Creativity: The magic synthesis -From Schema to Bueaty
IT IS of exceptionally interest that the characteristics in the art of children, especially those between four and six and a half years old, are also prominent in the art of the neolithic period. To most students of the history of art, the transition from the paleolithic to the neolithic period has every appearance of a catastrophic decline. Instead of the accurate depiction of animals in drawings of great variety, we find geometrical designs which tend to degenerate into dull repetitive patterns; instead of a vital naturalism, a deadly monotony of abstraction. However, abstraction represents a tremendous mental advance, a prerequisite for the progress made by neolithic man in relation to the paleolithic. No longer was he a hunter of wild beasts. Instead he became an agriculturist, he domesticated animals, he made pottery, and he even became interested in astronomy. It is no wonder that the New Stone Age is considered the cradle of the ancient great civilizations.
Abstraction or schematization requires imagination, inasmuch as it is a transformation of reality. But this imagination does not rely on images as images. If images are used, it is in order to abstract a schema from them. A linear symbol now replaces the image, but obviously this linear symbol is now related to the image. It need retain only the essential components of the image, thus transforming the image into a schema. These primitive schemata are very distant from the eidetic imagery that reproduces reality almost photographically. Yet inasmuch as schemata are common in children's art, and in the art of the mentally ill, we must recognize that they are the work of relatively primitive processes of the mind. They are perhaps the most archaic forms of the secondary process. But it is on this archaic structure that more advanced mechanisms are based.
According to Read(1955), it is in the neolithic period that form itself originated. I assume by form he means a formal entity, an abstraction from practical life. As suggested by Raphael (1947), the neolithic form achieves a synthesis. It indicates a disposition or determination to
create a unity of several elements: simplicity, the desire to build a complex structure from few elements; formal necessity, since it implies a determination to represent some content and conceal others; detachment, as the artist is determined to rise above the content of his product; definiteness, embodied in the self-evidence of the form;energy, often expressed in the will to transcend the physical powers of life; and connection of content and meaning. Read believes that adoption by neolithic men of this schematic style did not signify the abandonment of the previous vital style. The two coexisted.
Abstraction or schematization requires imagination, inasmuch as it is a transformation of reality. But this imagination does not rely on images as images. If images are used, it is in order to abstract a schema from them. A linear symbol now replaces the image, but obviously this linear symbol is now related to the image. It need retain only the essential components of the image, thus transforming the image into a schema. These primitive schemata are very distant from the eidetic imagery that reproduces reality almost photographically. Yet inasmuch as schemata are common in children's art, and in the art of the mentally ill, we must recognize that they are the work of relatively primitive processes of the mind. They are perhaps the most archaic forms of the secondary process. But it is on this archaic structure that more advanced mechanisms are based.
According to Read(1955), it is in the neolithic period that form itself originated. I assume by form he means a formal entity, an abstraction from practical life. As suggested by Raphael (1947), the neolithic form achieves a synthesis. It indicates a disposition or determination to
create a unity of several elements: simplicity, the desire to build a complex structure from few elements; formal necessity, since it implies a determination to represent some content and conceal others; detachment, as the artist is determined to rise above the content of his product; definiteness, embodied in the self-evidence of the form;energy, often expressed in the will to transcend the physical powers of life; and connection of content and meaning. Read believes that adoption by neolithic men of this schematic style did not signify the abandonment of the previous vital style. The two coexisted.
Labels: creativity, schema
