongs to one of eleven categories (memory, desire, signs, thin, trading, eyes, names, dead, sky, continuous and hidden) according to its inherent nature. Another unique feature of Invisible Cities is the way Calvino shifts between vantage points or perspectives. On one side, we have the omniscient narrator, Marco Polo, in dialogue with the Kublai Khan about his travels. However, at points it slips into a third-person narrative, which emphasizes the central role that perspective plays in memory and sets a definite surreal tone throughout the novel.

Calvino, both in Invisible Cities and in Visibility, emphasizes the importance of the past - and our constant need or habit of revisiting it – for imagination as it is a source of inspiration and ultimately, the source of all things created. Calvino’s subject then is memory and how it can be an endless source of new by its nature to provide infinite interpretations. Thus, Invisible Cities is about the “spontaneous generation of images” and the “subsequent intentionality of discursive thought” .

EKPHRATIC: A clear, intense, self-contained argument or pictorial description of an object, especially of an artwork.

UCHRONIA: a historical condition when nothing happens, a time of stagnation.

ANNIE DILLARD (1945 -) Literature, like creativity, is also a concept that defies a straightforward definition. Formalists, like Terry Eagleton, focus on „ the internal characteristics of the text; he said it is all that transforms and intensifies ordinary language, systematically deviating from „ everyday speech (REF). Eagleton then also suggests that literature is any significant writing, any text that a person considers valuable; in this sense, creating literature is not so much an inherent feature text, but the way it is approached, the attitude of reverence (REF). He notes though, that the problem with these definitions is that there is no ordinary language nor reliable value themselves as they vary greatly depending on place, time, class and culture amongst others. What is normal and valued for some, for others, it is odd and worthless. However, Eagleton‘s efforts are useful because they expose the institutions, values and ideologies that are behind the arguments that define what is and what is not literature (and as discussed below, the what is and what is not design) and illuminate on the rich plurality inherent to multiple perspectives. Dillard, in The Writing Life, contributes to this with her own personal approach to writing and literature.

“

You know how a puppy, when you point off in one direction for him, looks at your hand. It is hard to train him not to. The modernist arts in this century have gone to a great deal of trouble to untrain us the readers, to force us to look at the hand. Contemporary modernist fine prose says, look at my hand. Plain prose says: look over there”. - Annie Dillard in The Writing Life

FINE PROSE Fine prose is grand, articulate and rhetorical and exudes a certain self-awareness. Dillard describes it as indulgent, communicating with a „lexicon enormously wide, its spheres of reference global” (REF). Imagery in fine prose relies heavily on metaphors, similes and allusions.

PLAIN PROSE Plain prose is brisk - even brusque - and humble and focuses on the narrative without pretensions. Dillard describes it as heavily focused on mimesis as a source and highlights its acknowledgement of the role of the reader. Plain prose communicates without „relative clauses and fancy punctuation; it forswears lexicon and attention-getting verbs ... it eschews splendid metaphor and cultural allusions ... [in] plain writing - objects themselves ... invite inspection and flaunt their simplicity” (REF). Paraphrasing Dillard, if fine prose is a pyrotechnic display, then plain prose is a lamp (REF). According to her, on one end of the contemporary modernist style continuum lies fine-rhetorical while at the other plain-empirical. It is also important to remember, as she stresses, that distribution is normal (Bell curve) - most writers work in the middle.

PROSE STYLE CONTINUUM WHERE ON THE CONTINUUM WOULD YOU PLACE ... ? A.S. BYATT: Fine Prose. Her language is ornate and filled with metaphors and similes - like a dog owner at a show, she takes language out for a walk She does however, alternate between styles. The girl in her memory of that passively miserable day‘s packing seemed discontinuous with herself looked in on, as much as the imaginary teaparty. As a little girl I had a clear vision of his pale limbs somehow telescoped and contracted into this dirty receptacle. CALVINO: Fine Prose. His descriptions are detailed and he artfully commands the rhythm of his writing. The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand,written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning rods, the poles of the flags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls. .

