Aesthetics, jugs and rock’n’roll

Definitions of ‘creativity’ are elusive. Here, Paul Feldwick examines what exactly aesthetics contribute to our appreciation of the world – concluding that creativity might be better defined as an aesthetic quality rather than originality

I was in my kitchen one day last summer, wondering what to talk about at the TEDx New Street conference I’d been invited to, when my eye fell on two jugs on the top shelf of the dresser. You can see them in the picture. They’re both British, modern studio pottery, and I’d bought them both in the past few years.

What interested me about these two jugs was this. I was noticing that I’ve always liked one of them much more than the other. Yet they’re basically very similar – hand-made, earthenware, about the same size, same general shape, and with a similar origin.

At the TEDx talk I invited the audience to express their own preference. Slightly to my surprise, not everyone made the same choice as me – but it did seem that most people found it easy to make a choice.

The left jug comes from John Leach pottery in the Somerset Levels. The right jug is made by Svend Bayer, who works down in darkest Devon. For me, there’s something about the Bayer jug that puts it in a different class from the Leach. For me, it’s easily more – what? creative? beautiful? special? rewarding? Certainly if I had to keep only one of them, this would be it.

But it’s not easy to say exactly why my response to the two jugs is so different. I can try to put it into words: I like the sexy roundness of the Bayer, I like its distinctive texture, it seems to have been made with some kind of energy that I don’t get from the Leach. But even these comments don’t go far to explaining my response; we seem to be in the realm of very subtle, sensual differences which resist analysis or definition.

Now I want to propose that the way I make this choice between the two jugs represents an important aspect of many consumer choices. Indeed, if the jugs were in a shop together they could be an actual consumer choice. And I know which I would pay more for.

Value added View

I propose that the principal dimension on which I’m making this choice between the two jugs is aesthetic. According to Ken Wilbur, since the 18th century we have made a separation in our minds between three sets of values – the moral, the instrumental, and the aesthetic.

• Moral – is it right, ethical?

• Instrumental – does it work, is it effective?

• Aesthetic – is it beautiful (or grotesque, comic, sublime)?

My experience is that in organisations, it’s instrumental values that dominate. And conversely, ‘aesthetic’ is not a word that commands much respect. Maybe its associations with Oscar Wilde and the ‘aesthetic movement’ haven’t helped: it carries historical overtones of elitism, effeminacy, impracticality. But more fundamentally the word means something highly subjective, something resistant to analysis and control – therefore, it is something with which organisations feel uncomfortable.

So we don’t hear the word ‘aesthetic’ used much in business. A word we do hear quite a lot, although it’s still treated with some suspicion, is creativity. It’s commonly said that this is a good thing and business needs more of it. Ad agencies and others hail it as their core value. To some extent, I believe the word ‘creativity’ stands in for ‘aesthetics’.

But to get inside corporate HQ – even to get inside the ad agency – the word creativity has been redefined to mean something that is very different from what I mean by aesthetics. And I think by doing this, we have put ourselves in danger of missing something very important – and something that business really needs.

A matter of opinion

I’ve read a lot of management and academic literature on the subject of ‘creativity’, and I’ve also observed first hand how the word is used in advertising and marketing. And I’ve noticed two things that are almost universal, but which I find increasingly odd:

• creativity is defined as involving originality or innovation;
• it’s nearly always linked with the phrase ‘the creative idea’, as if the output of creativity is always ‘an idea’.

Sternberg and Lubart, at the start of their massive academic Handbook of Creativity, define ‘creativity’ as ‘work that is novel, original, unexpected’. The Royal Society of Arts’ report on Creativity in Organisations talks of ‘creativity and innovation: words we treat as synonymous’. Elsewhere, it equates creativity not just with novelty but with ‘new ideas’.

The commonest image for ‘creativity’ is the lightbulb going on – the ‘bright idea’. People in ad agencies universally talk about ‘creative ideas’. James Webb Young called his famous book A Technique for Producing Ideas. You can find examples just about any week in Campaign, such as the feature ‘How Advertising’s Big Ideas Are Born’. The IPA’s booklet, Judging Creative Ideas, uses the same type of language on every page. And I’ve just opened chapter 1 of Hegarty on Advertising, ‘Ideas’, which begins: ‘Ideas are what advertising is built upon. We worship them, we seek them, fight over them, applaud them and value them above everything else.’

You may be so used to these ways of talking that they seem natural and sensible, and of course, they come on powerful authority. Yet to me they seem increasingly strange and even wrongheaded. Not just in terms of what the word creativity means to me, but in terms of what, in reality, I think it contributes to business success.

