Thursday, July 12, 2018

More on creativity


Nuclear power, DNA discoveries, cloning and new technologies are examples of elements of contemporary life that we think of as either good or bad, when in fact they are neutral. They take on morality as a result of how they are used in society.

We tend to assign creativity the role of good guy when, in fact, it is a quality and practice that affects society in different ways. Widely employed and highly compensated, creativity is used in the advertising/marketing industry to lie, manipulate and seduce consumers for mere profit  more than for socially useful goals. Even some contemporary art uses creative means for work that is naïve or empty.

Another point is this: Creativity does indeed lead to outcomes that are new, strange, challenging or perplexing. Indeed, at times these pieces are called “crazy.” They are anything but. Over time, they reveal themselves to have an inner logic, one that is not even apparent at first to the artist. A big task in understanding such works is to try to understand that inner logic that exists in form, use of materials and content.


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