Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney | Paul M. Johnson

Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney | Paul M. Johnson | The brighter side of human achievement

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Creators: From Cha...

	Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney Paul M. Johnson, 2006 - 320 pages average customer review:based on 14 reviews view larger image
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Twenty years ago Paul Johnson published Intellectuals, biographical essays forming what Kingsley Amis described as ""a valuable and entertaining Rogues? Gallery of Adventures of the Mind."" It was a bestseller in many of the score of languages into which it was translated, but also criticized for describing clever people ""so as to bring out their bad behavior"" (Bernard Williams, New York Review of Books).

Paul Johnson now meets the charge with this companion volume of essays on outstanding and prolific creative spirits. He looks at writers from Chaucer and Shakespeare to Mark Twain and T. S. Eliot, artists like Dürer, and architects such as Pugin and Viollet-le-Duc. He explains the different ways in which Jane Austen, Madame de Stael, and George Eliot struggled to make their voices heard in the masculine hubbub. Victor Hugo allows him to ask, ""Can imaginative genius coexist with low intelligence?"" Johann Sebastian Bach gives him the opportunity to focus on the role of genetics in creativity and to explore the strange world of the organ loft. Louis Comfort Tiffany takes him into the technology of glass-making and the tragic vagaries of aesthetic fashion. Some essays make illuminating comparisons: of Turner with his contemporary the Japanese master Hokusai, and of the two great dress designers, Balenciaga and Dior. The final essay examines those two inventive geniuses, Picasso and Disney, and asks which had the greater influence on the visual arts of the twentieth century -- and beyond.

Paul Johnson believes that creation is a mysterious business that cannot be satisfactorily analyzed. But it can be illustrated in such a way as to bring out its salient characteristics. That is the purpose of this instructive and witty book.

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A paean to the life of creation

If in a previous work 'Intellectuals' Johnson was all acid in criticizing those who in his phrase ' put ideas before people'.In this work he is all sweetness in praising great creators who as he sees it ' people before ideas'. Johnson's praise of creation however is not confined to those we normally think of creators. Like the great American pragmatist thinkers he sees ' creation' as an inherent part of human everyday life. Furthermore he gives this concept a religious grounding, by speaking of the idea that God the Creator wishes human beings to be creators also. This idea is Biblically derived, and is a reflection of Johnson's own religious view.
In the opening chapter Johnson commends creators for their courage in overcoming adversities, for their persistence against rejection of many kinds. He writes, " What strikes me, surveying the history of creativity, is how little fertile and productive people often received in the way of honors, money or anything else." He gives the example of Vermeer whose great dedication and hard work did succeed in lifting his family from poverty. He says that Bach and Mozart too never really had full financial security despite their enormous productive efforts.
Johnson is an especial chamption of prolific, hard- working creators. His opening chapter is on Chaucer who virtually invents the modern English language and literature. He then writes of Durer one of those artists who was always learning, expanding and developing his powers in new areas. His third chapter is devoted to Shakespeare who Johnson calls " the most creative personality in human history" Johnson makes studies of two great Shakespeare characters Falstaff and Hamlet. Johnson focuses on the new phrases and words Shakespeare has given to the language. He emphasizes the speed and variety of Shakespeare's creation, the tremendous insight into human life and character. He sees Hamlet as a kind of deep thinker whose reflections throw light on every important aspect of human existence.
If Johnson points to Shakespeare as proof that the great creator can come from anywhere is in no way dependent on high origins- then he in his next chapter on Bach focuses on the opposite aspect, the genetic component. He writes of the Bach family which for three hundred years from the age of Luther to the age of Bismarck were at the heart of German music. Bach is praised not only for his hardworking dedication, but for his enormous originality- his creating in every music form known at the time ( except Opera) and expanding the dimensions and scope of each form.
In the chapter on Turner and Hokusai Johnson writes of creators who did not go outside their own form of creation- who were wholly dedicated to it. "Turner transformed landscape , during his lifetime into the greatest of visual arts,and left the world of painting permanently changed- indeed artists all over the world are still learning from him ..... Hokusai in effect created Japanese landscape painting from nothing, but he also portrayed Japanese life in the first half of the nineteenth century with dazzling graphic skill and an encyclopedia completeness that have never been equaled anywhere"
In his chapter on Jane Austen Johnson focuses on the special difficulties women have had historically in attempting to be creators.He points out that most women were simply barred by their families from any creative endeavor. He tells in a few especially instructive pages the story of George Eliot, who was at the outset something of a rejected if not ugly, then very plain 'duckling'. With the years ' she was increasingly recognized not only as a storyteller of extraordinary gifts but as moral mentor of formidable power. Polite society , far from shutting her out, queued up at her door and was often refused admittance." Jane Austen, Johnson indicates did not have anything like Eliot's success in her own lifetime, but her books are far more widely read today. Johnson points to her early elegance, self- confidence and ebullience in writing. Johnson sees her great transformation coming when she looked into the Romantic novels of her own day, and understood that she could do far better than them."Quite naturally, she perceived that real life , as she knew it from personal experience , was much more fun to write about than impossible adventures of which she knew nothing." Johnson laments her early death and puts her with those creators Keats, Shelley, Mozart, Weber, Girtin, Gericault, Bonningon who died young and left many with a longing for works of theirs which would never be. Johnson also writes of the architects A.W.N. Pugin and Viollet- le-Duc, of Victor Hugo, Mark Twain (For Johnson 'humor'is one of the greatest of all creative gifts) Tiffany, T.S. Eliot, Picasso and Walt Disney.
This is a wonderfully entertaining book. It is centered on a 'positive' subject most people I suspect are happy to read and learn more about . However here I would register one note, if not of dissent, then of reservation.
In his opening chapter Johnson writes of the great creative power of Wagner's operas. Johnson ignores however their evil and destructive ideology- He ignores the fact that great creators have often been evil people. He ignores too the fact that 'destruction is inherent in certain kinds of creation'.And great creators are often those with a kind of overriding ambition, a kind of Faustian hunger that means their creation brings with it great destruction.
The subject is darker than his list of creative heroes indicates. There is a whole literature from Rudolf Wittkauer to Kay Redfield -Jamison on the saturnic, dark, depressive force behind much great creation. And many many of the greatest creators were not the kind of sensible, practical productive businesslike figures Johnson praises. Consider
Johnson as religious believer does not really raise the question of why great creative gift and powers are sometimes given by God to evil people.
In his final chapter he speaks briefly about scientific and technological discovery as creative work. He cites Humphrey Davy's invention of the safety- mask for miners, and the over one thousand inventions of the greatest inventor of all , Edison. But he does not talk about Newton and Einstein. And he does not even begin to point out how scientific and technical creation are at the heart of so many dilemnas, including 'survival' facing Mankind today. In other words here too the darker sides, the more problematic sides of 'creation' are not considered.
Again though, despite these reservations, this is an exceptionally instructive and enjoyable work.