The description of the world to which you lend a benevolent ear is one thing; the description that will go the rounds of the groups of stevedores and gondoliers on the street outside my house the day of my return is another; and yet another, that which I might dictate late in life, if I were taken prisoner by Genoese pirates and put in irons in the same cell with a writer of adventure stories. It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear.”

KUNDERA: Plain Prose. Although he innovated by using plain prose in a fiction/novel format. Nonetheless, there is a density at moments - like the overlapping themes - that seems more characteristic of fine prose even though the language itself is not verbose.

They were seated across from each other, over two empty cups of coffee. Irena saw tears of emotion in Sylvie‘s eyes as her friend bent towards her and gripped her hand: It will be your great return.

On the trip home he decided to leave the country. Not that he couldn‘t have lived here. He could have gone on peacefully treating cows here. But he was alone, divorced, childless, free.

55 55

PRECLUDE • New Criticism: Its “perilous proximity to matters subconscious”. • Modernist Prose: which she considered “dense .. clotted” putting an “opaque layer” between writer and reader. (Ex: Beckett, Burroughs). • The exotic and supernatural. • Artificial scenarios. • Implausibility.

• Haphazard expression and abstract wording, • Artistic and literary conventions

CONSTRAINT

PROMOTE

SOURCE

• Plain Prose: (Ex. Hemingway, Chekhov, Joyce, Nabokov, Gass). • Writing that “penetrates the realm of ideas” • Prose whose “supreme function [is to] refer tot he world”.

SUBJECT

• Personal memories: family, childhood, etc. • Everyday experiences • Uniqueness of daily life.

TASK

• “Adapt to the contents of the paintbox ... work possibilities excite them; the field‘s complexities fired their imaginations”. • To “fasten down the spirit of its time, to make a heightened simulacrum”. • Mot juste: modest use of language. • Revision as a mean to avoid what she sought to preclude.

ANNIE DILLARD - FROM THE WRITING LIFE (1989)

What does Dillard say about revision ? Why is it so difficult? She considers revision as an absolutely crucial step of her writing process. Dillard describes her process as one whose trajectory is unknown and one where the writing itself guides the writer (and not the other way around). As such, some paths taken might nor make sense and is it them that revision helps the writer edit, adapt or write off sections in order to find the path most likely to lead to a solution. From a psychological standpoint, revision is hard because the writer may be unable to ignore the sunk costs of his/her work and keep certain parts that are impoverishing the end result or even derailing the writing completely. Compared to the relief of laying down words, eliminating them however, is not as satisfying most of the time

What is the advantage/disadvantage of both a rough draft and a continuous polished one? A deep revision, however, is not necessarily the ideal as it can also interfere with the writer‘s preliminary intent. In the same sense, too constant revision can also disrupt the writer‘s natural flow of work and taint the end result. Dillard concludes that revision is necessary for a writer‘s improvement and the development and refining of the work.

What does Dillard say about revision ? Why is it so difficult? She finds that revision can be analogous to other processes in diverse domains. For example, like paint covering a sketch - after being laid, removed, corrected - , writing should ‚cover up‘ the revision and it should be hard for the reader to detect it. This however, does not diminish how integral revision is to the end product. The writer is very much aware of the field - “what has been done, what could be done, the limits” - and it is his/her task to work, push the edges until it shapes the domain of writing just as much as the domain of writing shaped the writer.

“You adapt yourself, Paul Klee said, to the content of the paintbox” - Annie Dillard in The Writing Life (1989)

WHERE SHOULD YOU GO NOW ? Is this sounding all too confusing? Then maybe go back to Stokes’ Constraint Model to revisit her ideas on page 29. Want to read my own attempt at writing? Then turn the page to see me try and write a memoir in the style of Byatt, Calvino and Kundera!

5 Chapter FIVE

WHEN

AFRICA - MEMOIR

RED - BYATT

I have to confess that after living what I lived, I have an impossible desire to tell someone about it. I say this because I need to apologize in advance for the excessive use – or misuse - of explanatory euphemisms, which I will stumble though with the sole purpose of being able to mention it all. Also forgive if I write more than necessary; the Western practice of summarizing here is repealed by the intensity of what I felt. I am also obliged to warn that words will – from now on - trap me at a crossroad as it is possible that the language humans created will fail to allow me to describe precisely what humans have not.

