Vigorous and Athletic

Posted on September 18, 2010 by galarzamonsalve

Highly Creative people keep favored routines.  For ten days I’m posting about the routines of individual Creators, historical and current. My previous post: Can’t Wait to Get to Work.

Colette

French Novelist

Colette’s late fifties were probably the happiest and certainly the most fecund years of her life. … She continued both to live and to work like an Olympian, and as must all champions, she kept in training. She walked and swam vigorously. She smoked and drank very little. She kept her muscles toned with massage. She maintained an athletic sex life.

During the summers, she adopted a frugal diet and began losing weight. Back in Paris, she consulted a fashionable quack who gave her blood transfusions–the donor was an attractive young woman–and these, she claimed, improved her vision and increased her vitality. But perhaps her most essential beauty secret was to surround herself with a circle of younger friends, male and female, whose hunger for life helped to recharge her own.

“The pleasure I take in contemplating lives on the ascendant reassures me about myself,” she said. “I see so many people who, as they age, find joy only in … their diminution!”

(From Judith Thurman’s book Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette)

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Painting To Find Beauty & Meaning

Posted on September 13, 2010 by galarzamonsalve

Highly Creative people keep favored routines.  For ten days I’m posting about the routines of individual Creators, historical and current. My last post: Predictable Life with Scrabble.

Le Corbusier

Swiss Architect & Designer, Writer, Pioneer of Modern Architecture

Le Corbusier’s working hours were implacably regular. During my four years at the atelier, he worked at the rue de Sévres from two in the afternoon to around seven. The hour of 2:00 P.M., I soon learned, was holy. If you were a minute late you risked a reprimand. At first Corbu arrived either by subway (a convenient, direct metro line connected his Michel-Ange- Molitor station with the atelier’s Sévres-Babylone) or by taxi. Later on he started driving his old pistachio-green Simca Fiat convertible. In his last years it would be the taxi again. The process of returning home revealed quite a lot about Le Corbusier’s character. If the work went well, if he enjoyed his own sketching and was sure of what he intended to do, then he forgot about the hour and might be home late for dinner. But if things did not go too well, if he felt uncertain of his ideas and unhappy with his drawings, then Corbu became jittery. He would fumble with his wristwatch – a small, oddly feminine contraption, far too small for his big paw – and finally say, grudgingly, “C’est difficile, l’architecture,” toss the pencil or charcoal stub on the drawing, and slink out, as if ashamed to abandon the project and me — and us — in a predicament.

During these early August days, I learned quite a bit about Le Corbusier’s daily routine. His schedule was rigidly organized. I remember how touched I was by his Boy Scout earnestness: at 6 A.M., gymnastics and . . . painting, a kind of fine-arts calisthenics; at 8 A.M., breakfast. Then Le Corbusier entered into probably the most creative part of his day. He worked on the architectural and urbanistic sketches to be transmitted to us in the afternoon. Outlines of his written work would also be formulated then, along with some larger parts of the writings. Spiritually nourished by the preceding hours of physical and visual gymnastics, the hours of painting, he would use the main morning time for his most inspired conceptualization. A marvelous phenomenon indeed, this creative routine, implemented with his native Swiss regularity, harnessing and channeling what is most elusive. Corbu himself acknowledged the importance of this regimen. “If the generations come”, he wrote, “attach any importance to my work as an architect, it is to these unknown labors that one as to attribute its deeper meaning.” It is wrong to assume, I believe, as [others] have suggested, that Le Corbusier was devoting this time to the conceptualization of shapes to be applied directly in his architecture; rather, it was for him a period of concentration during which his imagination, catalyzed by the activity of painting, could probe most deeply into his subconscious.

(Thank you to the Arch Society and Mason Currey)

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Defining Creativity, Part 7: Creativity as Experimentation in the Enlightenment

Posted on August 4, 2010 by galarzamonsalve

Every day, for a week,  I’m writing about the definitions of Creativity thinkers have offered throughout history and why each one cannot be the final definition. Yesterday I wrote about Cultural Suppression of Creativity.

Sitting under an apple tree, Isaac Newton discovered gravity. A falling apple answered for him all questions regarding the mechanics of the Universe.  So goes the legend you read in 6th grade Science.

Yes, Newton did formulate the Universal Law of Gravitation and an apple tree may have helped fine-tune his ideas about gravitational pull and power.  But, Newton’s influence directs Western Science farther and wider than gravity itself, including ideas regarding Creativity.

Newton sought to separate natural philosophy from objective observation-based science. The Scientific Method, generally divorced from pre-conceived spiritual or magical interpretations, led  to the dichotomy between science and religion.

Enlightenment ideas of High Creativity ignored the inspiration portion of Creation, because it could not be explained via the Scientific Method.  Creativity, defined by long hours and experimentation, think Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin, had little to do with magic or the unexplained.

