00IV of potential hindrances to our creative development continued…

Have you ever been really ramped up over an idea that came to you and then dropped it because you knew you couldn’t make some component yourself or you didn’t know how to draw something or you didn’t have time (or weren’t interested) to learn a new skill etc.? Did you ever think, well I could use some technology or get someone else to do that for me or I could just trace this? Did you wonder or conclude that this would be cheating?

Making something as difficult as possible tends to challenge our vanity. I realize this is a review of what I was saying earlier on but it also applies here. If we’re told something is perfectly easy we may conclude that it can’t be the real thing. One reason for this could be us wanting something to be really tough so we can flatter ourselves that we are serious and those other people are just dabblers. But what if we are choosing to use intelligence versus effort? Will this always raise the question, ‘isn’t it cheating?’

Barack Obama by Kehinde Wiley, oil on canvas, 2018. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. © 2018 Kehinde Wiley.

Back in the intro of this chapter, I mentioned a contemporary artist by the name of Kehinde Wiley. He is well known for his large scale insanely detailed paintings that place him in the realm of art history’s portrait painting tradition. Due to the high demand of his work (and probably other reasons), Wiley started shipping his canvases to China and hired a team to paint certain parts. Seems like a pretty intelligent move considering the skill, labour and time his work requires. He doesn’t try to hide this in any way and seems quite confident about his creative process. He does, however, get frustrated when people get hung up on this and pester him about the specifics:

“I don’t want you to know every aspect of where my hand starts and ends, or how many layers go underneath the skin, or how I got that glow to happen,” he says. “It’s the secret sauce! Get out of my kitchen!” 

It may surprise (or mean nothing to) you that many of the lionized painters of the past (like Titian, Ingres, and Vermeer) were probably using old-timey gizmos like lenses and mirrors to pull off some of their mastery. British artist, David Hockney, published a mammoth book called Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters sharing his extensive research regarding the technology painters likely utilized to accomplish certain esteemed craft in their work. Many art historians deny and are appalled at such a theory but that just makes me wonder if they are trying to save face or if it’s just the power and money thing… does it dissolve too much of the mystery? Are all the ‘master’ works a sham if the artists used intelligent tools? Does the entire value of the work hinge on the perceived solo genius skill? What about the choice of subject and the act of painting? Hockney didn’t write this book to expose a bunch of cheaters and has said, ‘The lens can’t draw a line, only the hand can do that, the artist’s hand and eye … This whole insight about optical aids doesn’t diminish anything; it merely suggests a different story.”

One of my favourite art documentaries is the 2014 film, Beltracchi: The Art of Forgery (Beltracchi – Die Kunst der Fälschung). It is based on the life of German art forger Wolfgang Beltracchi, who produced hundreds of fake paintings and created an international art scam to sell them as original works by famous artists. Among these were Max Ernst, André Derain, Fernand Léger and Georges Braque. If you are thinking Beltracchi took a sham-ful short-cut to success, I encourage you to watch the film and see for yourself his next-level process. He wasn’t just copying an existing painting, he was inventing a new painting in the style of a famous artist; he had to go through great lengths that included stripping paint off of old canvases, aging a new painting to fit it’s proper time period, inventing an art dealer that the paintings could be traced back to and pulling the wool over the eyes of many an expert. He had all the labour and skill that people usually respect. It’s easy to say that this man ‘cheated’ because he lied and fooled the art world and yet before he got busted (titanium white gave him away) all of his work was perceived as extraordinary. His paintings hold an undeniable essence. He may have broken the law but his work is creative expression. In his words:

Wolfgang Beltracchi. Photo credit unknown.

“Every philharmonic orchestra merely interprets the composer. My goal was to create new music by that composer. In doing so, I wanted to find the painter’s creative centre and become familiar with it, so that I could see through his eyes how his paintings came about and, of course, see the new picture I was painting through his eyes – before I even painted it.”

Just to be clear, I am not making a case for creativity to be an unlawful act; though there obviously is a long history of creative expression being perceived as blasphemous and/or illegal due to its ever-evolving nature that upsets the status quo. My intention here is to question perceptions of cheating and how they might stand in the way of a personal creative act. 

Thomas Nozkowski. Untitled # 2, 2012.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Stewart S. MacDermott Fund, 2012.

Once, in one of my college level art class critiques, a student declared that another student’s work lost all meaning for him when he found out she had purchased her canvases at the bookstore (the scene took me back to elementary school and the disdain children direct toward someone who has traced). To him, a true artist would stretch their own canvases. He may have been speaking from the pressure that we all feel around the ‘legitimacy’ of our work but his gesture of shaming left me wondering where you would draw the line with that kind of judgement. Would I also need to snare and shave a badger for the hairs in my brush and then whittle a handle for it? Did he know that American painter Thomas Nozkowski had a very successful career painting almost exclusively on low-grade store-bought canvas boards? I mean, it’s perfectly fine if someone wants to stretch their own canvases but why should anyone else care if they don’t? 

Personally, if an impulse or idea comes to me and it requires skills beyond me, I will find someone or some technology to assist me in any way so that the work can exist. I won’t allow my personal lack to hold me back from a creative experience and I’m not going to labour for someone else’s ideals. This also means that if I cannot find the person or technology to assist me I won’t let that hold me back either. The initial idea spark may take some surprising twists with or without certain tools and that’s part of the fun of creativity—– it does not discern what is or isn’t cheating. Ideas have their own reasons for existing.

No one can build you the bridge on which you, and only you,
must cross the river of life. 

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

[**Title image: Keith Haring]

*Disclaimer: No copyright infringement intended. I do my best to track down original sources. All rights and credits reserved to respective owner(s). Email me for credits/removal.