Arts & International Affairs: Volume 2, Number 2 | Page 56

J. P. Singh:
I’d call that cultural. I feel creativity could come from anyone, even an artistic
child crying. The example Barnett Newman, the expressionist painter, gives
us writing in the ����s, is that the first human cries in prehistoric caves were
anguished cries; they were about people trying to recognize themselves.
Newman said that before human beings became instrumental—became
farmers or made tools—they were crying; they were scratching the walls
with artistic representations. And so, for Barnett Newman, the first human
being was an artist.
Dorothy Miell:
Well, I suppose it depends whether we are looking back at that and saying
they were artists, or whether the people around them at the time recognized
that set of behaviours as art. It’s hard: How can you put yourself back
in the mind of those early humans? Did they as a community see such
scratches as something that we would call creative or artistic? I think Mihály
Csíkszentmihályi, a theorist about creativity, would say that it’s as much a
social and cultural event as an individual or psychological one. Creativity is
not simply in the individual person, it’s in the sharing and the community.
J. P. Singh:
Can it only be art only when other people recognize it? Or is it just art
because they did something that in that moment of isolation? People in
prison have written poetry; William Faulkner, in his very lonely condition,
wrote a novel on his walls. It’s humbling to find out later that where we
thought a person had nothing, art was created.
Dorothy Miell:
Well, they expressed themselves.
J. P. Singh:
Right.
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