I can illustrate this by applying these thoughts to my two jugs. I might say that Bayer’s jug is more ‘creative’ than Leach’s. But this makes no sense if ‘creativity and innovation are synonymous’. Neither jug is original or innovative. Bayer is working, as far as I can see, in a tradition of ancient Devonshire ceramics that goes back centuries. This jug could almost be 200 years old. Its beauty, its energy, its aesthetic quality have nothing to do with novelty.

Neither does it make any sense to me to talk about the ‘creative idea’ behind either jug. The idea is – what? – a vessel made of clay for holding and pouring liquid? Such banalities add nothing to our understanding of what makes them good. Creativity here does not belong in an idea, it is in the thing itself.

Applying the ideas

Are my jugs an exceptional case? I don’t think so. The same is true of almost any cultural artefact. Take, for instance, Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilboa.

Here, you could certainly claim a high degree of innovation or originality. But is it good merely because it’s original?

Or are we here looking at something that happens to be original, and good? And what is the ‘creative idea’ here? Any answer to this would represent, at best, an early stage in the architect’s imaginative process: applied to the actual building, it’s probably an absurd question.

We needn’t limit ourselves to the field of architecture. If you listen to an early recording by Elvis Presley – such as ‘Money Honey’ – musically, you hear nothing new. It’s the same three-chord sequence that is behind a million rock and blues songs, there’s little melody to speak of and the rhythm is regular and predictable. Whatever makes this exciting, memorable or moving isn’t innovation, still less a creative idea. It’s taste, timing, energy, presence, artistry. As with my jugs, we can try very hard to put it into words, and ultimately never succeed.

What is the creative idea behind a painting by Kandinski, or Monet’s Water Lilies, or Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony, or Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Voodoo Chile’? The fact is, we don’t respond to ‘ideas’. We respond to actual buildings, paintings, musical performances. Or actual advertisements.

The purest form

Our common notion of ‘creativity’ has been redefined so as to airbrush aesthetic quality right out of the picture. Yet I argue that it is this aesthetic quality that generally makes most of the difference when people choose designs, advertisements, or brands.

Aesthetic doesn’t have to be a dirty word. Its original sense, from the Greek, was of ‘perception through the senses’. The idea that we can know and respond to things directly through the senses, not just through abstract reasoning, was developed in the 18th century by Giambattista Vico, as a challenge to Descartes’ idea that the mind was somehow separate from the body.

Modern writers have suggested a definition of aesthetic as ‘emotional response to a perceived stimulus’. This should sound familiar to us: we now have more and more evidence suggesting that human choice is fundamentally affective, holistic, non-analytic, a subconscious, emotional response to sensual stimuli. Paul Watzlawick argues that it is ‘analog’ communication – largely non-verbal, based on gesture and nuance, beyond analysis – that influences our relationships with people or things.

If we understand ‘aesthetic values’ in this context – a direct, emotional response to sensual stimuli, that may take place subconsciously and that normally resists analysis – they may well be central to how people prefer and choose one design over another, one package, one brand, one advertisement.

If that’s so, our present discourse about ‘creativity’ is misleading and counterproductive. Based on our improved understanding of how people make choices, we ought to redefine creativity, so that it is primarily about aesthetic quality rather than originality for its own sake. And we need to recognise that it is manifested in tangible images, sound and performance, not in abstract ideas.

I’m convinced this is what Bill Bernbach meant when he said: ‘Is creativity some obscure, esoteric art form? Not on your life, it’s the most practical thing a business man can employ.’

A successful ad from the 1920s for a US music school’s correspondence course had the famous headline: ‘They laughed when I sat down at the piano but when I started to play!’ Bernbach commented: ‘What if this ad had been written in different language? Would it have been as effective? What if it had said: ‘They admired my piano playing…’ Would that have been enough? Or was it the talented, imaginative expression of the thought that did the job?’

‘The difference,’ he concluded, ‘is artistry – the intangible thing that business distrusts.’ And maybe that’s a word we should value more today. I urge you to prove this to yourself, by considering any highly successful artwork, advert, pack design or brand. Ask yourself honestly – what makes this excellent, powerful, moving? Hardly ever will it be its degree of originality. Nor will it be that meaningless abstraction, the creative idea. It will be the aesthetic quality, the artistry of the whole.

Based on a talk given at TEDx New Street on 9 October 2010.

www.tedxnewstreet.com/paul_feldwick.Html

Paul Feldwick is an independent Consultant

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Neither jug is original or innovative. their beauty, energy, and aesthetic quality have nothing to do with novelty

‘Aesthetic’ is not a word that commands much respect: it carries historical overtones of elitism, effeminacy, impracticality if you listen to a recording by elvis presley, it’s the same three-chord sequence that is behind a million rock and blues songs. whatever makes this exciting, memorable or moving isn’t innovation, still less a creative idea. it’s taste, timing, energy, presence, artistry