![]() |
Tangerine (2016) director and co-producer, Sean Baker (R), and Star Mya Taylor (C) Image credit - Zimbio |
Synopsis
Smart phones are changing our
understanding of creativity.
Yesterday (November 01, 2016) in a Berlin museum, a guard called my
attention to a special picture. People were streaming in to see the
Spanish Siglo de Oro exhibit,
but few were studying the museum’s glorious collection, and he and I stood
alone in a room of 15th-century Flemish paintings. The one he loved portrayed
an old man wearing a thin stole of fox-fur. “Look at the fur,” he said. The
little-known artist had painted it in such detail, it looked as though it would
tickle my cheek. With infinitely fine lines, he had turned a two-dimensional
surface into an illusion of floating softness.
The guard and I spoke about how long the artist
must have studied to learn his technique. He must have started as an
apprentice, cleaning brushes, and at some point he would have been allowed to
paint feet. Only after decades of observation and practice could he have become
a master.
As psychologists such as Mark Freeman and Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyi have shown, no one becomes an artistic genius alone (Freeman
1993; Csikszentmihalyi 1996). Popular myths depict artists as rebels who
succeed despite social forces, but that is not what the data show. Artists have
to learn the rules of their domains before they can break them, and their
innovations must be accepted as valuable by experts in their fields
(Csikszenhimihalyi 1996, 27). As Freeman’s interviews with artists have
revealed, “It is not quite right to say that creativity is affected
by social conditions. Instead, it would seem more appropriate to say that
creativity is constituted through those conditions” (Freeman 1993, 12). The
painter of the fox-fur had talent, and he probably wanted to create art. But
that talent would never have bloomed into brilliance without the apprenticeship
his Flemish culture allowed.
The museum guard wanted to discuss more than
painting, and I shrank when he spoke of young people’s unwillingness to work.
According to a friend of his who taught high school, only three in a hundred
students nowadays want to learn. The others are all playing with their smart
phones. For a minute I empathized with him. I turned 55 yesterday, and I know
the frustration of dodging zombies who walk staring into palm-sized boxes and
expect the world to make way for them. What do they see that’s more fascinating
than the people around them and the sky above? But my students with smart
phones are brilliant, and no one could work harder than they. If young people
who won’t learn constitute a threat, what about old people who won't learn?
I told the guard that people could be
creative with smart phones, an idea he didn’t accept. The marvelously daring
film Tangerine was shot on
an iPhone, and one can be active or passive with digital technology just as one
can be active or passive with a pen and paper. Thinking that people stare at
their smartphones because they’re interested in phones is like thinking that
scientists study Drosophila genetics because they’re interested in
fruit-flies. Digital devices offer views into the way the world works, and they
invite rather than stifle creativity.
With all the warnings about what digital
technology is doing to human brains, there has been less talk about what we’ve
gained from it. If one thinks of a creator as a bounded individual, artistry
remains more limited than if one thinks of human-machine networks or creative
groups. The painting the museum guard admired emerged as the work of
partnerships and tools: the person who cooked the artist’s meals; the person
who taught him to paint; and the brushes, pigments, and canvas that constituted
the technology of his time.
Creativity must be nourished and challenged, and
it thrives because of cultures and technologies, not in spite of them. “The
basis of art is truth,” said fiction-writer Flannery O’Connor, and it takes
courage, patience, and overwhelming work to render truth in a form that engages
many people (O’Connor 65). I regard it as equally courageous to shoot a
feature-length film on an iPhone and to spend months painting fox-hairs so that
a viewer can imagine them against her skin. As artistic creators, Tangerine director and co-producer
Sean Baker and the 15th-century Flemish painter might not be as different as
they seem. By studying the works of artists they admired and finding the
support they needed, both created works that make their viewers feel. I left
the museum guard alone with his painting, an old man contemplating an old man,
hoping that artists born today would have the perseverance to create
such beauty.
Works Cited
Baker, Sean S. Tangerine. 2016
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. Creativity: Flow and the
Psychology of Discovery and Invention. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
Freeman, Mark. Finding the Muse: A
Sociopsychological Inquiry into the Conditions of Artistic Creativity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press, 1993.
O’Connor, Flannery. “The Nature and Aim of
Fiction.” In Mysteries and Manners: Occasional Prose, Selected and Edited by Sally and Robert
Fitzgerald. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
This
article was originally published in Psychology Today
Laura Otis, Ph.D., is a professor of English at Emory University, where she teaches interdisciplinary courses on literature, neuroscience, cognitive science, and medicine. She is the author of Rethinking Thought.