DIGITAL GAMES

While visiting the lovely colonial town of Guanajuato in Mexico, I was captivated by the colourful views of the old quarters. I could not stop photographing the alleys, the lanes and the painted walls around me. On my return home, uploading the images in my computer, I realized the amazing visual potential achieved by playing with Photoshop. I had never been interested in digital photography as art before and this was a new window opening for me. Each image became a whole new world, different from the original photograph, streets became abstract shapes juxtaposed over one another, creating impossible landscapes.  The game was on and I was hooked!

Painter Pnina Granirer at work in her Vancouver studio.

The Urge to Create; why do artists do it?

The urge to create compels artists to continue working even in the face of poverty and obscurity…why?

Text and paintings by Pnina Granirer.

 

Is the need to create imprinted in the human genes? Otherwise, why would artists continue to make art while facing a life of poverty and few rewards? The  urge to create is a universal, compelling drive that has been evident since the dawn of civilization, its roots still explored and puzzled over by philosophers.

Let’s go back in time some 35,000 years ago and imagine a few humans dressed in animal skins, walking away from the bright sunshine deep into the darkness of a cave. They bear flaming torches in the gloomy darkness and draw images of animals on the uneven walls in the flickering light. Their tools are simple: sticks, earth pigments of ochre and soot, their hands, perhaps pieces of bone and fur.  They draw what they know: antelopes, bison, leopards and other animals. The accuracy and beauty of their images is astounding, although they have not had the benefit of art schools or instruction of any kind.

As an artist, I am fascinated by the thought of the first human who picked up a black stick charred in the fire and made a mark on the rough stone wall of the cave. Instinct? How could they draw such anatomically accurate animals without actually seeing them?  These drawings helped early humans to think symbolically, allowing them to hold the image of the antelope in mind while tracing it on the wall, thus connecting the lines drawn from their imagination with the living animal. Today psychologists define this ability as working memory.

We also know that children are born with the ability to draw spontaneously, an ability that, unfortunately, is often lost later on.  It seems to me that the ability and drive to create what we now call ‘art’, has been with us since the beginnings of human consciousness, and has been expressed in an amazing variety of ways in different cultures. From the cave paintings, petroglyphs and prehistoric sculptures, to Sumerian and Egyptian monumental sculptures and architecture, from realistic rendering of animals to abstract symbolism, from storytelling murals and religious content to more modern abstraction, the range is absolutely mind-boggling.

In the ancient world, the concept of the artist in particular and of personal expression in general, did not exist. Artists were considered useful artisans, more like servants working for a master, usually Kings or the Church and trained mainly as apprentices. Like other trades, painting and sculpting were hereditary and little or no attention was paid to personal artistic expression.

Only during the Renaissance, in the 15^th C, do we see the rise of individual artists. In 1546, Giorgio Vasari, a Florentine artist, wrote The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, mostly about 13^th – 15 C fellow Florentines: Paolo Ucello, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael and many others. He discussed their careers and personalities in a way that left no doubt that ‘Great artists were great and important people’. 

This was a crucially new idea! But even while artists were appreciated for their worth, they still depended on their patrons for survival. 

In the 18^th C, great patrons began to disappear, and at the same time artists began to develop their own styles.  In France, the visual arts exploded with painters like Courbet, Millet, Edouard Manet, Renoir and Claude Monet. Liberated from the obligation to produce work to order, these and other artists sought their own language and form of expression. It was the age of Art for Art’s sake.  Various ‘isms’ followed: impressionism, expressionism, symbolism, surrealism, and recently post-modernism.

But now artists were on their own, and had to find buyers for their work. Art for Art’s sake was a big shift for everyone involved. Artists’ insistence to be free of constraints in the style and expression that patrons would impose, stimulated artistic creativity and generated the now familiar ‘isms’.  But it also made it harder to sell work, and to survive as an artist. Freedom of expression increases poverty among artists; they must actually make their living selling art. Monet wrote heartbreaking letters to his dealer, begging him to sell more work or just pay him so he could survive, and Gauguin wrote similarly to his dealer. But from then on, innovation and originality have remained very important, in spite of difficulties and the struggles facing the artists.