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The brighter side of human achievement

I always make it a point to dip into the über-prolific Johnson's latest tome; his magnificent "Modern Times" had a most profound effect on the way I see and interpret the world. This latest effort is a sequel, of sorts, to Johnson's incisive "Intellectuals," in which the author drew stark contrasts between the lofty ideals of a gaggle of influential thinkers from Rousseau to Bertrand Russell and the frequently dreadful ways in which they treated the people in their lives. The message: beware letting such busybodies run things, as they recognize only "the heartless tyranny of ideas." As Johnson explains in the Introduction to "Creators", he caught a lot of flak over "Intellectuals"' "mean-spiritedness" (I prefer to call it "unwelcome truth-telling") and thereupon resolved to write a more "positive" survey of some of the world's most accomplished creative minds.

Creators could easily have been several times its final length, and one can sense in several cases how tempted Johnson must have been to expand his survey. In the section on Jane Austen, for example, Johnson manages to squeeze in micro-discussions of several other female authors, such as George Eliot and Mme. de Staël. (Perhaps he was trying to head off accusations of sexism?) By and large, however, Creators cuts the critical commentaries close to the bone and hews to its stated goal of using the figures discussed here to illustrate various ways in which the creative urge may manifest itself. Johnson evinces a clear preference for practical-minded, nose-to-the-grindstone geniuses such as Shakespeare, J.S. Bach, and Albrecht Dürer, who married disdain for overly "intellectual" theorizing to superhuman work ethics. By far the least likable of these pivotal figures is Pablo Picasso, whom Johnson compares unfavorably with Walt Disney in perhaps the most controversial of his essays. (Those who have read Johnson's "Art: A History" will be familiar with Johnson's attitude towards Picasso; it's the direct comparison with Disney, a bête noîre of the same cultural leftists who idolize Picasso, that will drive the latter folks crazy.) The book isn't as memorable or as eye-opening as "Intellectuals", but it will give a reader new to Johnson a fairly decent flavor of the man's working methods (dare I say, his sense of creativity?).

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Four stars for the facts, two for the tone...

If you ever read the syndicated political columns of William F. Buckley, the premier American literary conservative of his era, you undoubtedly recall that once in each effort he threw in an obscure vocabulary word, precisely used by him, never encountered by his readers before. It was educational, if you had a dictionary handy, but because this quirk of his was used judiciously, (one might say conservatively), it was forgiven. Mr. Johnson, obviously a fine scholar with a great education, who has rubbed shoulders with some of the best thinkers of the 20th century, has the Buckley flaw, but to a fault. It seemed that a word or a foreign phrase which baffled me popped up 300 times. I have four years of college and I'm not inexperienced in the world at age 63, (as of yesterday) but I found this word-dropping to be offensive. The one time I ever saw Bill Buckley in person, he did his trick in a way that also offended me: The week of Martin Luther King's murder I saw Buckley in a debate on civil rights with Julian Bond at Vanderbilt University, and Buckley, referring to the assassination, called it a "regicide" which was too cute by half, and should have been resisted by such a disciplined man. Johnson almost goes that far as well. One learns a great deal about the famous and the relatively famous thinkers and creators he profiles between these covers, but his prose style is cumbersome, and his attitude tedious. It took me weeks to read this, because I was only content with putting up with the book for four or five pages at a sitting. I know a lot more about the subjects of this volume now, but I also know a lot more about its author, and that makes me little interested in his other works.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3

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