Even if it appears to me in other textures, that shade never fails to take me back. That red, brick-like yet helpful in building nothing, tarnishing, yet hiding little of the misery around. If anything, that red only served to emphasize every hole on the road, every wrinkle on the driver’s face, every building born to be defaced. If the memory of my memory does not fail me, that red did not consume every fraction of my attention as I awoke the city to the pulse of my rightwheeled Land Rover early that morning. Yet of all that I saw, that red is what refuses to become the past. That red came back – on a scarf, in my food, on a painting, in my rum. In a dim room, rum has that red. Rum has that red, that shade, when struck by light in a dim room. I think that is why that red is now so prominent in this story, even more that it was when it happened. As I’ve told and retold the story and revoked and evoked it in my memory, that red borrowed one adjective out of my description and later roused a sentence. Now that red commands

Africa: I arrived in Nairobi at dawn, and was instantly absorbed; Africa has invaded each of the systematic features on this site. Africa, as you‘ll spot, I use as a mindset. The airport, which architecturally struck eyes like the best boxer, was only the first expression of this unusual and contrasting existence. After a couple of hours, I finally left on a Land Rover that awoke the red earth with its pace. Darkness managed to camouflage what the morning would make clear: poverty espoused in an Oedipal marriage with colonization and opulence. I slept that night in an old hotel in the city. The kind of hotel where they British consuls and their guests stayed until a few decades ago, The wheel to the right and tea with lemon offered to me at arrival serving as reminders for the unwary: the British Empire was here. The next day I flew to Masai Mara, a place that is probably what divine beings thought of when he imagined paradise. Here the sun, sky, stars, rain and shadows, especially shadows, are what the beginning should have been: a superhuman reminder of how tiny we are and how big we can be. They remind us that time passes. The first few days - and I say first because I lost track of time - I devoted myself to cruise around the park in another Land Rover. Animals kill, eat, play and stop with a naturalness that I never knew existed. The circle of life here revolves at a different pace, and you feel like a morbid voyeur who understands nothing of the world, but who, with binoculars in hand, thinks he knows something. I saw. I smelled. I heard. I lived through days of human silence. Perhaps everyone felt equally overwhelmed. Perhaps there was nothing to say. I had been told beforehand that Africa is a continent of contrasts. Well, now I understand that such an allusion escapes my parameters of what a contrast is. Everything started in Africa, but I don’t know how it will end. If God created this world, it is said he began in Africa; the problem is that he never finished, he left. In Africa, hope is a story, told at night in the world’s most beautiful place by men who live while dead. Africa can only inspire the most pure of amazements.

That red earth managed to camouflage what the morning would make clear: poverty espoused in an Oedipal marriage with colonization and opulence. The road from the airport allowed me to get my first glimpse of many elephants; first one far from the road, then a couple young ones in captivity. The biggest one made itself be seen only through its silhouette. Its skin was layered as years left a visible souvenir of their passing. The driver told me it had been the first one in the city. It used to be central to the city, to the country.. It used to be white he said, but not since the British left. Now it is light yellow he said. Now, it is quiet, even quaint. Less luxurious, still as beautiful he said. I slept in it that night, just as consuls and their guests had decades ago. The tea with lemon offered to me at arrival left no doubt: the British Empire had been here. Yet it refused to be forgotten, just as that red.

TODAY - KUNDERA Today feels different. I like travelling, but by the fifteenth day I found it hard to walk. Maybe it’s because I‘m already somewhat melancholic, maybe because more than a dozen days of seeing the world begins to weigh over my body. Maybe it’s what I see that weighs over my soul. The girl in front of me dispirits me with her gentle smile, standing there with a baby on her back and another child on her lap. Barefoot. Dirty. Mood is shrunk amidst so much misery as one realized that here, dignity is not defined by morals, but by endings.

