{CHAPTER 5}

ON THE SHOULDERS
OF FRANCIS BACON

There has been a tendency in creativity research to celebrate mythical figures such as Einstein and Picasso. It is their stories we hear when we describe the creative process. For example, in 1993, one of the first books written by the psychologist Howard Gardner concerning creativity was titled Creative Genius, and the book consisted of descriptions and analyses of great personalities such as Einstein and Mozart and their life stories and creative work processes³.

We too are guilty of celebrating mythical loners. In the previous chapters, we mentioned Einstein and Picasso, and have so far delved into the narratives of two quite distinctive interview subjects. The present chapter thus concerns the importance of others for creativity. We stress that, when discussing creative individuals, it is important to consider who else has been involved besides the protagonist. Where do the ideas actually come from? How can a manager, a teacher, or someone else be of significance to the creativity of a particular individual?

As we have already seen, most creative individuals walk along the edge of that which exists, or they let themselves be inspired by their existing environment. This chapter concerns standing on the shoulders of others when being creative and using the cracks and holes in existing knowledge as launching pads for innovation.

We will now tell the story of Andreas Golder, who was born in Russia, is resident in Berlin, and has been hailed one of the great artistic hopes of 21st-century Germany. Until now, we had only considered Danish cases, but we will deviate from this principle for Andreas’ sake. This is in part because Andreas is connected with Denmark since it was among the first places where he exhibited his paintings and sculptures. Andreas is also interesting because he has an opinion on creativity – and a critical one at that. Andreas’ voice has contributed to the development of one of the present book’s primary arguments, namely that we must go to the edge of that which exists to be creative; that creativity emerges through a break from the existing and from the everyday. We will shortly, however, begin our story in a completely different context – in the world of fiction.

³ Gardner is among the most important pedagogical psychology researchers today in terms of influence on everyday pedagogical practice in Danish primary schools. Posters illustrating the various kinds of intelligence are, for instance, often found in Danish schools. One of Gardner’s basic arguments is that we possess not merely one intelligence (that which is measurable by IQ tests) but instead numerous types of intelligence, such as musical, personal, and social intelligence.

BORROWING OR THEFT?

What do we mean when we describe creativity as the act of going to the edge of that which exists? Is it the sampling that Peter Stenbæk discusses? Or is it the ability to create hybrids of two forms as Bjarke Ingels does? In other words, the phenomenon of combining reality in new ways? Is that what it means to be creative? Or is it simply borrowing? Or perhaps even theft? Creativity is unique and transcends all boundaries precisely through its liberation from that which exists.

THE GREAT ONES STEAL

Let us use an illustrative and potentially provocative example from the world of fiction, namely a quote from the Lars Saabye Christensen novel Open House (Åbent hus, 2009): “Greater men than I have said that middling artists borrow while great ones steal.” Thus thinks scriptwriter Will Bråten when he has snuck into the premier of a film of the same name – the script for which a former script consultant stole from him without his knowledge. Certain details have been changed from Will’s original script. The film takes place in Copenhagen instead of Oslo. The two young protagonists, Will and Cathrin, drink Tuborg beer instead of Bellini (with or without vodka).

At the film’s premier, to which Will has been invited, he waits patiently for his name to scroll by in the closing credits – but he waits in vain. “I didn’t see it,” Will states on the last page of the novel. It was not particularly kind of the script consultant to benefit in this way from Will’s art. It was theft. It is wrong to hide one’s sources, and yet no artwork exists without sources and inspiration from other artwork. As Søren Ulrik Thomsen writes in the notes to his latest poetry collection, Shaken Mirror (Rystet spejl, 2011), “Every text is indebted to an immeasurable quantity of other texts.” Thomsen then continues with the following very telling enumeration of his own borrowings:

“The sentence ‘and now the black roses blossom in the snow’ (p. 11 draws upon many sources, for example Ole Sarvig’s poem on the ‘Black Flowers’ from Jeghuset (1944), which itself bears a coincidence of motifs with Sophus Claussen’s 40 years older ‘Black Flower’ from Djævlerier (1904). Nor can we forget Ruth Franks’ song ‘Roses in the Snow’ (which I know from Emmylou Harris’ album of the same name, 1980), and probably jingling around in the background as well is the Medieval Marian hymn ‘Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming’, which we find as Number 117 in the Danish Book of Psalms. And so on.”

