On creativity
June 15, 2011
- Pablo Picasso print Head from Art of Europe.
‘Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction’ Pablo Picasso*
*I found this quote while reading Alchemy Arts recycling is chic by Kate MacKay and Di Jennings.
True?
harrysdesk 
I don’t really get how it is true. The first creation wasn’t, was it? I guess you need to cut down trees to make paper and pencils, dig up the earth to make clay. But what about creation of books? Poems? A child?
Not sure he was right.
Bold Cath… to disagree with a famous person.
I can see what you are saying.
A child perhaps ‘destroys’ the family that was and creates a new one.
I think you make a point on the creative writing. …. although sometimes ideas are destroyed….. and this leads to the writing , but not always.
Keep thinking.
I like your thoughts.
Ally
I think ‘creativity’ in this sense involves an imaginative reordering of existing stuff — turning trees into houses, wild plants into tended grain crops, iron ore and carbon into electricity pylons, colours and shapes into artworks, and so on.
If by ‘destruction’ you mean ‘deconstruction’, then that’s true in a way — you take the constituent elements of one thing and take them to make another thing.
So a better quote would bee something like….. ‘Creativity is the imaginative reordering of existing things’ ?
Doesn’t really sound so grand …does it.
Ally
I was going to suggest deconstruction too, but then thought maybe it was silly. So either Stuart and I are both silly, or both brilliant. Deconstruction is a word I hate from the education world, and lucky for Picasso it probably wasn’t so cool to use it back then.
So what do YOU think, Ally? We’re all ears…
I think you and Stuart are both brilliant!
Ally
It might if I were famous.
So I should give it some more time?