About book Creators: From Chaucer And Durer To Picasso And Disney (2006)
A few years ago, I read the book Intellectuals by Paul Johnson. There really aren’t enough words to describe what that book did to my thinking about modern history. It was scandalous, salacious, shocking, sensational, and, most importantly, sentiment-shifting. The fact that people regularly put themselves at the mercy of intellectuals who, though possessing a clearly high level of intelligence, are really quite nasty, immoral, and dislikeable people says a lot about the modern world. I think the book From Bauhaus to Our House by Tom Wolfe did a great job of supplementing that lesson with the arrogance of the artistic and specifically the architectural community. But, alas! Not all were satisfied. “Ad hominem!” the critics shouted, as if a man’s character has nothing to do with whether we might want to trust our society to his masterful instruction. So Paul Johnson set out to write a new book which would detail, not the failings and shortcomings of bad men, but the achievements and prolific accomplishments of great men. This book he called Creators.I wasn’t sure if I would like Creators as much as Intellectuals. It didn’t seem to be as much of a paradigm shifting book, and, of course, it lacked the prurient hook of famous men behaving badly. However, as it turned out, I enjoyed Creators much more than Intellectuals. It is true that this book isn’t going to change your outlook on life. However, the inspiration it presents in a series of unconventional mini-bios of great creators is much more personally edifying than hearing about Victor Gollancz and his unfortunate obsession with his…um…member.So, beginning with Chaucer and continuing on through Dürer, Shakespeare, Bach, Turner, Austen, and Twain to name a few, Johnson investigates just what it is in each of these Creators’ lives that make them so prolific and so enduring. Along the way, there were a number of people I hadn’t heard of: Hokusai, who practically invented the art of Japanese landscape painting, A.W.N. Pugin and Viollet-le-Duc who led the neo-Gothic architectural movement in England and France respectively, Balenciaga who was a famous dressmaker throughout the 20th century.One thing that I found fascinating is that in most chapters, Johnson takes two great creators, oftentimes contemporaries, and compares their legacies, showing how their unique abilities, characters, and circumstances shaped their work. In this, I’m not certain if he was intending to imitate Plutarch, but the effect if of a modern Lives giving us a list of things to imitate and avoid. The only person Johnson rips apart in this book is Picasso whom he compares to Walt Disney. Disney, Johnson concludes, is a more enduring and influential artist because Disney wished to take the nature he saw around him and transform it into art, whereas Picasso wanted to move away from nature and portray only what he saw inside his head (a trait shared by most modern artists who are unknown outside of university art departments).In conclusion Creators is a great series of mini-biographies for those interested in the prolific composers, artists, writers, and architects. Even if you’re not interested in all the specific topics the book presents, you will enjoy the personal touches and you’ll learn a good deal of fun information on the way. I, for example, didn’t think I would enjoy the chapter on Dior and Balenciaga, as I have about zero interest in fashion and dressmaking. However, I found myself fascinated and sucked into the fashion world of Paris nonetheless and hearing Johnson and learning what a conniving and horrible person Coco Chanel was. Creators has something to fit every taste and it creates a good counterpoint to Intellectuals, much the same way Chesterton’s Heretics is a perfect balance to his Orthodoxy.
At the beginning of "Creators," Paul Johnson asserts that God is the source of all human creativity. This claim, which of course can neither be proved nor disproved, means that the book's chapters merely tell how the author thinks creativity works, not why. Yes, an occasional insight appears like a comet in heavens. For example, Johnson argues that Picasso's "genius" arose from a twisted megalomania, that only his vision mattered. From that, Picasso changed art in the 20th century. I can ponder that thought. Yet Johnson's assertion that creativity is a mystery nursed in the bosom of the deity means that we mortals merely drink the milk. Maybe. But a god as cosmological genius gurgles in this reader's mind like gas bubbles in the stomach after the lactose intolerant eat bad cheese. These chapters encompass short biographies, revealing facts about creators' lives and work. Johnson does this well. He acts as biographer, music critic, and historian when he delves into, for example, J.S. Bach's life and work. Bach came from a musical family and sired one. Johnson offers several works as evidence of Bach's brilliance, namely, "St. Matthew's Passion." The author discusses why this work compelled critics' and music lovers' attention then and does now. Thus, Johnson puts Bach into his time and ably argues for the composer's relevance today. These features contribute to this book's sole strength. Johnson might have been well served with a term in Plato's academy or even the experience of ancient Greeks' frat party--a symposium. Then maybe he would've reasoned out why creativity happens. Frankly, readers would've been better served had the deity in which Johnson professes belief doused him with a stainless steel bucket of divine moo juice.