For those who wish to create something apparently “new”, this functions as an important lesson that those who are creative allow themselves to be inspired by that which already exists.

When we began working on this book, we were preoccupied with understanding the relationship between the old and the new. On 7 September 2010, an article appeared on the newspaper website Politiken.dk that crystallized one of our points: “Andreas Golder, one of the greatest painters living today, says ‘Creativity?! Bah! I just steal.’” We agreed that we simply had to get hold of Andreas.

In the article, Golder explains how he draws upon the creations of past masters in his work to produce something different. “When I look at a work, it doesn’t matter whether it’s modern art or not. What matters is whether it’s good art. And the great masters, well, they’re hanging there in the museums, so they’re part of my time, of the now. I absorb things like a sponge, from all of the artists from all periods – and from everything I see and experience. I wring that sponge at the workshop, and the result is what you see here.”

In other words, tradition is materialized in the artwork that already exists. It is quite literally hanging on the walls, and it becomes a materialized starting point for Golder’s innovation.

The morning the article appeared in the newspaper, we rang Larm Galleri in Copenhagen, a gallery at which Golder was then exhibiting his paintings and sculptures, which had occasioned the interview in Politiken. We spoke with Lars, the gallery’s owner, and quickly learned that Andreas was terribly busy with the exhibit. At last, however, we managed to catch Andreas at the gallery on a cold October day. As we strolled among the colourful and figurative paintings – alternately expressionistic and naturalistic – and the strange sculptures, such as the fruit bowls disguised as ashtrays in painted bronze, we heard the story of Andreas’ approach to the creative process. And this story is not merely thought provoking; it is also an interesting and instructive tale of what is needed to be creative in the world Andreas inhabits.

If you do not inhabit the art world, Andreas Golder may not exactly be “a big name”, but within the art world, he is widely hailed as a man who has renewed the art of painting. Andreas was born in Yekaterinburg, Russia in 1979 and moved to Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. He has exhibited his work in Denmark on numerous occasions but has also appeared at the world-renowned White Cube gallery in London and is described as an artist who combines his training in realistic and representative techniques with more abstract elements; the physical and the metaphysical. In a 2010 article in Magasinet Kunst, his paintings are described as “Francis Bacon on acid”. But how does he do it, and what does he personally regard as important?

A MAD DOG

Andreas is surrounded by smoke and steam when we interview him. One cigarette after another is ending its existence among its fellows in a plastic cup while we take in and discuss the paintings on the walls and the sculptures in the room. Andreas apologizes for his slightly Germanified English, and we apologize for our not exactly fluent German. Andreas explains that he never precisely planned on being an artist but that it was more a result of circumstances. He says that he is just as happy lying down in front of the TV as he is painting but that he feels a bit ill when he is not working on a painting in one form or another. The first thing Andreas emphasizes in the interview is that he is uncertain whether he is truly an artist:

“It’s the same every time people ask me, ‘How did you become an artist? When did you decide?’ And each time, I’m just totally fucked up. How should I know whether I’m an artist at all? That’s up to people to figure out when I’m no longer around. I just do what I do. Yesterday, I saw a good movie, The Dark Knight. There’s a scene where the Joker says, ‘I’m chaos. I’m just a mad dog chasing after cars, and when I catch one, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with it.’ That’s how I am when I paint.”

This is a description of creativity that we have encountered elsewhere. Bjarke Ingels also talks about getting involved in something and only seeing patterns in the creative process in retrospect. Andreas expresses doubt as to whether others will even deem his contributions art, and even if his creative process itself is not exactly chaotic, it is characterized by uncertainty as to what will emerge from his creative efforts. Creative individuals follow no set process but instead jump into their work and see the patterns afterward. And they are seriously dependent on others seeing these patterns. Otherwise, it is just oil paint on canvas or, in Bjarke’s case, Styrofoam models of miniature houses in an attic in Nørrebro. To avoid the uncertainty inherent in the process of recognition, Andreas quickly moves on to the next painting while continuing the interview.

