False Creativity

By Stephen Bucaro

There are some artists, I don't want to name names, that pretend to be creating art, when in reality they're just wasting paint. I'm talking about the ones who splash some random paint on a canvas and call it abstract art. The art viewing public, thinking that they don't really understand art, then gives it high praise and thinks it has some value.

I,m not saying that it's impossible to create art through randomness, but you would need to splash paint on ten thousand canvases before you randomly ended up with something that evoked feeling and harmony. Maybe some artists have been splashing paint for so long that they know what color paint to use and just how to hold their wrist when they release the paint, but generally I view this random abstract art as false creativity.

Another example of false creativity is someone who takes another person's design or writing and copies it, making just enough minor changes to it to hopefully avoid being sewed under copyright laws. I stated earlier that almost everything ever created was built upon someone else's work. But someone else's work should be used only for inspiration, not just copied, not significantly changed, and then presented as your own work.

I also stated earlier that you can be creative by copying mother natures work. However, the great beauty of mother nature cannot be improved upon by placing mans art or architecture within it. When Frank Lloyd Wright builds his architecture on the side of a hill, it's an attempt to create a construction that is in harmony with nature, but no construction of man will ever improve the beauty of a hill left to mother nature.

I've seen artists who have placed yellow plastic bags around islands, placed their glass blown work among plants at the botanical garden, and attempted in all kinds of ways to improve upon nature by placing their work in it. All this is false creativity that is trashing up the environment. Place your glass blown work in the proper venue and you may have some beautiful art.

The biggest example of false creativity who create socially unacceptable garbage to deliberately shock, outrage, and disgust the public. Those who do this are untalented, unknown, wanna-be artists who are desperate to draw attention to themselves. If you want to consider stand-up comedy and art (which it is), this is similar to the comedians who have to use cussing and racially insulting jokes because they have no real talent and they're desperate for recognition.

I have a great deal of respect for people who earn a living with their creativity because it's not like a regular job where you're just do physical or mental work, converting time into product. You can't just turn creativity on and off like a switch. Sometimes creative inspiration comes easy, and sometimes it comes after much stress and struggle. But you must do the work. Maybe sometimes you can fool the public because they think maybe they don't understand art, but I know false creativity when I see it.

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