I just found the following on a post at The School of Life blog. If you are into reading the likes of Alain de Botton on all sorts of things from everyday life and the not so everyday it might be worth trotting over to this curios blog for a peek at their categories and approach to philosophy. Its very readable ...even flirting with wisdom for our age ... certainly there's something to chew on. Why I titled the post "conversation with Helena" is that Helena is owner of the gallery where I have some work at the moment and our late night exchange after the opening of the group show ran along lines that I noticed this post picked up on...I recall remarking Joseph Beuys' famous statement "everyone's an artist" needed revisiting...and here Sue Hubbard picks up the thread with "Beuys didn't mean everyone has the potential to be a Picasso."
Blue-sky thinking, finding the inner you; if you look up ‘creativity’ on the internet you’ll be bombarded with sites to help you get in contact with your creative potential. I blame Joseph Beuys, that modern art guru of fat and felt, who claimed “everyone is an artist”. Now we all feel we have something to say. But do we? Of course Beuys didn’t mean everyone has the potential to be a Picasso. Motivated by utopian beliefs, culled from Romantic writers such as Novalis and the anthroposophy of Rudolf Steiner, he believed in the power of universal human creativity to bring about revolutionary change. The psychoanalysts had a slightly different take. Hanna Segal saw art as an expression of the depressive position and the task of the artist as the creation of the world. Great art could be defined by how well it created another reality. In this world the artist mourns for lost relationships and experiences that have given meaning to life. Segal cites Proust who, on meeting some long lost friends, saw how frivolous they’d become. Realizing that his former world no longer existed he set about re-creating that of the dying and the dead. Art, therefore, becomes a form of mourning, where loved ones are given up in the actual world and re-created in an inner one.
Melanie Klein took these ideas further. For her art was a form of reparation for destructive infantile rage against the abandoning mother. While for the psychiatrist Anthony Storr reflective solitude was an essential component. The cliché that genius is akin to madness is not so far off the mark. Artists, particularly poets, are known to suffer from a high rate of depressive illness. So no, creativity is not about ‘blue-sky thinking’ but about destruction and loss, transformed into art through the arduous creative process.
Sue Hubbard recently published ‘Adventures in Art: selected writings 1990-2010’ (Other Criteria)
OK...so while we are talking about The School of Life have a look at this.... if books have ever been important to you... as in really important...made a difference in fact....then look at this!
Bibliotherapy
Once upon a time, it was easy to find books you could enjoy and which felt relevant to your life. Now a new book is published every 30 seconds, and you would need 163 lifetimes to get through all the titles offered on Amazon. That’s why The School of Life has set up a bibliotherapy service: the perfect way for you to discover those amazing but often elusive works of literature that can illuminate and even change your life.
Make an appointment with one of our bibliotherapists to discuss your reading life – past, present and future. Perhaps you’re looking for a set of travel novels to inspire your next adventure, or you'd like to fathom an aspect of a current relationship through a short collection of essays. Maybe you’re feeling nostalgic and would like to spend six months revisiting classics from your childhood, or you’re seeking change and the opportunity to explore new worlds through a sampling of contemporary literature.
Make an appointment with one of our bibliotherapists to discuss your reading life – past, present and future. Perhaps you’re looking for a set of travel novels to inspire your next adventure, or you'd like to fathom an aspect of a current relationship through a short collection of essays. Maybe you’re feeling nostalgic and would like to spend six months revisiting classics from your childhood, or you’re seeking change and the opportunity to explore new worlds through a sampling of contemporary literature.
Whatever your concerns, dreams or challenges, we'll take exceptional care and effort to create a reading prescription that's perfect for you.
Our bibliotherapists specialise in works of fiction but also prescribe select works of philosophy, poetry and other creative non-fiction. They also provide a service for young adults. Read more here.
NOTE: been very busy planning more things, events and so on... so this is very quick blogging... see ya!
