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Creativity and Risk
Monday, 12th July 2010 20:59 PM
I have always found Grayson Perry's thoughts on the arts and crafts interesting, so I took time to listen to "Grayson Perry on Creativity and Imaginationon" onRadio 4. He started by saying that "Creativity is Mistakes". Well! if that is the case I must be a very creative furniture maker! I think I would rejig that idea to say that creativity comes from risk. Most of the really creative artists in history have lived lives of risk, Caravaggio, Michaelangelo, Jackson Pollock, Christopher Marlow, Dylan Thomas, Picasso, Schumann, Schubert etc etc etc. These lives of risk enrich their work, by living their lives in that way they come to look at the world from a different perspective to those who lead a humdrum life. Perry emphasised the importance of looking to creativity, saying that it is the most important part of the creative process. Looking,looking, looking and storing up ideas for future use.
Risk also takes us back to Perry's Creativity is Mistakes. In the actual process of art or craft mistakes only come about via risk. Fully mechanised production is not creative because the risk has been removed by the mechanisation, this relates back to the idea of Workmanship of Riskand diversity, possibly mistakes could just be seen as diversity.
Yesterday I was at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park to look at the current David Nash exhibition. As usual the park provides a wonderful backdrop to large scale sculpture. Nash works almost exclusively in wood, many of the pieces on a very large scale, a huge eucalyptus trunk almost fills a gallery. Nash uses charring to colour and texture many of his pieces. On finishing a piece he will build a bonfire round it then set light to it and control the amount of charring by removing or dousing the burning timbers. Risk in art although Nash has developed such finesse in controlling the fire that the risk is much reduced.
Another piece, addressing Nash's interest in the passage of time, was a video of the progress of a boulder he had carved in oak (about 4ft diameter). He intended to float it down a river to his workshop to work on it further, but found it took on a life of it's own when rolled into a shallow stream, so he left it to work it's own way down stream, returning periodically to record it's progress. He launched it in 1978, it reached the sea in 2003. Surely an exercise in risk and time!
The David Nash exhibition is on until 27th February 2011.
References:
Grayson Perry on Creativity and Imagination BBC Radio 4 1.30 am 6/7/10
Yorkshire Sculpture Park http://www.ysp.co.uk/view.aspx?id=3
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Red Column
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Two Sliced Cedars
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Black Ball