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'They say that The Economist is an excellent magazine for keeping informed about subjects you don’t know anything about, but its deficiencies begin to appear as soon as it addresses one you do. The same could be said about Creators by the British polymath Paul Johnson, whose previous books, including Modern Times and The Birth of the Modern, have also tended to take on the kind of very large subjects of which one man could hardly be expected to have deep as well as extensive knowledge. But those books had a compelling narrative line and a brilliance that was at worst idiosyncratic. The arts seem to bring out the crank in him. Creators, a collection of sketches and mini-biographies like Intellectuals, to which it is the second in a projected trilogy to be concluded with Heroes, is an even odder book. It lumps together Picasso and Disney, Bach and Balenciaga, Shakespeare and Louis Comfort Tiffany, all of whom share only the name of “creators.” Well, yes, but is that quite enough for them to have in common in order to make a subject for a book?'Read the full review, "Absent at the Creation," on our website:http://www.theamericanconservative.co...
—The American Conservative
I enjoyed Johnson’s Intellectuals, which offered biographies of a variety of famous people whose primary product was ideas. This time, Johnson is tackling creators, those whose primary product was poetry, music, novels, art, or movies. I look forward to reading this collection. Based on the sample I’ve read (up to half way through the second chapter), it seems that, as with Intellectuals, he will be attempting to draw some common threads through the lives of these characters while revealing their fascinating idiosyncrasies.
—Skylar Burris
"All the same, creation is a marvelous business, and people who create at the highest level lead a privileged life, however arduous and difficult it may be. An interesting life, too, full of peculiar aspects and strange satisfactions. That is the message of this book."The abbreviated biographical stories in Johnson's Creators are brush strokes in a much larger painting, individual pieces of a mosaic (pun absolutely intended). Opening the book with the notion that creativity is inherent in all human beings as a result of our own creation in the image of a creative (and yet uncreated) God, Johnson proceeds to take snapshot looks at the lives of some of human history's most well-known & notorious creative personalities (I would have liked to have known what his thought process was for selected those he did). Searching for any semblance of pattern or recurring characteristics, Johnson delves into the world of music, literature, art, and even fashion & decorative glass to see if he can't put his finger on some undeniable creative gene. What he finds might surprise some readers, but most creative types will probably conjure up an affirmative and familiar smile & nod. Along the way, however, Johnson makes some interesting observations about the nature of creativity: that it's not necessarily tied to intelligence or genius or moral decency, that it can be both largely derivative or highly original, that it can spring of intense education & wealth or relatively little of either. His conclusion is a refreshing and satisfying one:"The truth is, all creators are highly individual and have different views about what helps or hinders their work. Often their views are confused, or are formed so slowly and tentatively – after setbacks and failures – as to come too late materially to influence their careers, when options have closed and energy flags. It is not easy to be a creator at the higher levels, and at the highest it is often agony. All creators agree that it is a painful and often a terrifying experience, to be endured rather than relished, and preferable only to not being a creator at all."Basking in the lives of some of humanity's most powerful creatives makes for a fascinating, interesting, and thought-provoking read. My only (small) issue with the book was the very occasional editorializing that occurred without further explanation. (I'd like to know, for instance, why Johnson seems to assume that everyone already knows that Monet and the other Impressionists were so universally "dull".) Other than that, however, I found this to be a marvelous jaunt through artistic history, even during the chapter on Dior & Balenciaga (caring about fashion is simply not my thing). And, believe me, the final chapter juxtaposing Walt Disney & Pablo Picasso serves as a brilliant payoff. I love Johnson's writing and this book is no exception. Highly recommended, especially for artistically-inclined types.
—joel
