More Thoughts on "White Page Fright"

Having blogged about the situation that all artists encounter, sooner or later, of having "white page/canvas fright" and being unable to get going on creating a piece of art, I discovered that the blog resonated with people. 

What I had not expected was to find that Eric R. Kandel, in his superb book, "The Age of Insight" (about which I have previously written), indirectly addressed this situation.  Discussing why unconscious thought, or distracted thought, helps creativity, Professor Kandel cites studies carried out by Ap Dijksterhuis, a Dutch social psychologist, and his colleague Teun Meurs, which show that we all work best in terms of creativity when we don't consciously think about the problem.

Three groups of people were asked to perform various mental tasks, lists of activities or places, for instance. The people had to generate the lists immediately, after a few minutes of deliberately thinking about the lists or after a few minutes of being distracted by doing something else entirely.  Surprise, surprise – the groups all made the lists required, but the group that had produced the lists after being distracted, and thus being made "unconscious thinkers", made lists that were far more creative, interesting and full of differences.

So all those "strategies" of tidying up one's studio, taking the dog for a walk, ironing shirts, or whatever - are totally valid means of becoming creative. Artists have found all this for themselves, but it is interesting that carefully quantified studies validate all these strategems for becoming creative.  Professor Kandel details out the many insights into unconscious processes happening in the brain, and how it all works (pp.470-71).

As he states,  "distraction, letting the mind wander, may not only encourage unconscious (bottom-up) thought, but also, as evidenced by the emergence of a new solution, recruit a new top-down process from memory storage."  In other words, relax - the inspiration will come for that next work of art - when you least expect it.  But it will come - just trust that wonderful complex brain of yours!

More Thoughts on Art Residencies

I wrote about Art Residencies on 13th August, when I had just returned from a Residency in South Italy.  As life accelerates again, that experience is receeding a little into the past, although I am still creating art inspired by that visit.

Nonetheless, as I was reading the wonderful Eric R. Kandel book, The Age of Insight.  The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind and Brain, I found a passage that seems to me to be really pertinent to art residencies. My thanks go to Professor Kandel for these insights and my using the quotes from his wonderful book.

Professor Kandel discusses the essential prerequisites for creativity - in other words, what an art residency seeks to offer.  The basic requirements are "technical competence and a willingness to work hard" (page 456), according to the famed Viennese art historian, Ernest Kris, and psychiatrist, Nancy Andreasen. Those criteria are givens, I suspect, in every selection an art residency makes of artists who will spend time at the residency. It would not make sense to have people coming if they could not perform competently as artists, unless, of course, they are coming for courses that are offered.

The other prerequisites that Professor Kandel cites are: "(1) the types of personalities that are likely to be particularly creative; (2) the period of preparation and incubation, when a person works on a problem consciously and unconsciously; (3)the initial moments of creativity themselves; and (4) subsequent working through of the creative idea."

The mixture of individuals who are knowledgeable in a discipline, the different cultures in which each individual works and the social field when the person comes all combine to form a creative mix.  That, to me, is a good summary of the interest and rewards of an art residency when the artists are all serious professionals, from different walks of life and coutnries, but all willing to share ideas and experiences.  This was the situation I experienced in South Italy, and it made the art residency there a delight, despite drawbacks on the administrative side of the residency.

Art - Binding People Together

One of the most fascinating books I have recently read is Eric R. Kandel's newly published book, "The Age of Insight.  The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind and Brain. FromVienna 1900 to the Present".  It is dense, interesting and challenging, as it details the many new discoveries of how the brain works and the many dimensions of humankind's involvement with art over millennia. There are so many aspects of the book that are worth talking about, but one short passage resonated with me because of my recent visit to South Italy, a place so rich in history.

In a chapter entitled "Artistic Universals and the Austrian Expressionists", Kandel delves into the large questions as to whether art has "universal functions and features" (p. 440).  He goes on to state that, "Since the artist's creation of art and the viewer's response to art are products of brain function, one of the most fascinating challenges for the new science of mind lies in the nature of art." The questions then multiply: do we respond to art because our biology dictates our reactions, do we respond to art instead as individuals with our own personal experience and taste?  Kandel refers to one opinion formed by Dennis Dutton, a philosopher of art, that art is not simply "a by-product of evolution, but rather an evolutionary adaption - a instinctive trait - that helps us survive because it is crucial to our well-being." (my emphasis)

Kandel goes on to allude to Cro-Magnon man painting those marvellous images in the Grotte Chauvet, 33,000 years ago, and reminds us that apparently, the Neanderthals, also living in Europe during that same period, did not create representational art.  The conclusion which experts, such as social psychologist Ellen Dissanayake and art theorist Nancy Aiken, have reached is that art was a crucial means of binding people together during the Paleolithic age.  People gathered together in communities and thus enhanced their likelihood of survival; one way to create this social glue was to make objects, images, and events that were important to these people, memorable and pleasurable.  Just like the festivals celebrated all summer in Southern European towns and villages today, despite economic gloom; people enjoy themselves and reinvigorate their social ties, enhancing their daily life with religious or ceremonial events.

I immediately remembered two humble, but to me very powerful, objects I had seen and drawn quickly in the Matera Archaeological Museum in South Italy.

Upper Paleolithic stones from Matera area, South Italy, Prismacolor, Jeannine Cook artist

Hasty drawings, but what fascinated me was the literal binding-together marks that were on these stones, of a shape and size that would fit comfortably into a human hand.  Just my interpretation of the marks, but I found them compelling.  Even then, so many thousands of years ago, for the Upper Paleolithic age officially lasts from 45,000 to 10,000 years ago, our ancestors were scoring careful, thoughtful marks into stone, driven by a need to create art, art to bind those communities together most likely.  

The fact that those stones can still compel our attention today makes an even stronger case for art's universal power to bind humans together.