Creative Processes of Different Artists - Case Study Example

The Creative Process Every artist has a unique creative process, one that they can call his or her own. The common threads that every artist has to possess are a passion and commitment to their work and all of the things that may fuel their work. One can learn many things from known artists’ creative processes, specifically the work of Georgia O’Keeffe, Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol and Joseph Cornell. Though they are all different, they were all motivated by passion and a commitment to their work. Georgia O’Keeffe’s creative process was extremely based on her own emotional response to the things around her. One could define “emotional response” as inspiration, because based on her subject matter she would be motivated to paint a series based on one subject, and get into the subject with a sense of scrutiny that only someone truly inspired would have the patience to do. Mostly, these would be organic materials- flowers, bone matter, arid landscapes. Georgia O’Keeffe had a long career as an artist: from the early nineteen hundreds to the nineteen eighties. Because she had annual exhibitions, this provided a push for her to create but also to find new sources and materials around her to motivate her. O’Keeffe liked to live in different places to garner this inspiration and explore the physical setting of place and the organic materials within it as the start of her creative process. An instance of this is noted in the book The Spirit Catchers: An Encounter with Georgia O’Keeffe. OKeeffe is in Santa Fe stuck in a rainstorm with a friend. “He had to shout to her three times before she finally heard him over the drumming rain, rushing water, and wild rumblings from the clouds above (Kudlinski, 2005).” In this anecdote, we can see that inspiration came from the natural workings of the world. O’Keeffe was enamored by the earth and form, and her fascination with deserts, specifically, led her to New Mexico on many occasion- a far cry from the artist’s life in New York City. Georgia O’Keeffe’s creative process was based on place, and the impetus to work constantly based on the inspiration of the organic matter within a physical setting. Jackson Pollock, on the other hand, did all of his work on Long Island, New York in the nineteen thirties and forties. Unlike O’Keeffe, Pollack’s creative process started not with place but with the inspiration of form and material. As an abstract expressionist, Pollock was increasingly concerned with a “drip” technique, and the tools used to create a certain effect on the canvas. Like O’Keeffe, his exploration of this facet of art making culminated in long hours of experimentation with house paint, dripping techniques and different methods of getting the paint on the canvas (which was usually laying on the floor of the studio). Despite his abuse of alcohol that continued through the end of his life, Jackson Pollack was the father of “action painting,” a creative process that involved the physical and performative elements of putting the paint on the canvas. This culminated in larger than life oeuvres that made the viewer actually see his process, every drip and stroke. Pollock’s process was based in constant experimentation until he felt good about his work. Through this, Pollock made artwork that was inspired by the action and materials necessary to create a painting. Andy Warhol, who worked from the nineteen thirties until the eighties, had an entirely different creative process. Coming from a graphic design background, Warhol gained momentum by finding inspiration in mass-marketed everyday objects and the cult of celebrity. Warhol would use these objects repeatedly in a way that played with the form and color of the object. At the same time, Andy Warhol’s creative process began and at times, ended with the idea. Warhol liked to surround himself with other creative people in his notorious studio-space, “The Factory.” Much of the time (and also as a bit of a nod to painters like Raphael and Michelangelo) he would use assistants to finish out the art object in and of itself. The momentum of the idea, to Warhol, was enough to begin and end the creative process. The outcome object was almost just a necessary evil, and many of his pieces branched out into conceptual and performative art, from film and printmaking. For Warhol, the creative process was one that could not have been achieved, formally, without the help of others. Warhol’s creativity was famed for its conceptuality, the object being a byproduct of a greater sense of idea. Finally, and deviating from Warhol, O’Keeffe and Pollock’s creative process is that of Joseph Cornell. Joseph Cornell worked in the nineteen fifties and sixties, doing work that was neither expressionist nor pop, but could be considered assemblage, a precursor to postmodernism. Many things in the world inspired Cornell, but he was a recluse. Children, for example, were the prime motivator for the construction of his famous “boxes.” Cornell obsessively collected cut outs from magazines, knick knacks and constructed wood holders and constantly toyed with each box having a sense of playfulness, story and composition that was intriguing to a child’s eye. “Never deterred by his infinitely more modest circumstances, Cornell understood the primacy of the imagination in constructing his own miniature environments in his boxes (Tashjian, 1992).” Cornell would toy with these boxes for weeks if not months, making sure that they were perfect. When he wasn’t working on the construction of his boxes, he was looking for inspiration through objects that he found. Unlike Warhol and much like Pollock, Cornell worked entirely on his own in a tiny space, and when he did finally get recognized for his groundbreaking work, inspired others’ creative processes in a wide range of media. All of these artists’ creative processes have had an effect on me, and I’ve tried to emulate each one, with positive and negative outcomes. Though not all work for me, personally, I can make some generalizations about the creative process that are true in any artist’s eye. For one, every artist needs inspiration and some sort of interaction with their surroundings, even if it is just a memory, a dollop of paint, or a multi-million dollar industry. Though Andy Warhol had Coke and Marilyn Monroe, Cornell had the memories of his childhood and the faces of children. These small or large interactions serve to motivate, inspire and generate ideals. Secondly, every artist needs to be committed to his or her work and passionate about it, no matter how intimately involved of how detached they are with the specific or formal construction of their artworks. Andy Warhol made a life out of his obsessive commitment to everyday objects and celebrity, despite not being integrally involved with some of his artworks’ construction. Finally, the artist has to- if only for a brief time- suspend their judgment to break ground. According to artist and motivational speaker Anne Paris, a good creative state is one that “is similar to a meditative trance, in that the artist becomes unaware of his or her surroundings and is free of external judgment and self-evaluation (Paris, 2008).” Though this state may be brief and humans are critical, it is necessary for continued creativity and progression. These seem to be the three major things that I have noticed in every artist’s creative process, including my own. My own experience supports these generalizations, in that I use outside sources for inspiration, am committed and passionate about my work and try to refrain from being judgmental, at least in the formative steps of creating art. I work with shape and assemblage a lot of the time, and feel like shapes and pictures in my environment (and especially in books and images I try to expose myself to) are my primary inspiration. I believe every creative act has an outcome, because so often we forget that every act is creative, in that it involves human choice and human choice and action- vestiges of free thinking- are creative in and of themselves. I personally feel creativity is everywhere and is a constant process. Because creativity is everywhere, everything and so fluid in the world, pinpointing it makes a creative process, in formal terms, “art.” “Art” is the product of a creative process, but everything is artistic in that it is creative and involves humans making choices, from the smallest movement of someone’s pinky to constructing the highest skyscraper. We can learn a lot from the artistic processes of others, specifically successful artists, and find comfort and motivation by emulating the important tools of their process: passion, inspiration, interaction and experimentation or suspending self-judgment. References Bockris, Victor. (1989). The Life and Death of Andy Warhol. New York City: Bantam Books. Caws, Mary Anne. (1993). Joseph Cornell’s Theatre of the Mind. New York: Thames & Hudson Inc. Kudlinski, Kathleen. (2005). The Spirit Catchers: An Encounter with Georgia O’Keeffe. New York: Watson-Guptill. Messinger, Lisa Mintz. (2001). Georgia OKeeffe. London: Thames & Hudson. Naifeh, Steven & Smith, Gregory White. (1989). Jackson Pollock: An American Saga. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, Inc. Paris, Anna. (2008). Standing at Water’s Edge: Moving Past Fear, Blocks, and Pitfalls to Discover the Power of Creative Immersion. New York: New World Library. Tashjian, Dickran. (1992). Joseph Cornell: Gifts of Desire. New York: Grassfield Press. Read More