Among non-artists or laypersons that do not work with creativity profession-ally, creativity is frequently associated to the relatively simple task of getting ideas� According to Weisberg (1993) the need for training creative techniques has generated a whole “creativity training industry” (p� 58)� With the promise of yielding more creative workers and therefore more creative products and there-fore more revenue, industries have been attentive to the developments in the
field of creativity studies� Contributions in this direction focus often on crea-tive problem solving techniques (see Weisberg, 1993) and on the stage of ideas generation� As an example, we can mention brainstorming (Osborn 1953), the six thinking hats (de Bono 1985) and the vast quantity of creativity consultancy offers on the market� The main issue for private or public companies seems to be to get help with idea generating tasks�
Among the interviewed artists, however, this does not really seem an issue�
We found no mention of the layperson’s struggle in getting ideas� Idea genera-tion is what least worries and occupies the professional artists we have inter-viewed� One explanation of this could be that, because they intentionally expose themselves to a large number of diverse inspirational sources, they might con-struct a sort of reservoir of ideas and inspirations, which they tap into when they need it� This idea is supported in creativity studies that look at creativity as the emergence of insight from subconscious or internalised dynamics (Sawyer 2003, p� 21)� Sawyer cites Simonton’s cognitive model as an example of internalisation of mental elements that are stored in the brain and released appropriately into combinations of “chance configurations” (Sawyer 2003, p� 21)�
Artists might be collecting ideas and inspiration for their idea-reservoirs, not because of biological, divine or genius-related reasons, but because of a long-term and voluntary commitment to the task of artistic creation� In the inter-viewed artists’ narratives, idea generation does not have a prominent place at all� Ideas are there - the artists “just” have to listen to them� In order to do so, they provide themselves with the best conditions for listening to the ideas that are apparently already “there”� They provide silence and quiet in order to listen�
This silence might be merely metaphorical, in the sense of a place free of distur-bances, as in reality ideas might emerge while listening to music or within noisy environments�
Where the ideas are to be found is expressed differently by artists, often de-pending on the art form they practice: listening to ideas in your head (Hustvedt’s
“talking head”), seeing or listening in your head (Nord), singing in your head (Nisticò), in the body (Varley), in the process of making (Granhøj, Barba)� Ac-cording to our data, this almost “natural” abundance of ideas starts with early life experiences that have been meaningful, inspiring, encouraging and diverse�
These experiences, as the years progressed, turned into a steady mind-set or disposition toward the search for inspirational experiences, individuals, envi-ronments or artefacts: a consistent and sustained over-stimulation of senses, aes-thetic perception, intelligences and knowledge� We agree with Weisberg (1993) that creativity has nothing to do with genius and that genius is a myth� The ac-cumulation of ideas and inspiration that our artists report is not necessarily due
to extraordinary individual traits nor to divine inspiration, but to a voluntary ex-posure to inspirational and often serendipitous experiences� Ideas are something one has and that does not need to occupy too much place in the compositional process� The artists’ effort is rather focused on shaping their ideas; what artists strive to find is form and solutions or new problems and experiments� Architect Inger Exner even thinks of herself as someone who is not good at getting ideas (“I do not think I’m so specially good at getting ideas”), but then she tells of an irresistible drive to drawing that shifts the compositional focus on observation and crafts: “all the time I have a deep longing to sit and paint and draw, and if I can get to it when I sit in a meeting and sit and stare at different people, I have an awful great desire to draw them, including you”�
Fjord relates ideas generation and inspiration to relational and dialogical ex-periences� He also points to reflection and the possibility of keeping the artistic creation on hold, allowing for quiet and reflection: “for me it is very much a mat-ter of dialogue, but when the ideas come as if falling from the sky, as often we talk about divine inspiration, this happens on the basis of perception and discussion, and therefore it may well be that you have to give room to quiet sometimes, for example� I think it’s just an element that we have an insane need of as human be-ings, both as creative people, but also in general: in the process you need time for reflection, and so it may well be in between, then it must go really fast, and there must be many discussions”� He mentions the feeling of ideas as if they fall from the sky and as if they were divine, but associates the idea generation process to the artistic compositional routine of making, reflecting, discussing and making again� Several other artists mention the feeling of wonder when ideas pop up,
“where the hell did that come from?” (Olesen), but they attribute the emergence of ideas to compositional craft: concentration or intensity of concentration, ex-perimentation, memory, flow or group flow�
The artists’ narratives provide us with insights into how they work on ideas�
How an artist thinks in the making depends on several variables, for instance on the art form or artistic tradition they have chosen, on the possibilities and limi-tation of their medium, on their own expeclimi-tations (Hennessey 2010) or needs, on socio-cultural standards or expectations� In spite of this variety, it is possi-ble to look for similarities through the artists’ narratives� Our main finding in this field is that, rather than a dualistic process excluding opposing methods, artistic creativity includes both terms of opposition� Creativity studies describe creative processes as contrasting cognitive choices: convergent/divergent think-ing (Guilford), vertical/lateral thinkthink-ing (de Bono), judicial/creative (Osborn), non-remote/remote (Rednick), logic/intuitive (Adams), conscious/unconscious (Freud), reproductive/productive (Gestalt), logical/analogical (Weisberg, 1993),