“I’m not so good with words,” Andreas says. Many artists are wary of discussing creative processes, which can, of course, be circumscribed by the lack of expressive breadth involved in mere language. Andreas continues: “The problem is that art doesn’t become anything without viewers. Unless there’s someone who says it’s art, then it’s just oil paint on a canvas.”

The artist is thus vitally dependent on his public to be able to call himself an artist. Creativity is, in other words, fundamentally relational, or as we also note in the introduction to this book, creativity is undertaken within social practices, the norms and values of which are the starting points for every assessment of what counts as new. It is like the tree that has fallen in the forest: it only makes a sound if someone is listening.

RELIGIOUS ART?

Many artists use religious metaphors or narratives in their creative work. We ask Andreas whether his art is religiously motivated. He responds that, while he definitely makes use of figures from the religious universe, he is not interested in the political aspects of religion:

“It’s more the motifs, the construction of a painting; you use the same thing, but you create something new from it. Historically speaking, many artists have been forced to paint what the powers that be – the Church or Stalin, for example – wanted, but the paintings are still pretty, and the question is how you can transform them into your time. But I don’t really know. Everything I say today, I may deny tomorrow.” Most of Andreas’ comments in the interview are accompanied by laughter, which is both reflectively ironic and reveals a degree of uncertainty regarding the whole setup.

Andreas consistently stresses that it is others who make him creative. Again and again, he returns to the viewer’s role in recognizing him as an artist and to the existing works that serve as his point of departure. We enquire more closely into Andreas’ creative processes, and he tells us that he usually works in one of two ways. Either he begins with the materials alone – brushes, paints, and canvas – or begins with brushes, paints, canvas, and an idea. It is typically when he is producing work for an exhibition that a particular idea or concept is involved.

We wander through the exhibit as we speak. A number of particularly lovely works catch our eye: miniature people on miniature easels on a shelf. We ask how Andreas got this particular idea.

“Well, I was walking around in a big store with painting supplies and that sort of thing. Then I saw these little easels, and I thought, well, I need to make some miniature works. Because all works of art are getting bigger and bigger, so why not go the other way and make something really little?”

Creativity researchers Robert Sternberg and Todd Lubart have developed an investment theory of creativity that makes a lot of sense in relation to what Andreas describes. Creative individuals buy cheap and sell dear, say Sternberg and Lubart. In other words, they take up ideas that others have not really noticed before, do something with them, and sell the work at a high price. Andreas does not, of course, speak of the financial logic of buying cheap and selling dear, but he understands that when others are building big, it could be a good idea to build small. Creative individuals think and act laterally – they turn things upside down and do the opposite of the majority.

Andreas continues, “I have around 20 books of sketches or photos I’ve taken with my mobile phone. It could be anything I come across. Before, I sometimes just went straight to work on the painting, but this resulted in a lot of mistakes, which meant that I had to paint the whole thing over again. Now I test at least three or four colours before I get started in earnest on the actual canvas. Other times, I just go around searching. For example, I walked around my friend’s workshop. There was all sorts of junk – modern things and things from the Middle Ages. So I went there and got a lot of ideas.”

It seems that inspiration for Andreas’ work processes comes from many sources and that Andreas samples ideas from all the materials and sources of inspiration that he has at hand.

“I once did a show for the White Cube. It was a really compact show, and all the paintings were closely linked. It was very dark and memento mori, Catholic pictures and so on, but it was more of a hodgepodge of all sorts of things.”

In other words, the process can begin in one of two ways: either in the form of a pure process in which Andreas just paints on the basis of his experience and immediate inspiration or in the form of painting in the direction of a specific concept, which often occurs when he is working toward an order or a large exhibition.

APPRENTICESHIP

We ask how Andreas learned what he does. “It just came to me. In fact, there was no one who told me how I should do it or what I should do. I think you need to find your own way. And there really isn’t one correct method you can learn. It’s quite individual.

