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perspectives on talent : page 4.......
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Psychologist Dean Keith Simonton says schooling has a positive impact on creativity up through the final year of college. Then the progressively narrow focus of graduate school actually detracts from creativity. "You don't become a great novelist by getting a Ph.D. in creative writing."
[usaweekend.com Jan 3, 1999]
**Origins of Genius: Darwinian Perspectives on Creativity - by Dean Keith Simonton
......related pages :........nurturing talent........nurturing talent : teen / young adult~ ~ ~ ~
 .. .. This view annoys Kinkade no end, and he will talk your ear off... about the ugliness and nihilism of modern art and its irrelevance compared to the life-affirming populism of his work. He will point out that he has built the largest art-based company in the history of the world, and that ten million people have purchased a Kinkade product.... People like to own things they think are valuable, and they are titillated by the prospect that the things they own might be even more valuable than they thought. The high price of limited editions is part of their appeal: it implies that they are choice and exclusive, and that only a certain class of people will be able to afford them -- a limited edition of people with taste and discernment. |
 .. .. "I believe in 'aspire to' art. I want my work to be available but not common. I want it to be a dignified component of everyday life. It's good to dream about things. "It's like dreaming of owning a Rolex ñ instead, you dream about owning a seventy-five-thousand-dollar print." In fact, a lot of limited- edition art is about dreaming; so many of the paintings portray wistful images of a noble and romantic past that never was, or the anti-intellectual innocence of fairies and animals, or mythical heroes who can never fail and never fade. from article: Art for Everybody by Susan Orlean [on her site] painting from book Thomas Kinkade: Masterworks of Light Susan Orlean is author of book The Orchid Thief |
*related page :.....promoting talent~ ~ ~ ~
 .. .. "Now, more than ever, we must continue to practice the human touch. As the great chronicler of American life, Studs Terkel, said to me, 'We are more and more into communications and less and less into communication.'" She continues, "The late Lorraine Hansberry in To Be Young, Gifted and Black creates an image of a bridge acorss a chasm. |
"It's a bridge which is filled with all of her favorite artists, many of them are indeed the greatest American artists of the twentieth century... I have for many years been living with her image of the bridge across the chasm.
"We don't need a bridge that's monumental. We don't need an aesthetic miracle of a bridge. We need a bridge to take human beings from one side to the other. "If we could remember the human touch and remind ourselves of the power of the word, the power of color, the power of song, the power of dance that defies gravity and reminds us of our souls. "If we could remember this -- remember it -- we would all be, I think hopeful. I remain therefore, as ever, a prisoner of hope." from profile by Janice Albert [California Association Anna Deavere Smith plays National Security Advisor Nancy McNally |
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The way I see it - you cannot talk about art in this country without speaking to the issues of Religion, Law and Economics. The religious right has declared war on the contemporary artist, tradition based artists, socially based arts programs, artist visionaries, and the collective left artists and non-white culture -- all have been labeled evil and demonic.
(Check out the litany of actions against artists documented in book "Artistic Freedom Under Attack" published by The People for the American Way.)
from article Art Changes: From Where I Stand - In Motion Magazine -
column co-edited by poet, writer and educator Alice Lovelace~ ~ ~ ~
 .. .. Art was sublime. It was a means of moral and spiritual instruction. Entertainment, on the other hand, was anything but sublime. It was a means of sensual gratification. In the nineteenth century, and even in the twentieth, the genteel elites and religious leaders railed against entertainment, and eventually the elites purged entertainments from their own stages by creating separate theaters for themselves where they would watch Shakespeare and opera while the masses would attend theaters of their own to see melodramas and musicals. But entertainment was a resilient force. In time it became this country's dominant culture. .... |
The thing about serious anything is that it is seldom entertaining.
The threat in an entertainment society is that seriousness will be marginalized--my own book excepted of course. I think we already see this happening. Serious literature, serious art, serious ideas, serious people are given nowhere near the attention and receive nowhere near the respect that they would deserve if the basis of attention and respect were one's contribution rather than one's entertainment value. I am not one to issue jeremiads and I am certain some readers will resent my not issuing a condemnation of the entertainment society in the book. But here is one place where I do have real fears. When seriousness cannot be sustained because it isn't wanted, it will disappear under a heap of entertainment. Neal Gabler... [randomhouse.com interview] Life The Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality |
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 .. .. In his late 40s, American painter Close was riding high creatively and critically when a spinal blood clot struck him down, leaving him partially paralyzed. In a wheelchair, with the use of his arms but not his hands, Close slowly resumed painting. The makeshifts he contrived to handle the brush transfigured his photo-realist style, discovering visual complexities he could never have contrived in the maplike portraits that have become his stock in trade. from article: Survival as art - 20 who defied the odds to follow |
 .. .. So many people right now have so many talents, interests, skills, and they can do so many things. I was really only good at one thing and I knew that if I didn't make that work I'd be stuck, so that made it easy to be more committed than most of my fellow students. The degree of urgency for me was greater than for a lot of people; I think in the long run it served me well not to be good at anything else. Chuck Close... [Soma, Feb 2003]
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....related book: Creativity and Disease: How Illness Affects Literature, Art, and Music
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When I talk with agents these days, they seem to dwell on their corporate clients or salivate over some big package, but they don't talk about building careers. Abe Lastfogel, the William Morris chief of yesteryear, liked to boast that show business was propelled by only one force: Talent. I don't think that notion is too widely held today.