I‘m sitting on the dusty floor of the airport. My flight delayed and for two hours. Two fluorescent tubes illuminate the travellers. Why do I travel? I wonder. It happens often that I fail to know why I do things. No, I’m not running, I tell my cousin Elizabeth. No, I‘m not proving anything to anyone. I do not travel to re-live, but sometimes I do travel to places where I lived. I begin to dream. As I felt a thread of peace rising through my body, I shook. Peace? Was it the music setting off my travels when planes could not? Opening my eyes was not necessary, as my nose was unable to ignore the smell of overly piled luggage as the ache on my back bought me back.

Today, Africa hurts.

HIGH - CALVINO Our path - through what I can generously describe as a city – was such a rodeo that I lost north. The path finally opened as we drove through the heart of the Masai land stagnant water blocked the way, only until the sun, responsible in the absence of governments, eliminated the difficulties. After more than 4 hours on this old path, driving had become a more physical activity than ever before. We were on the edge of town, where a huge fleet of trucks, dump trucks, excavators, pinch rollers and asphalt machines of whichever Italian won a concession in better times. This vast mechanical islet, a herald of arrogant modernity, breaking the monotony of a sun-scorched, head-waved expanse of wooded savannah. But as soon as we came out through one last tight array of houses and one last row of trees, perspective offered us Lengai, the tallest of them all. The tallest demanded respect; long ago, as the watchman of God, believers pilgrimaged to its skirt in search of protection; they left flowers which, like the finest embroidery, made extraordinary our of the rather plain and

signalled passer-bys of its value. Today however, the tallest demanded with less vigour and offerings were left, ones however of quite different worth. Today it is ornamented by corrugated iron, shacks, garbage and unfinished construction. A past clearly irrevocably gone, the tallest was still valuable, yet now as earthly building terrain. Against this everyday all destroying force, there was no defence. The flimsy-looking construction leaving a scar even when they rose already in wait to be demolished. Excess was a concept hard to come by in these corners of the world, yet here I saw it constructed. Lengai was surrounded in a way no divine entity ever would have wanted: shielded, forgotten, and made ordinary. The architecturally heterogeneous embroidery today unblended Lengai from the landscape it had so majestically belonged before. Religion, heritage – and with them, the past – was excluded from this now, nowhere to be found. Because in Africa, the land of expansive expansion, I had yet to feel excluded. Even as life around me seemed at times increasingly expendable, Africa was constantly attracting. Puddles always attracted children. That space, coveted, created out of the falling sky, which opened it amidst a dusty and dry environment. I saw to one side as a multitude of small bodies shivering shamelessly as they invaded a small puddle down our path. They were surprised to see us emerge from amidst the trees, my white body challenging visual their routine, yet were only briefly distracted from their joyful splashery. Movement, chaotic, slowly unveiled itself to be choreographed: young girls moved hieratically, always in full awareness of their surroundings. Boys jumped, danced in the air and fled self-directing far away from the core only to run back in triumph, arrogantly proud of their flamboyant gesture. What a pleasure it was to see this before this encoded exchange was noticed. What a pleasure it had been. Indeed, Africa was a pleasure in every way - as long as one never decrypts, nor unravels the decadently beautiful debacle.

WHAT’S NEXT? Want to read about constraints in memoir writing again ? Try page 44. If this was all good and fun, but you’re looking for a practical way in which creativity and innovation are approached in business, then simply turn the page!

Chapter SIX

HOW

How can you be Creative ? DESIGN THINKING Currently receiving widespread attention - particularly from business schools and centres for social innovation - Design Thinking is a problem-solving methodology applicable to any field that requires a creative approach. While the name may cause confusion, it is not so much a question of “design” inasmuch as it is about adapting the creative dynamics characteristic of the discipline: an invitation to think as designers. Although the name “design” is often associated with quality and / or aesthetic appearance of products, design as a discipline has been promoting improvement regardless of the form it takes. Hence, identifying problems is central to the ‘designer’ way of thinking as much as the problem-solving process. He understands that problems affecting the welfare of people are diverse in nature, and it is necessary to analyze the culture, contexts, personal experiences and processes in the life of individuals to have a more complete picture to better identify barriers and alternative. By investing efforts in this analysis, the designer can identify the causes and consequences of the difficulties and be more assertive in seeking solutions. So, Design Thinking prioritizes collaborative work between multidisciplinary teams that bring diverse viewpoints and offer different interpretations on the issue and, in this way, innovative solutions. In addition, as the name says, it refers to ‘thinking like a designer’, which stays away from the type of reasoning that is most common in the business environment - deductive thinking. This mindset seeks to formulate questions through apprehension or understanding of phenomena, where questions are formulated to be answered from the information collected during the observation of the universe around the problem. So, when thinking deductively,