“I went to art school in Russia and Berlin. In Russia, when I was a child – they have these special schools for athletes, ballerinas, and so on. They still do. I was just there two weeks ago, at my old school. But now it’s a very privileged school, only for the rich children. It was strange for me to see. In the old days, anyone could go there, but now it’s about money, and it’s horrible because a lot of children don’t have the money, right? But yeah, they taught me all of the realistic techniques, and it was a very academic education. I could already paint as a nine-year-old. But you probably know this famous line from Picasso: ‘I could paint like Raphael when I was nine years old, but it took me another 30 years to learn how to paint a picture.’” Andreas laughs. “I think it’s the same for me.”

One thing is being able to paint; it is something else entirely to be able to paint pictures. Mastery of the technique is, Andreas stresses, not enough. Making paintings involves entering a social practice – a sort of chain of other artists between whom one must make oneself a place and find oneself a style. How one gets there is difficult to say. Andreas nevertheless reveals a bit of his “method” in our interview. Maybe it is an advantage to have access to a privileged school in which you learn to master the basic principles. And maybe this element of craft lies at the core of the quest for creativity while the quest also requires that a person find his or her own style.

“Yeah, it all takes a long time. Learning the technique is pretty simple. It’s almost a sort of copying practice. But I mean, Renaissance artists and the great figurative painters became masters because they did more than just translate tradition. They added something to it. As a child, I also copied intensively. All of the old masters. It was part of our education. So when you talk about creativity, it’s actually about stealing. Someone has done it before; you take it and continue. I mean, in the old days, we didn’t even talk about artists but about masters and apprentices. Apprentices just continued their masters’ lines, and that’s why I’m so interested in the old masters. What’s laughable is that there are so many young artists today who want to create something new all the time, and it’s just ‘me, me, me’. They just want to create something new without having any goal. And that’s why all that ‘creativity’ stuff has just a bit too much of a ‘housewife’ whiff to it. They sit there and want to create something totally new. But it’s more about doing something good and honestly. That’s what I think.”

Andreas thus prefers the old apprenticeship tradition in which the apprentice, nearly by definition, is tasked with continuing the line that the master has already begun. He also feels that apprenticeship represents a correction to today’s intolerable self-absorption. This self-absorption can obstruct creativity, and it risks – as Bjarke Ingels noted – making a project more to do with the artist himself than with the work he creates.

WHAT CAN WE LEARN
FROM ANDREAS GOLDER?

In The Great Achievement (Den store præstation) (2010), Allan Levann and Michael Trolle write that the keys to great achievement are tenacity, perfectionism, and renewal. The first concerns training and practising with the help of existing methods and means of training. Is it actually more often the case that creative individuals borrow from tradition? And is it true that many who regard themselves as creative are not actually creative inasmuch as they are working from the illusion that it is possible to create something new without having a place in the existing world?

The British anthropologist Tim Ingold (2001) stresses that all creativity features a close relationship between continuity and renewal. In reality, he argues, creativity is a form of “re-creation”, and the creative process involves continual relationships between past, present, and future. The Swedish creativity researcher Lars Lindström (2009) speaks of creativity as a reapplication of that which a ready exists.

The main problem is that we are liable to under-appreciate creativity’s material foundations when we celebrate creative icons – inventors, authors, industrialists. We see them as lone individuals in a narrative of how their creations are solely the products of themselves or of inner creative sources. But this is not the case. Those who succeed in breaking through with a creative idea are those who are capable of contributing something new to society, perhaps in part because the product is sufficiently recognizable and builds upon tradition. Large companies, for example, are only creative if they discover new products for which there is actually a market. Similarly, as Andreas Golder seems to say, an artist can only call himself an artist if his works are recognized as art by his peers and by the public.

As the French sociologist Bourdieu (2003) stresses when analyzing the origins of the artist, we should not underestimate the relationship between production and consumption. There can be no artist without a market. This is not just a matter of producing monetary sales from products. It also represents a more symbolic recognition of the artist as an artist.

Above all else, we can challenge the idea of a radical distinction between the conventional and the new. One hindrance to the development of creativity could precisely be a lack of understanding of the interrelatedness of tradition and renewal. The Danish Professor of Anthropology Kirsten Hastrup works from a similar understanding that creativity ought to contain both the old and the new, the recognizable and the unexpected. She says:

Basically, I would describe [creativity] as a way in which we experience the new coming into the world.