So here we are again.  Why do artists continue to create in the face of poverty and lack of recognition?

Here is my own story as a practicing artist: I have been drawing since childhood, and made my first money selling my small pictures at school in grade 2. Making things was my favourite thing to do, and my dream was to be an artist. In Israel, where I immigrated at age 15, life was difficult and money scarce, so I helped my parents by painting lampshades for children’s rooms and decorating wooden clocks. At the time it seemed that becoming an artist was an impossible dream, a luxury I could ill afford.

 

Creation, 1972.  Acrylic on masonite tile, 12×12 in.

With this in mind I decided to become an architect, the closest profession to my passion for art that I could imagine. (No wonder so many architects are closet artists!)  But fate decided otherwise. My husband went to study at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where there was no school of architecture.  But there was an art school teaching graphic arts – described also as commercial art. Four years later I graduated and began working as an illustrator.

We moved to the US in 1962, where I found myself in new situation. Without a work visa, I could not continue working. But I could make art – with very little hope of any gain. My interest at the time was in woodblock printmaking. I was excited to discover a new technique of working with just printing inks and a roller, without using brushes.  (A couple of years after we moved to Vancouver, I was surprised by The Grand Hotel series, in which Maxwell Bates used exactly the same technique!)

Gradually, my work began to sell. I had the chance to exhibit in good galleries.  I enjoyed some artistic success.  Ted Lindberg wrote a book about me and Mehdi Ali produced a film by the same title, shown on BRAVO!TV and the Knowledge Network.

But in the art world there is never any security; artists can’t count on stability. Relying on my own experience, I can think of several reasons why artists continue working.

1. Creative people can’t help producing art. An extreme example is ‘art brut’, or outsider art.  These artists have no art education, live in isolation, and have no contact with or knowledge of other artists. They are obsessive in making each piece, then quickly move to the next one. They don’t think of themselves as ‘artists’. Most of them are uneducated, and live in remote villages, mental health institutions, or prisons. When I first saw ‘art brut’, in the Musée de l’art brut in Lausanne, it blew me away with its power. One cannot but wonder at the sheer need of these people to create. Are we programmed to create? Is it in our genes?

2. Creating art makes you feel better. Creating art is therapeutic. The activity of making things fulfills a deep need for self-expression.  This is obvious to any artist who teaches art to others who need to do it for their own pleasure.

3. We need self-expression and originality. Ours is a history of expressing ideas and emotions through art. Expressionist painters Edvard Munch, Max Beckman, Emil Nolde and Egon Schiele expressed both social misery and inner turmoil. Another obvious example are Vincent Van Gough’s wild, obsessive paintings.

To the question why they paint, some artists would reply: “Why do I breathe?” Is this the same urge that compelled our prehistoric ancestors to put marks on cave walls? American artist Leonard Baskin said: “Art is man’s distinctly human way of fighting death”. Is this the primal, deep-set urge to leave footprints behind?  Artist Keith Haring said “The act of creation is a kind of ritual. The origins of art and human existence lie hidden in this mystery of creation. Human creativity reaffirms and mystifies the power of life.”

4. We need recognition: playing the game.  Unfortunately, a prerequisite for recognition is ‘playing the game’: following current trends, making good connections and having the right personality. Like all social fashions, fame and recognition are inaccessible without conforming, but they are powerful motivators for some artists. For me, it was sobering to realize that talent is only a small part of ‘success’. Not having followed the fashions of the day, I paid a price. But I could not have done it any other way.

On a lighter note, Robert Rauschenberg reflected the reaction of most people to artists who, against all odds, continue to create:  “You find two extremes usually as clichés. One is that ‘Oh, you’re a painter? Isn’t that wonderful! You’re sensitive, you’ve got all these wonderful, beautiful thoughts’! And the other is, ‘You’re a little crazy, aren’t you?’”

Perhaps we are a little crazy. Otherwise, why would we do it?

 

This talk was first given in 2010 at the Philosophers Art Café at the Lord Byng School for the Mini-Arts and sponsored by Simon Fraser University Continuing Education.

It was then published on line in the Vancouver Observer.

 

 

 

 

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Pnina Granirer