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Talent, Inspiration and Chaos

9/27/2012

4 Comments

 
"The real issue is not talent as an independent element, but talent in relationship to will, desire and persistence." Milton Glaser 

Talent in a nutshell? I believe it to be a slippery bugger; talent is not to be contained in a shell of any kind. Can anyone say with certainty what talent is, where it comes from or how it is harnessed? A quick perusal of thoughts and quotes by some talented artists shows a surprising (to me) lack of trust, even belief, in 'talent'. I think talent is a species of intelligence, as is genius, an actual trait/characteristic of brain activity. F. Scott Fitzgerald's brain works in a certain way, enabling him to write The Great Gatsby while I must be content with such as this post. YAWN ..., that's a pedantic statement saying nothing about the relationship of talent to art. But a reductionist explanation may be the best I can muster on my own.

I wonder why so many talented people disparage the idea that talent is an actual characteristic, a real player in the success or failure of an artist. The consensus seems to be that hard work is THE key to unlocking art, with heavy doses of discipline and luck. It is as if hard work is required to legitimize the art. Like pain in my previous post, art requires hard work and discipline to be worthy of the title. True? Or is this adding to the myth that art is a herculean achievement? Perhaps it is. There is no denying the role of hard work, discipline, will, desire and persistence. But why remove talent from the equation? Many people are capable of hard work, suffering,... but what sets the artist apart from this crowd? Talent, an ability to create/discover connections the rest of us simply cannot see.

"...I paint German artists whom I admire. I paint their pictures, their work as painters, and their portraits too. But oddly enough, each of these portraits ends up as a picture of a woman with blonde hair. I myself have never been able to workout why this happens." Georg Baselitz 

Is this the best ever description of inspiration or what? Brilliant. Inspiration, is it a real phenomenon or another by product of work and discipline? The thoughts and quotes I found generally treat inspiration with the same wariness as talent. Once again the consensus seems to be that it is not a real thing in itself, but a name we give to the ability to pay attention and show up for work. I believe work/art is what an artist, or anyone, does with an inspiration. Whether the inspiration comes from outside or inside is immaterial, for me. What matters is something stimulates a thought process, words, pictures, faces, emotions, a landscape,... whatever it is, there is a catalyst and a reaction. Something very real is happening when inspiration occurs. Anyway that is how it seems to me. 

Talent and inspiration, are they mysterious forces at work in the soul of an artist? Labels we apply to the products of hard work and discipline? Brain states that happen for some of us sometimes under the right kind of stimuli? Except for the soul part I say yes to all the above. There is as much mystery in talent and inspiration as there is in genius, beauty, truth, etc. What is not mysterious is they come to little or nothing without the will and discipline to work at one's craft. In the end I do believe is does come down to what our brains do, for whatever reason, to make connections in the chaos of it all.

That's all I have for now.
 
4 Comments
ann link
10/1/2012 07:27:02 am

once again your (talented) mind sets mine spinning...an issue i've got is that we u.s. american kids were raised to think we were all talented in some way, and it was just a matter of figuring out how...the past 15 years of my life have been intermittently tripped up by coming to (and running from) the cold, hard realization that i'm in fact quite mediocre...and that might actually be okay...

Reply
ron
10/1/2012 09:15:14 am

is it peculiarly american to make every kid special? something to do with the philosophy of american exceptionalism? maybe even a western cultural characteristic?

i think being mediocre doesn't necessarily make one less interesting ... just not vonnegut or picasso and like you i believe that is okay. so here's to the pleasures of a mediocre mind pushing itself to the limit.

Reply
ann link
12/7/2012 03:09:47 am

yeah - i think the american ideal of individualism has a lot of responsibility in all this...that is, we're taught that if things fall apart, it's nobody's fault but our own (pull yourself up by your bootstraps, son!), and the truth - the really, real truth - is that life is very hard. to make it against the (capitalist) odds requires brute force and a lot of charisma. so god help us all if we aren't super special in some way, cuz if we don't rise above the masses, we deserve, or so our forefathers thought, to suffer in our millions.

Reply
ron
12/9/2012 05:32:22 am

individualism - a most dangerous myth. so i looked up bootstrapping and if wiki is correct its original use may have been something like "pull oneself over a fence by one's bootstraps", to mean an absurdly impossible action." too bad it has been so bastardized as to become a vicious, destructive, divisive, antisocial trope. the great mystery to me is how so many, for whom life is so hard, accept the individualist bootstrapping myth and why so many who should/could know better do not. as long as the "the really, real truth" is confused by the perverted fairy tale that every man is an island we will suffer in our millions...needlessly, wastefully, and without hope.

oh my that is bleak. i am generally an optimist. so i will stop now before i go any farther down this road.

on the bright side i am feeling better after surgery. i have a lingering pain in my hip and leg but the doc is hopeful it will stop in time and i will be able to get back to normal duty.

thanks for you continued interest in the stuff i write, i do appreciate it.




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