Planning for Spontaneity — Creativity & Production
How can artists plan for the most brilliant moments?
Production is the cornerstone of making art. Without the intent of the artist to produce something, art is not created. How much of art production is deliberate action and how much is happy accident? Can artists plan for the most brilliant moments?
Leonardo da Vinci coined the phrase “cultivated chance” when he implored artists suffering from creative blocks to seek out motivation in stains, marks and natural formations. For da Vinci, the unexpected nature of natural object could combat the blankness of a canvas.
The phrase, “cultivated chance” highlights that there may be other routes to creativity. In order to examine the role of deliberation and chance in art production, it is useful to explore aspects of creativity. In their exploration of creativity in Inventive Minds: Creativity in Technology, Perkins & Weber discuss six styles on the spectrum between chance and deliberation.
While Perkins & Weber focus on inventions and technology, the spectrum provides a useful cognitive framework to examine the creative process of art production. It also provides a critical lens to examine the roles of chance and deliberation.
Perkins & Weber define chance as ranging from sheer chance, based on complete accident, to cultivated chance, a deliberate process that takes advantage of opportunities that arise, and finally systematised chance which is a deliberate search for those opportunities.
For deliberation, three styles are discussed: a fair bet which relies on several small studies that combine craft and knowledge to ensure a good outcome, good bet which relies heavily on fewer studies but makes more use of experience and expertise to produce an outcome safe bet which is much more process driven and almost procedural — the tried and tested route.
How do chance and deliberation affect art production? Sheer chance is described as a complete accident as a result of the artist ‘poking into all sorts of matter’. This implies a complete lack of deliberation from the artist who is simply seeing what happens without a plan or stated intention, other than to produce art.
An artist may want to forget deliberation but it plays a key role in mark making and art production according to Ellen Dissanayake. In her exploration of the beginnings of mark making in Mark-Making as a Human Behavior, Dissanayake emphasises that children cannot create art. Dissanayake, a scholar focusing on “the anthropological exploration of art and culture”, claims children are attracted to basic scribbles or motor scribbles. They do so from an early age but do not attain the foundations of mark making until age five or older.
So, children demonstrate no intent to create art, their focus is on the pleasure derived from the activity. This is the view of in Mick Maslen and Jack Southern in Drawing projects : an exploration of the language of drawing. Children, they claim, focus on “gestural self-portrait”.
However, the intention of the artist, unlike children, is to produce art. Along with their choice to explore and see what happens, this means deliberation may still play an import role in art production, even when the outcomes are brought about by complete accident.
Cultivated chance, the next style of chance, highlights the role of deliberation in happy accidents. Here, the artist takes advantage of opportunities as they arise. The seizing of opportunities implies the artist seeks a balance of deliberate action and happy accidents in art production. Leonardo da Vinci used the method of, “cultivated chance” as a way to remove creative blocks, but it has also been used as way to influence new work.
In the 18th century, Alexander Cozens accidentally re-discovered and enhanced da Vinci’s concept of, “cultivated chance” primarily in influencing landscapes. Cozens discovered that he had been subconsciously influenced by stains on paper, and harnessed this into deliberate mark making to produce landscapes with new techniques.
This cultivation of chance involved making marks on paper using ink or blotting using plates. It was noted however, that Cozens’ expertise and knowledge allowed him to take better advantage of the happy accidents he had created. A “happy accident” may rely on the artist’s skill to elevate the event from negatively accidental to positively beneficial.
Eventually, Cozens took his accidental discovery a step further and began to deliberately create the stains. At this stage, Cozens style could be described as systematised chance — a deliberate search for accidental opportunities.
Chance, it appears, can be used strategically as part of art production or provide the inspiration for artwork. In Chance, Margaret Iversen describes the gap between the artist’s intention and the final outcome of art pieces by examining art since the 1900s to establish these facts. Iversen concludes that chance is relative, there is no absolute chance nor any absolutely random event.
All styles of chance described by Perkins & Weber are tied to previous events and deliberate choices by the artist. In this case, Iverson argues, results are from a universe of limited possibilities in the same way that the results from throwing a dice seem random but are not. If ultimately there is no such thing as pure chance, what are the deliberate choices on the spectrum of art and how do they affect art production?
The styles associated with deliberation start with a fair bet using several small studies. Here, the artist combines their knowledge and craft to produce the studies which then inform and shape art production. Rather than, “seeing what happens” as in sheer chance, this approach to art production is deliberate and methodical, reflective of the ‘fair bet’ ethos.
The methodical nature of the ‘fair bet’ style aligns with Edmund Burke Feldman’s views on art production. Feldman in Varieties of Visual Experience, describes part of the production of art as the exploitation of rhythm which he proposes, “rarely occurs as the result of accident”. Most artists know the limits of their chosen medium; the knowledge and craft element of the fair bet.
The next style of deliberation from Perkins & Weber is the ‘good bet’, which relies less on multiple studies and more on expertise and experience. A greater emphasis is placed on what Feldman describes as craftsmanship: the knowledge and ability to use a medium.
Mediums for Feldman are “a vehicle for changing materials into artistic form”. A painter knows the limitations of linseed oil combined with oil paints, a sculptor the limitations of welded metal, and an architect the limitation of cast concrete. Knowing these limits allows an artist the choice to stay within those limitations or stretch their possibilities. This again is a deliberate and measured decision from the artist on their art production.
The final style of deliberation described by Perkins & Weber is the safe bet. This style relies on the tried and trusted route of making art with very little left to chance. Using this style, the artist follows a process-driven or procedural approach to art production.
In his piece in Wired, Christoph Niemann explains the importance of constant, meticulous production. Niemann underlines the importance of working hard to get lucky and forcing himself to trust the process.
The spectrum of chance and deliberation from Perkins & Weber) begins to blur further when we examine artist’s description of their own practice. Next, we’ll examine the artist’s journey in their own words.
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