The Artist's battle for Creativity

The creative thinking artist is permanently involved in a battle for creativity. This, seemingly endless combat is the result of socio-cultural, institutional and personally internalized norms of 'vision' (to be able to perceive, imagine, interpret, understand, express, respond to, communicate and understand norms or standards of visibility). Such norms of vision are both unconsciously accepted, internalized and developed as well as in an intentional manner, at least in the case of those involved in visual arts and other professions dealing with, specializing in and employing them. Those involved in visual arts will most likely be more sensitive towards such norms as it is part of their specialization to identify, explore, analyse, extend, develop and transform such norms. The creative thinking artist most likely will not merely accept institutionalized norms of vision of his sub-culture, his culture, his class, civilization and historical era, but he will explore, analyse, question, transcend, transform and reject many of them. His questioning and rejection of many established norms of vision of his time is not merely because he is rebellious or some kind of visual revolutionary, but a necessity if he wish to develop an individual style of perception and expression. Norms of visual perception, expression, understanding and communication are both those more general ones of culture (the culture of his time), civilization and sub-cultures and of particular socio-cultural domains and their discourses. Among the latter are the traditions of visual norms of visual arts of different cultures (for example Western ones, Indian, Chinese and other Asian and Far Eastern ones, Arabic and other Semitic ones, African ones, Aboriginal, Maori, Aztec, Red Indian, etc.). Within each of these traditions there exist a diversity of sub-traditions and streams. What concerns us in this article is the influence established norms of vision in general (or the larger culture and society of which the artist forms part of) an artist as social person has acquired and the more specialized norms of vision of the visual art the artist works in. An artist will acquire sets of visual norms of the visual art form he becomes involved in, in a selective manner. If he is involved in 20th Century Contemporary Art, through education and practice, he will emphasize other norms as primary and secondary if he was a Central European Renaissance or Medieval artist. Regardless of the era and society he exists in, he will constantly be driven by certain social norms of vision as if they are a centrifugal force, as if they are like a law of Physics such as gravity that are determining his own visual norms. In his attempts to explore, find and develop his own individual style of vision and its expression he will continuously have to resist merely following already established and institutionalized norms of vision. As those are norms, with their accompanying attitudes, values, beliefs and understanding he has internalized - they have formed, underlie and are his vision. Therefore when he attempts to develop and express (and explore ways of expression) his own individuated visual reality, he will constantly fall back on established norms of vision he has internalized. This traditional tendency causes him to question his own vision, his own attempts to create and to express his vision and the development of a unique vision and accompanying attitudes, values and understanding. This is the endless combat the creative thinking artist is involved in - battling with the institutional norms, attitudes and values of vision he has internalized, that he is, that his reality of vision consists of so as to explore, analyse, question, transform, evolve, develop and transcend inherited norms in favour of other, newer and perhaps more evolved, advanced and subtle ones. Examples of such norms concern specific aesthetic phenomena, such as composition, elements that play a part in composition for example symmetry, balance, counterpoint etc, strong and weak forms, colour, lines and dots, etc. In an attempt to explore, analyse, question, transform, develop, transcend and overcome 'traditional' or his internalized set of visual norms the artist will deal with these aesthetic elements, such as form, composition, colour, texture, etc in a concrete manner by painting. Let us not forget that these elements will not be dealt with merely in abstraction and through reflection but in a concrete manner by the making of marks on paper or some kind of support and by means of different types of paint, pencil, crayons etc . These material thing will also be applied in some way to the support, for example in many different ways by brush, dripped, thrown, etc. Or in the form of light, digital media, aural as sound, smell, touch, taste, etc. The diversity of ways of 'application' in painting, performance art, installations, etc do not directly concern us here. What is relevant in this discussion is the fact that all of these things also come with their own baggage of assumptions and established notions, attitudes, values and ideas. It is by dealing in concrete with these things that the creative thinking artist will submit to the weight of his internalized, traditional assumptions and their accompanying attitudes, values, perceptions and misconceptions. At every moment and all the time the artist will have to resist the pull of traditional values and attitudes he has internalized, that he is, seeking for a new, a more authentic way to employ each of these things in an attempt to realize, make concrete and visible his own, new, unique vision, his own aesthetic vision and the expression and realization of it as a visual reality. 5th May 2015, Ulrich