“

Here is one of the few effective keys to the design problem - the ability of the designer to recognize as many of the constraints as possible and his willingness and enthusiasm for working within these constraints. Charles EAMES

the solution of the problem does not arise: it fits into the problem. The practice opposed to this – abductive thinking - has long been a staple in the traditional field of design yet one that Design Thinking has helped spread to other disciplines. This methodology invites an open and collaborative process to seek innovation through divergent thinking in order to generate innovative solutions to address wicked problems that require complex solutions. If this sounds familiar, it is because Design Thinking is hardly a radically novel concept or one with a single definition; it is however, a call to re-engage with the user, to stop depending on algorithms for reliability at the cost for validity and to practice this in a more reflective manner.

DESIGN

PRECLUDE • Conceive an artefact that solves a problem considering its fixed requirements, utility function and constraints • Craft-based knowledge • Production methods • Manufacturing. • Personal Inspiration • Creativity is self-serving • Taxonomy • Modernist Living.

• Individual creation • Veiled, unmethodical process. • Effectivity-Seeking • Solution adapted to fixed function. • Satisfying solution. • Deductive Logic • Aesthetic pursuit.

DESIGN THINKING CONSTRAINT

PROMOTE

GOAL

• Identify a problem or unmet need in order to provide a solution through a product, service or process.

SOURCE

• Open Source • Multidisciplinary inputs. • Research method • Cognitive Sciences

SUBJECT

• Applied creativity • Taming wicked problems. • Innovation

TASK

• Collaborative creation. • Reflective and deliberate process. • Evolving Solution • Satisfy fundamental needs. • Validity-Seeking • Non-linear process • Iteration & Prototyping • Embrace Ambiguity • Abductive Reasoning • Experience over Efficiency • User-Centered

WHENCE

Abuhamdeh, S. & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2004). The artistic personality: A systems perspective: In R.J. Sterberg, E.L. Grigorenoko, & J.L. Singer (Eds.), Creativity: From potential to realization (pg. 31-42)Washington DC: American Psychological Association. Adams, Laurie Schneider (1996) The Methodologies of Art: An Introduction. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press. (135). Byatt, Antonia Susan (1996) Sugar and Other Stories Random House. Calvino, Italo (1974) â&#x20AC;&#x153;Invisible Cities. 1972.â&#x20AC;? Trans. William Weaver. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). The domain of creativity. In M.A. Runco & R.S. Albert (Ed.), Theories ofofreativity (pg. 190-212). Newbury Park: Sage Publications. Dillard, Annie (1990) The Writing Life. New York: Harper Perennial. Ericcson, K.A. (1996). The acquisition of expert performance: An introduction to some of the issues. In K.A. Ericcson (Ed.), The road to excellence: the acquisition of expert performance in the arts and scientists, sports and games (pg. 1-50). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Garlick, D. (2003). Integrating brain science research with intelligence research. Current Directions in Psychological Science 12:185-189. Kundera, Milan (2003) Ignorance. Chivers Press. Stokes, Patricia D. Creativity from Constraints: The Psychology of Breakthrough. Springer Publishing Company, 2005. Schlesinger, Judith. (2009). Creative misconceptions: A closer look at the evidence for the mad genius hypothesis. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 3: 6272. Reitman, E. (1965). Cognition and thought. New York: Wiley. Weisberg, R. (1986). Creativity: Genius and other myths. New York: W H Freeman & Co.

CREATIVITY