How is creative talent supported today? Are there great advocates? Who are they?

Alan, I really like your point: ‘It’s always been true that creativity often comes during times of adversity.’ Adversity is a problem—something to be solved, or worked out. Creativity is a powerful problem-solving tool. So it makes sense to me that the two would come as a pair.

Emily, I think the real power of social media (and to some extent, technology) is that it lets more people tap into their creative suasions. I would absolutely say that Kickstarter is the Glass House of the 2010s and Kickstarter supporters and the modern-day Philip Johnsons. The days are long gone where you have to sit down at a desk and draft a pretty picture in order to be considered ‘creative.’ Now you can record a witty video on your webcam, snap photos at your local flea market, submit doodles to a blog, or participate in online conversations, all while gaining the distinction of ‘creative.’

My opinion on this question? I largely agree with Alan in that creative talent supports creative talent. But I would say that the most significant way creatives are helping other creatives is by doing exceptionally good work. As a designer, I feel like there is always this battle about proving the worth of my creative work and the value of design as a whole. At the same time, I’ve been hired by clients because of my creativity. And because they’ve worked with designers in the past, they understand why design (and the critical thinking that comes with it) is valuable. So those past designers supported me, and I hope to support many others in the future.

Thursday, September 15 at 6:04pm

Something we discussed in our last conversation that’s still relevant is activating historic places with new and innovative programming. One of the major challenges of this task is developing ways of working with artists/architects/designers, to create interventions that do not permanently alter the environment.

So, when I saw this video it struck me as a really incredible way to support creativity, and for a team of creative people and brands to interact with a space and engage the public in a dialogue without permanently altering a place – check out the video, Melissa Shoes x Post-It @ http://bit.ly/nMLLyW

Monday, September 12 at 1:12pm

Comments by Paul Goldberger, host of the September 8, 2011 Conversations in Context program. Discussion held in the Painting Gallery at the Philip Johnson Glass House

“I don’t think anybody does it quite the way Johnson did it. It was so much an extension of his own personality, his passion for the new, his continual interest in new things. I said a minute ago that this was a very generous side of him. It was but it’s also important to realize it was also a very selfish side of him because he knew that as you get older and older, it’s harder and harder to automatically know what’s going on, and what’s in the air, and you have to sort of get it from young people.

The first time I ever came to the Glass House I was still an undergraduate, and my architecture professor who knew Philip Johnson well arranged for a few of us to come and visit and a bunch of us drove down from New Haven on a Saturday afternoon. We sat there on those very chairs and talked, and I remember we drank scotch at four o’clock in the afternoon. So, when you’re nineteen years old you can do that. I can’t anymore, but anyway, I remember thinking, god, this famous important man is actually interested in what we think, and wants to know what we have to say about things. It was only later I released he was just like a sponge soaking up anything because he wanted to know what younger people thought, and wanted to do what he could to sort of incorporate that into wherever his own thinking and doing was.

It was a combination of generosity and selfishness I guess, but for whatever combination of reasons, it resulted in a very extraordinary presence. Now, nobody else has quite had that role, as it was so much an extension of his personality, his gregariousness. He was a truly great conversationalist, he wished to conduct this kind of ongoing salon, one of them was the Four Seasons, one of them was right here. Who wouldn’t want to go to either of them? I can’t quite think of any architect today who has either of those things, let alone his personality as well, so it was a remarkable combination, and there is nothing quite like it.”

Monday, September 12 at 9:34am

Great question!
Without question, many of the institutional arrangements that provided support for creative talent in the United States have withered, died, atrophied, or simply turned their back on this critically important role.
We have all, it seems, succumbed to the logic that commercial viability is the ultimate arbiter of creative talent. Basic research has given way to applied research–if it doesn’t pay, why bother? Experimental art exists on the fringes, while major backing goes only to those projects that can claim the status of commercial blockbuster.
So how is creative talent supported today? Who are the advocates?
Increasingly, the supporters of creative talent are . . . other creative talents. Like any fragile community that is threatened with hostile conditions imposed from without (and possible extinction), creative thinkers and doers are rallying to help and encourage each other.
In all kinds of fields, you’ll see artists, designers, writers, poets, film-makers, musicians, craftspeople helping, supporting, encouraging, nurturing each other. Helped by social media, creative people are finding other creative people.
It was probably like this in the Dark Ages–or maybe the 1950s in America. You know, that other Dark Age.
But the good news is, when support and encouragement dry up from the outside, you can almost count on artists and creative people of all kinds to do their best work under the worst conditions.
It’s always been true that creativity often comes during times of adversity. It feels like that’s the case now.
Bitter-sweet, but true.

Friday, September 9 at 12:23am