Peter Bart, Editor-in-Chief, Variety - from his column: "Who's minding the talent?" Nov. 24, 2002
 .. .. It's not that there is no such thing as genius but, rather, that genius is an assessment or an accolade often retrospectively applied to an individual or an idea -- not an identifiable essence. The words we use shape the way we think. "Genius" has become too easy a word for us to say. The parallel here may in fact be addiction rather than religion: as a culture, we have become increasingly addicted to the idea of genius, so we are dependent on it for a certain kind of emulative high, an intoxication with the superlative. Nowadays it takes more and more genius, or more and more geniuses, to satisfy our craving. |
 .. .. If we remind ourselves that what is really at stake is creativity and invention; if we can learn to separate the power of ideas from that of personality; then perhaps we will be less dazzled by the light of celebrity and less distracted by attempts to lionize the genius as a high-culture hero -- as essence rather than force. It's not just another word that we need; it's another way of thinking about thinking. from article: Our Genius Problem by Marjorie Garber books by Marjorie Garber. Academic Instincts Bisexuality and the Eroticism of Everyday Life above left: Meryl Streep in "Adaptation" (2002) [dvd] |
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Gifted children are typically seen not only as creative children but also as future creative and eminent adults. But many gifted children, especially prodigies, burn out, while others move on to other areas of interest. Some, while extremely successful, never do anything genuinely creative. Only a very few of the gifted become eminent adult creators.
We cannot assume a link between early giftedness, no matter how extreme, and adult eminence. The factors that predict the course of a life are multiple and interacting. Over and above level of ability, important roles are played by personality, motivation, the family environment, opportunity, and chance.
Ellen Winner, PhD - from her book: Gifted Children : Myths and Realities
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| Painting,
like acting or writing or dancing, is such a difficult task The rewards
are so infrequent, and when they come, when you win the prize, when you
get the acclaim, it can be very intense, but those moments are still few
and far between, given the number of hours, weeks, and months of work there
is between those epic events.
The people who love their craft and see themselves as artists, and carry that identity through and study each day, who use walking down the street as a place to study and observe, who absorb every person they meet because they don't know when that person might show up in an artistic endeavor, are the people who thrive. .... |
 Successful people are able to sustain their identity as separate from their profession and what's happening to them. That's particularly important in the arts, where what happens to you bears only faint correlation to your talent. Robert Maurer, PhD - from article The Vision Thing by Karen Kondazian |
~ ~ ~ ~Creativity is like a water table under the earth. It's not limited to writing or to painting; it's everywhere.
It's a life force: You tap it with energy and effort, and it wells up through you. No matter what you do,
the first step to tapping creativity is showing up.Natalie Goldberg - author of Wild Mind : Living the Writer's Life
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Perhaps the single most reliable finding in our studies is that creative work takes a long time.