mind/hand (Kimbell & Stables 2007)� These theories imply the succession in stages of the above opposing terms or their mutual exclusion, for instance di-vergent thinking introduces many different solutions to a problem and tends to characterise introductory stages of the creative problem solving, where conver-gent thinking tends to close up possibilities and occurs as a closing stage� But as Gardner has suggested “the skilled artist need conform neither to the convergent not to the divergent model”, as the convergent/divergent models “barely sug-gest the complexity of behavior involved in ‘Knowledge of a medium’” ( Gardner 1994a, p� 14)� Becoming good at the job of artistic creativity is a complex ac-tivity and, as several interviewed artists maintain, is fundamental to artistic performance�
Virtuosity
According to Rønsholdt the idea development stage is quite short, compared to the rest of the compositional process� All artists emphasise often and insistently that artistic creativity unfolds in connection to the composition of artworks by means of skills, craft, techniques and attention to quality� Virtuosity is, accord-ing to Kvium, about a cognitive, identity-related and epistemological state that occurs when artists do not think about technical issues anymore: “virtuosity oc-curs at that point where we no longer think grip, nor think notes, nor think keystrokes or bow-strokes, one thinks [cognition] music, one is [identity] mu-sic and understands [epistemology] mumu-sic at a higher level”� Mumu-sicians Anders and Benjamin Koppel maintain that persistence is what separates professionals from amateurs� Where artists feel that they are never finished learning, amateurs tend to rely on the stroke of luck, “but can they do it again?” They mention the character Gerard Depardieu plays in the film Green Card, where the French actor pretends to be a professional musician and throws himself in an impro-vised seemingly successful performance� Virtuosity is, according to Benjamin Koppel, the continuous improving as a musician and the collection of expertise,
“the more opportunities one has, the more facets and the deeper one can reach”�
Even though this can be understood as the quest for perfection, Valeur speci-fies that as an artist one will never achieve the perfection one strives for: “much is being written on the frustration that you cannot make it perfect� And that’s because you’ve done something that cannot be done, one chooses, one wants to describe something in life that does not have a name, one will describe it� But to describe it, one has to use the language, so one wants to make it non-verbal with the language and you know that you cannot win the battle”� This striving for quality and mastery and the perseverance implied by it (Dehlholm: “I don’t
stop until I am convinced about the result”) is related to the internal values of the artistic domain, as Valeur and Nord seem to specify� A former punk musician, Valeur emphasises that “punk aesthetics […] should not be confused with ama-teur writings”, meaning that the punk shabbiness is not unreflected carelessness but rather a different aesthetic choice than the domain of non-punk art culture�
Similarly, as illustrator and visual artist who prefers the grotesque, Julie Nord be-lieves that art “doesn’t need to be perfect, […] it doesn’t need to be nice” in order to be creative or effective� Perfection of the final artistic product or virtuosity in the process of making do not answer to cultural conformity and perfection itself is a concept that can be negotiated within a domain�
What is well-done in the arts can be independent of accepted canons and field-agreed criteria, as one of the functions of artistic creativity is to challenge the established rules within a field and re-invent new rules� Breaking or bending the rules is not only accepted as part of artistic creativity but also expected and nurtured� According to Dewey “every great initiator in art breaks down some barrier that had previously been supposed to be inherent” (2005, p� 235)� This might often mean finding new ways of conceiving expertise, perfection or virtu-osity� As the oft-quoted Impressionist example shows, the very concept of what is accepted as quality and virtuosity changes through time and cultures� Back in 1874, year of the first Impressionist exhibition, the first Impressionist paint-ings, which looked like the unfinished work of a poorly skilled artist, raised a scandal� Nowadays, Impressionism is a classical expression that is imitated and reproduced�
The difficulty of mastery is that it “is an implicit or unconscious ability, such as riding a bike” (Hustvedt) and words can fail whoever is attempting to describe it� The trap of mastery could be related to creative performance, no matter if tacit or explicit, aware or unaware, conscious or unconscious for artists� Whether expertise enhances creativity or not is still debated� If mastery becomes mindless repetition of rules or of symbolic representations, mastery can be an obstacle to renewal and creativity (Langer 2005)� Nevertheless, in system theories, profi-ciency in a domain is mostly seen as necessary to the creative challenging of rules within a domain and field (Nakamura & Csikszentmihalyi 2003)� Kahneman (2011) relates the development of valid intuitions to expertise: even though this is not always true, “valid intuitions develop when experts have learned to rec-ognize familiar elements in a new situation and to act in a manner that is ap-propriate to it” (p� 12)� Without mentioning creativity explicitly, Kahneman talks about a response that is new and appropriate, which are the elements that define creativity� Heuristics, the ability of “finding”, grows with the accumulation of ex-pertise, making creativity possible