The Argument Against Intuitive Painting

As artists we find ourselves engaging in intuitive painting: responding to what the paint is telling us, or otherwise working in a flow that includes instinctive or habitual responses.  Ideally, we can produce innovative work, much like Jackson Pollack did with his drip paintings, drawing on automatic memory.  More often, though, we are in danger of creating the mundane. 

Creativity is not a unique phenomenon in that everyone is creative on a daily basis.  When describing my painting process to a potential client, she immediately responded by saying, "oh, it's like cooking, you have the recipe as a starting point and then go from there."  But as any chef knows, when you "go from there" some thought has to be put into the expected outcome if you want your restaurant to survive.

So if creativity is not a unique phenomenon, what is painting, or the act of creating any piece of art?  It's worth considering this statement in the book Aging, Creativity, and Art:

"All cognitions, creative or not, include working memory, capacity, speed of retrieval, perceptual fluency, activation of relevant concepts and inhibition of irrelevant ones, recollective ability, inspection of memories, and a host other processes that are used in everyday cognition." 

The author then asks, " Why are some cognitions creative and others ordinary?"

The argument against intuitive painting asks the same: why are some paintings creative, and others ordinary?

If the goal of the artist is to take an abstract idea and intrepret it with a visable image in a compelling and easily understood way, then it requires purposful thought in addition to creative impulse. And as the author of Aging, Creativity, and Art goes on to say, " "creativity-as-cognition is about problem-finding, -defining, -identifying, -discovering, -expressing, -posing, -representing, -translating, -integrating, and -synthesizing."

 The next time you're facing down a potentially mundane painting consider why the word "intuitive" wasn't included in that list.

 

Aging, Creativity and Art: A Positive Perspective on Late-Life Development, by Martin S. Lindauer, 2003, Klewer Academic/Plenum Publishers, NY

 

Comments

[sue smith]

also - I give the other side of the argument in The Argument For the 1% Solution

[sue smith]

Nina - I'm not dismissing creativity and intuition at all - just raising questions about the entire process. I don't think creativity is just about intuition but a combination of many different forms of thinking - for instance, once an artist discovers and identifies the problem (the subject of his painting) and begins the process of translating, the intuition and creativity are free to take over and yes, they do create amazing work. But I think we do a disservice to novice artists when we tell them to "just express yourself" without offering a foundation. And YHO is well respected, so thank you for your input to this conversation.

[Nina]

I think you're overlooking a whole genre of art by dismissing creativity and intuition. Yes, I have an interest bec this is how I work, but I also know many, many artist who work intuitively and whose work is amazing. JMHO.