With all due apologies to thunderbolts, creative work is not a matter of milliseconds, minutes,
or even hours -- but of months, years, and decades...The creative person cannot simply be driven [but] be drawn to [their] work by visions, hopes,
joy of discovery, love of truth, and sensuous pleasure in the creative activity itself.Howard Gruber - editor of book: Creative People at Work
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| book:**The
Rise of the Creative Class: And
How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life by Richard Florida "Of course, there has long been a class of creators, consisting of writers, artists, scholars, financiers and inventors. But now, Florida asserts, the class' expansion has reached critical mass, altering the nature of economic development because ideas -- new products, technologies and management methods -- increasingly form the basis for national wealth. Prosperity depends on having a business system that can nurture, satisfy and stimulate the class that cultivates the ideas." [from review by Robert Samuelson, LA Times, 7.14.02] |
 |
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| Talents
Unfolding : Cognition and Development by
Reva C. Friedman, PhD and Bruce Shore, PhD
"..sheds new light on the developmental aspects of giftedness and exceptional performance - insights that inform the encouragement of talents in so-called "normal" individuals as well. This book provides a refreshing look at ability that extends the debate about giftedness far beyond the contours of IQ and into the realm of multiple intelligences and their environmental context. Contributors examine the nature of creativity and domain-specific expertise (e.g., social giftedness, visual arts) to determine how talent can be nurtured, educated, and developed." [review py publisher: American Psychological Association] |
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For us to come to terms with change and the perennial conundrums, we need more
than verbal or numerical answers. Perhaps the artist's eye, which sees without naming,
can reveal patterns that illuminate a new understanding of the boundary between order
and chaos. My own personal ecstasies and agonies have contributed to a philosophy
that is carried through my paintings like equations in a scientific model. ...Life calls to me, "Wake up!" and for me, painting is an enlightening pursuit. It is my privilege
to trust that my search for the real may shed some light for others.Dan Cooper - from bio/statement on his site [image: "Thunderhead"]
"Too many companies believe people are interchangeable.Truly gifted people never are. They have unique talents. Such people
cannot be forced into roles they are not suited for, nor should they be."from book: Warren Bennis and Patricia Biederman.Organizing Genius
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"Once you homogenize yourself, you will never be the best, because the best
is the original. You will be a lesser copy. Like when you photocopy something.
The more you do the copies, the more vague they get. So you will never be
the best if you try to be like other people. You can only be the best you that you can be."Sharon Stone [AOL interview, April 27, 1999]
~ ~ ~"In each of us creativity is an individual, personal and emotion-associated quality.
It is organic rather than mechanical. Our imaginations are personal and alive,
and we have thoughts and ideas that are unique only to our experiences and ourselves."
Oliver Sacks [neurologist; author of book: : An Anthropologist on Mars]~ ~ ~
"Expect your creative process to change, your interests to change,
your ideas to change because that is as it should be.
If you don't change, you go backwards. You can't control
how your work develops because you are your work."
Faith Ringgold (painter, writer; age 69) [Modern Maturity, March.00]
~ ~ ~"... to deny that artistic creation involves problems and purposes
would be to admit that an artist creates without premeditation,
without design, under a spell. Therefore if an artist boasted to me
of having written a story without a previously settled design,
but by inspiration, I should call him a lunatic." Anton Checkhovfrom book: Brewster Ghiselin. The Creative Process : Reflections on the Invention of Art
~ ~ ~
"Each time I make a photograph I celebrate the life I love and the beauty
I know and the happiness I have experienced" Ruth Bernhard
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"Intellectuals are not just people who know things but people who shape the thoughts of their generation.... Of course, there are many artists... who are still caught in the trap of Nietzsche, playing with death and violence and negativity... But these people are more and more irrelevant... some artists have understood that the world's not going to end soon, that the twenty-first century is going to be an extraordinary time, and that the time is now to begin imagining what direction thehuman community may go in." John Brockman - from his book: The Third Culture
"No matter our art form, our purpose is to attend to the world around us,
including people, musical instruments, trees, and words, and through the attention we
bring to them to help them blaze into life. Once we give ourselves to the world, it gives
itself back to us: Life rushes in."
Michael Jones: [author: Creating an Imaginative Life] [more at his site: pianoscapes.com]
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"We all possess the necessary intrinsic motivation to be creative. ..
extrinsic motivation is not necessary, and can actually work against creativity..
organizations and society can construct situations that choke out intrinsic motivation...
we would be better off asking 'what have we done to choke off the intrinsic motivation
in people to be creative?' than wondering 'what must we do to motivate people to be creative?'Paul Plsek - author of Creativity, Innovation, and Quality
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"Mediocrity is self-inflicted, genius is self-bestowed." Walter Russell illustration by Walter Russell: "musician, painter, sculptor, architectural designer, philosopher, and natural scientist" - image and description from University of Science and Philosophy site
bio: The Man Who Tapped the Secrets of the Universe by Glenn Clark
"I'd like to write, act, teach, lecture — anything creative. I must also service my curiosity.
I want to continue to wonder about things, because there is a young man inside me, and he
is energetic and mentally active. .. I can examine so many things. I would like to do
independent thinking about everything."Sidney Poitier [age 73; from O Mag. interview, Oct.00]
his new book: The Measure of a Man : A Spiritual Autobiography~ ~ ~ ~
Jean Houston: "We are becoming 'polyphrenic,' and, with the help of the Internet,
we are changing the way that we think about ourselves." [Fast Company, July.00] //
"... polyphrenia -- the orchestration of our many selves -- is our extended health.