Still, some Creators had sparkle enough to cause suspicion that a final, workable definition of Creativity had not yet arrived.

Filed under: Creativity: Historical Perspective, Defining Creativity, General Theory of Creativity, Ideas, What is Creativity | Tagged: , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Defining Creativity, Part 1: Ancient Greek Artists Following the Rules

Posted on July 25, 2010 by galarzamonsalve

Every day, for a week,  I’m writing about the definitions of Creativity thinkers have offered throughout history and why each one cannot be the final definition.

Aegineta, sculptor, Glaucus, inventor of welding and Pyrgoteles, gemologist, all rose at dawn to work on their craft.

The Fathers of Classical Art, were appreciated by kings of the era and well paid for their work, but no one in Ancient Greece, 2,500 years ago, considered them Creative.   Artists of Ancient Greece were recognized as gifted rule-followers, a bit like electricians or accountants of today.

The Romans recognized the Greek mark of  inspiration and  heavily borrowed their techniques and patterns to design grand buildings and well-organized cities around the globe even to India and Japan.

But when Aegineta and friends were alive, they had no idea the Parthenon or the statue of Nike would hold their genius, within for so many years.  They must have loved their work; they must have worked in flow.  But the idea of Creativity, as we know it today, did not yet exist and so they had no idea how Creative they were.

Learning and then following rules of a domain is crucial to Creativity, but there is more to Creation than staying within a set path.

Creativity Scholar Mihalyi Csikszenmihalyi believes Creativity is defined socio-culturally and historically. In gist, Creativity is defined by its future effects on society. In that case, it would not have mattered if Aegineta’s concept of art held true to modern standards. He enjoyed a short Ancient Greek lifespan, and the effects of his ideas would not be fully seen until Rome took over the planet.

The speed of life and the dissemination of ideas is so much faster in 2010, creative-types may enjoy full-blown recognition for their contribution much sooner.  And, the concept of Creation is bound to morph to new ideals with time.

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Creativity and Mental Illness

Posted on June 11, 2010 by galarzamonsalve

Is mental dysfunction, such as manic-depression or depression (formerly known as melancholy) common among highly Creative people?  It depends.  Writers, painters and sculptors are more likely to suffer from “diseases of the mind” than say, neuroscientists or architects, whom we assume, work for stable companies and receive regular paychecks. Lack of societal recognition may be one reason for such mental instability.  Another may prove more philosophical.

Elizabeth Gilbert, author of the New York Times Bestseller, Eat, Pray, Love, believes the problem does lie within philosophy.  In classical Greece, Ancient Rome and Medieval Europe, Creators had a Genius. Gilbert says,

During the Renaissance, coupled with Humanism’s bent toward personal responsibility came the idea that a person was a Genius.



Could a philosophical tweaking of the definition of Genius save writers, painters and sculptors of the future from suicidal tendencies?  Gilbert says, Maybe, yes.

Lou Marinoff , Philosophical Practitioner and author of Plato Not Prozac! would probably agree.  Marinoff says:

For the most part, personal unhappiness, group conflict, gross incivility, shameless promiscuity, epidemic crime, or orgiastic violence are products not of a society that is mentally ill, but of a system that–through lack of visionary statesmanship and philosophical virtue–has allowed and encouraged society to become morally disordered.

The idea that personal or societal philosophy affects the human Mind is as old as the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus, who said:

As for Diseases of the Mind, he said, against them Philosophy is provided of Remedies;  being, in that respect, justly accounted the Medicine of the Mind.

Creativity and all its components, including Curiosity are seen in a much more positive light today than a century ago.  If Gilbert, Marinoff and Epicurus are correct, Highly Creative people today are mentally healthier than ever in human history.

That, is good news.


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Early Modern Ideals

Posted on May 22, 2010 by galarzamonsalve

In graduate school I embraced Early Modern European History as my hands down favorite area of study.  The clothes were fabulous. Think Veronica Franco, the Venetian poet and courtesan or Queen Elizabeth in her sumptuous get-ups. Food was plentiful and more varied than previous centuries. The printed word grew to disperse some of the most beautiful ideals humanity has ever had. Think Erasmus’ first mass-produced translation of the Bible and his ideas on freedom of choice. Think Teresa of Avila’s ideas on inner spirituality and Elizabeth I’s attempts to diffuse the power of religion in State affairs. Consider Leonardo Da Vinci‘s notebooks detailing the inseparability of body from mind.

Such ideas elevated humanity to greater responsibility and possibility and led to modern ideas of equality, independence, freedom of thought and self-determination.

The humanistic ideas born in Early Modern Europe allowed Creativity as a gift of Humanity but also,  pointed to our deep responsibility to unwrap it within ourselves and others.

Viktor Frankl, psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor speaks of this responsibility to view humans in the best possible light and the benefit of doing so. Watch this inspiring clip below:

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