And:

Creativity is not radically cut off from the world (in that case, it would be regarded as a sign of madness), nor is it just a competent response to an anticipated result (this is the same as the ability to act). In order for “creativity” to retain an independent meaning, it must cover both the unexpected and the recognisable, both the new and the anticipated.

Creativity is not liberated from the world; it simultaneously contains the unexpected and the recognizable – both the new and the past as it is embodied in the new. This is the same as when we metaphorically suck up the knowledge of others, wring the sponge, and produce something new. Concerning recognition of the new, Hastrup emphasizes the importance of emotionality:

The point is that social creativity is not just about new combinations, as if it were a purely intellectual exercise … it must also include a certain semantic and emotional novelty with which others are prepared to get involved even if it is unexpected and breaks away from that which exists.

In the social space of reality, the creative is thus that which can bring others into motion, and a creative person is someone who can inspire others and convince them to invest resources, energy, and time in his or her ideas. This is not a purely intellectual exercise, aimed at combining things in new ways. The creative includes a kind of emotional novelty that moves us to grasp the value of the new – despite the fact that it is new. Mastering this is, of course, an art. In other words, it is an art to produce something new that deviates just the right amount from that which already exists and that can be understood within others’ worldview.

COLLECTIVE CREATION

Andreas Golder’s story challenges the prevailing idea that creativity is radically cut off from its surroundings. Perhaps it is better to follow a line that has already been laid. But the truth is, Peter Stenbæk’s and Bjarke Ingels’ stories show that they do the same. All the narratives show how creative individuals absorb inspiration from traditions and materials that are already in the world – from film, science fiction, and past masters. They discover paradoxes, breaks, holes, and cracks in the existing knowledge and use these as points of departure.

This quite radically challenges the prevailing notion of creativity. Much psychological creativity research is, in fact, characterized by a fundamental understanding of creativity as an individual phenomenon that involves learning to think in certain ways and standing up to conventions (as well as to convergent thinking) by thinking in terms of opposition and conflict. This is also part of creativity – but the point is that the process is not a purely individual one.

Ray McDermott, Professor of Anthropology at Stanford University, has made various attacks on this individualization of genius. He feels that genius and creativity do not belong in an isolated cognitive space but belong to people who organize collective problems that are sufficiently well defined to allow a solution to be developed. Creativity is “common” in the best sense of the word. People do what they have to with the materials they have at hand. This means that the origins of creativity cannot be identified in an individual person but, rather, in a series of people standing on another’s shoulders. People who create a breakthrough should, according to McDermott, be regarded as links in a chain. From this perspective, the celebration of the lone individual is misplaced: “When prizes are distributed to individuals, we lose sight of collaboration.”

It is interesting from precisely this perspective that even Isaac Newton himself is famous for celebrating the work of others: “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” We tend to locate genius and creativity in the brain, but it may be more accurate to say that creativity is a matter of some people creating the right conditions for other people to take the right steps at the right place and time.

This means that we must take care to correctly describe the process of creation (there is always a path to follow). We must also understand, says McDermott, that creation often arises in particularly creative environments:

Genius is cumulative: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle follow one after another over three generations; Confucius, Loazi, Zhuangzi, Mencius, and Han Fei come in quick succession; Darwin and Wallace bring out theories of evolution in the same year.

It is thus not always the case that, as far as creativity is concerned, individuals are always on a collision course with society’s limits, which is commonly assumed in conceptions of creativity that celebrate individual talent. Creativity follows a course, the contours of which have already been laid down by others.

In the next chapter, we will shake things up a bit, despite remaining in the art world. We will be going on a visit to Søren Rasted, one of the most successful composers in Danish pop, to learn how to create hits – and how to keep creating them. We will also meet ballet dancer Alexander Kølpin for a chat about summer ballet and being a hotel owner.

These two have succeeded – in spite, they feel, of themselves. Søren thinks there are far better songwriters than himself, and Alexander says that he never thinks he is good enough to dance ballet. They are, in other words, familiar with the humility that Andreas Golder describes, but they have no trouble speaking about creativity and are both skilled at thinking commercially and quite concretely selling their creativity.