What do you think of when you think of the word “Art”? Well according to an essay called “The Five Theses on Creativity,” by Eric Kaplan, he explains that the general answer when people think of “art” is that someone will force them to go to a museum, read an in-depth novel about the symbolism of something, or just see a movie without any explosions in it.
To Kaplan, he says that art is the aspect of our lives that can be transformed through creativity and that having creativity in our lives is important. The argument then goes further and basically says that without creativity we are stuck living in the past and not in the present. With creativity you are able to feel more alive and joyous. However, it can also be argued that art is simply life implemented with creativity. Kaplan’s five theses that can help explain this idea are that creativity can make something new, it can hide itself, creativity can permeate life, it can break your heart, and it can be a kind of love.
Thesis #1: Creativity makes something new. An example of this can be shown during the middle ages. During this time, roads were known as something people walked on and the ocean was seen as a scary stretch of unknown blue. However, an old English poem called Beowulf, which was written by an anonymous author, said that the ocean is just really a “whale-road” and this made people think of the ocean from a different perspective and experience the ocean as something new. It may be a challenge for humans to navigate but for whales, it is just their way of a road. Therefore, something new is created because of creativity.
Thesis #2: Creativity hides itself. Creativity can be really beneficial to art but it can also be really shy. What the essay means by this is that it's easy to overlook creativity and making something new because once the new creation is successful, the more easy it is that you see that your creation was obvious and had always been there all along. Relaying back to the “whale-road” example, if you think about it, “whale” and "road” are two things that were already known to us. However, once someone said “whale-road” it was suddenly something that made sense. Creativity can also be seen as a tool for solving problems or even discovering and making new problems to solve. In the middle ages, no one understood that there needed to be more ways to describe and understand the ocean until someone actually said “whale-road”. So, the obviousness puts the new creation in a different perspective. Kaplan also says the same for science as well. For instance, you think science isn't anything new but actually you have to create it for it to be considered science. An example is Sir Issac Newton.
He came up with his second law of motion and his formulation was something that had already existed but also didn’t at the same time. Motion was obviously already there but Newton’s creativity created something “new” with it but it's important to note that the new part was also just already there to begin with. Sir Issac Newton’s creativity doesn't make him more or less creative than the author who came up with “whale-road”. Both can be creative but their creativity can be hidden too.
Thesis #3: Creativity permeates life. Creativity fills our life in every moment, action, and word that we express. Creativity can flow from anything whether that be the way we wake up in the morning, the way we make a new friend, or the route we take when we walk to class. Our lives are constantly mixing with our creative actions. Kaplan relates this with sand to water and how when you build a sandcastle you need to have both. A sandcastle without water is just a pile of sand. A sandcastle without sand is just a bunch of water. A sandcastle completely falls apart without its two main components and the same can be said for life. Life without creativity is no life at all.
Thesis #4: Creativity can break your heart. Creativity in itself is a risky thing. You could even say creativity seems super fun, why aren't people creative all the time?. You could ask why do people plagiarize on their assignments and use their Snapchat AI or ChatGBT for school assignments? Why do people decide to copy what's been done before? Is it just pure laziness or is there more to it? Kaplan argues that the reason is that creativity can fail. Think about it, if you knew beforehand that the thing you were making would be a success, you wouldn't be engaged in creativity at all. When something doesn’t work or when you have a failure, it can be embarrassing and bring discouragement. Nevertheless, without risking failure, you can’t get the joy of being creative.
Thesis #5: Creativity is a kind of love. When you are creative you can add a new life to things, make something fresh and new. The same can be said with people. When you love someone and put effort into your relationship with them, you do the same exact thing. Kaplan explains this further and says that when people say “They just love blondes,” or “They just love everybody who reminds them of their mother,” what he means by this is that a lot of the time people don't like it when you try to figure out whom or what they can love. In general, people are just guarded when talking about love because they don't want people using the way they love as a way to take advantage of them.
To conclude, Kaplan wraps up his essay by explaining that love is the best part of life but it can also be the worst part when it is misused and misunderstood. The same can be said for creativity.So after learning all about art and its relationship to creativity, my ending discussion questions are:
Do you think the world we currently live in needs more art/creativity or less? And why?
In what ways can art/creativity become a bad or good influence on society?
What space do you feel most creative and why does it matter to you?
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