We have a vast crew within." [from interview]**book: A Passion for the Possible
~ ~ ~ ~
When I began meeting scientists, I realized, in fact, that scientists were actually no less creative than artists. And I began to think that artists were no less rigorous than scientists. The more scientists I meet, the more I think that they don't work that differently. The rigor is expressed in a different way. ... For somebody I never met, Feynman comes closer for me to being a hero than anybody because no matter what it is that he thinks about, he tries not to fool himself, and he tries not to fool anybody else, and he tries not to let anybody else fool him. He feels better not knowing something than believing something that's not true."
Alan Alda - about his play "QED" - about Nobel prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman [LA Times 3.18.01]
**book: Ralph Leighton, Richard Feynman. What Do You Care What Other People Think?
**~ ~ ~ ~
The still-prevailing view of creativity.. defines it as something apart from and above 'ordinary' people and 'ordinary' life, something that only a rare genius possesses.. a new way of looking at creativity recognizes that all humans are endowed with the capacity for creativity, and that .. it can be developed - or hindered.. The creativity we invest in our day-to-day lives is often the most extraordinary since.. it can give far more meaning, and even sanctity, to our lives.
Riane Eisler [co-founder of the Center for Partnership Studies]
from book: Sacred Pleasure
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"Whatever it is that is true to your heart, you should bring it out in your own way...
art is just about communication. It's a human thing, so if you're a human being, you can do it."Yoko Ono [HotWired interview, 1996] **book:Y E S Yoko Ono
~ ~ ~ ~
"I began writing at the age of eight or ten, secretly, at night, writing stories about adventures
with my friends, or writing just to attempt to articulate what I felt about my life. It's very odd:
people often ask me when I first considered myself a writer. Maybe I always did. Maybe I never did.With 31 published books, I still find it difficult to identify myself as a writer."
Hal Zina Bennett [Amazon.com intvw] - author of Write From the Heart: Unleashing the Power of Creativity
~ ~ ~ ~The time has come to reexamine our traditional beliefs about creative talent --
'hidden' or otherwise. Why do we assume that a rare and special 'artistic' talent
is required for drawing? We don't make that assumption about other kinds of
abilities -- reading, for example. ...My claim is quite modest: if you can catch a baseball, thread a needle, or hold
a pencil and write your name, you can learn to draw skillfully, artistically, and creatively.Betty Edwards - from Drawing on the Artist Within
~ ~ ~ ~
"Talent that large can be dangerous. People around her didn't see her, only the talent." Judy Davis - about portraying Judy Garland,
based on book: Lorna Luft. Me and My Shadows
~ ~ ~ ~
I'm a visionary and a creative person. God blessed me with certain talents. I hate to use an analogy, but Walt Disney was creative but not good with business. His brother Roy handled the books. He (Walt) loved creating family-oriented entertainment and so do I. I feel that was a gift and I have that gift also. I'm very honored to have been chosen.
Michael Jackson..... [imdb.com/PeopleNews 12/6/02]
"I don't imagine that I'm a singular specimen; I believe that I must be one of many pilgrims
who aspire to an existence of merit and who are willing to make an effort toward that end."Dixie Carter [from preface to her book Trying to Get to Heaven]
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"The Web has the potential to be one of the most*******
significant publishing mediums in history. The Web stands to revolutionize
the way we communicate and distribute information and artists will play
a huge role in establishing the look and feel...""I think part of the perspective I bring to computer book publishing is the fact
that I am self-taught. I learn by doing, not studying. I have a knack for picking up
software and concepts and enjoy sharing my knowledge with others."Lynda Weinman [amazon.com interview]
**one of her many books: Designing Web Graphics.3 | her site
<< related page:*digital imaging
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Mary Catherine Bateson: "It is time to explore the creative potential of interrupted and
conflicted lives, where energies are not narrowly focused or permanently pointed toward
a single ambition. These are not lives without commitment, but rather lives in which
commitments are continually refocused and redefined."book: Composing a Life
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"All of these women [in the book] were fighting to find a little bit of freedom to be
who they are, and I don't think the results have been especially good for them. And I hope
that the answer is not that we have to learn how to behave...People thinking that Sylvia Plath was a poor, sensitive poet, are not getting that she had
great amounts of ambition and anger that moved her along, or she wouldn't have been able
to fight against that depression to produce such an incredible body of work by the age of thirty."Elizabeth Wurtzel [randomhouse.com interview] author: Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women
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more :**perspectives..on talent : page 1.........perspectives.on talent : page 2.......perspectives.on talent : page 3*related page :......perspectives : teens/young adults
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