The Creative Urge
The artist Anwar Saeed , found himself alone all day at a friend’s
house without a pencil or pen to be seen. Unable to subdue the creative urge, he
began drawing with a spoon dipped in coffee. The artist Hanif Shahzad made breathtakingly detailed collages of a railway platform for his graduating
show, with a palette of coloured papers from magazines, because he could not
afford paints at the time. Iqbal Geoffrey calls his collages
“NeuroFusions” which he describes
as “Imagination + Oil and Odder mixed
media” in perfect compositional balance.
We inadvertently become creative when we rummage around for
material to express an idea, and in the process
learn to see materials through the lens of an artist- cardboard is the colour ochre , a bottle cap
is a circle, a button a red dot. While
the pleasure of working with perfectly prepared artists’ materials cannot be
denied, creativity is less in the materials than what the artist chooses to do
with them. 30,000 years ago, the earliest artists discovered coloured earth, charcoal
and burnt bones from last night’s cooking were perfect for making drawings
on the walls of caves.
20th century artists consciously sought new
materials - found objects and industrial processes - to more accurately reflect
a world changed by mechanization, consumerism and urbanity. Kurt Schwitters’ “Merzbau”
construction of 1923, filled the interior spaces of his home with found and
shaped materials, creating the first examples of installation art. Partly to
blur the boundary between life and art, but also to prove beauty can emerge
from destruction and fragmentation.
Robert Rauschenberg in the 50s, and Louise Nevelson in the
60s, incorporated objects found from urban debris to make their artworks. De Kooning
made a series of paintings on doors. Assemblage of found objects became a
genre. When one steps out into what is
called Outsider Art made by folk artists, or eccentric self-taught artists, the
range of materials used to make art becomes even more unconventional.
James Hampton, a janitor in a government building, spent 14
years making an elaborate secret altar, The Throne of the Third Heaven, crafted
from found materials covered with aluminum foil, which was only discovered
after his death. It is now placed at the Smithsonian Art Museum.
Paul Smith, an artist with cerebral palsy, achieved
worldwide fame making beautiful images using only a typewriter. SOKV,
the art name of Muhammad Rizwan Khan, an employee of Karachi Port Trust, has
for years been making text based art to convey eccentric messages. It is only
now that he can share his work on Facebook. One can find art unexpectedly in
the cracks between the gallery and society. A trader in Karachi’s wholesale
steel market, proudly showed us the sculpture he made with scrap
steel. The Canadian artist, Pnina
Granirer, observes “The urge to create compels artists to continue working even
in the face of poverty and obscurity”
Whether art is meaningful or meaningless, the urge to create
seems to be an integral part of our emotional needs from childhood to old age,
from prehistory to post modernity. Darwin himself recognized that selection of
the fittest does not explain the creative urge, given that it does not
contribute to physical survival. Mark Pagel explains it as “Group survival” where
cultural practices ensure the survival of a society’s way of being. It explains
a warrior’s willingness to die in battle to ensure the survival of his tribe. Shakespeare
believed writing or being written about,
gives immortality to the individual: “So long as men can breathe or eyes can
see,/So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”
Durriya Kazi
May 3, 2020
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