Signature Style vs. Evolution

A friend of mine here in Panama, Dawn Smith (Willy Smith's wife) is an artist. Over coffee, while visiting the Smiths', we'll talk about Art, we'll talk about technology, and we'll talk about what drives us.

What drives us? Dawn explains a bit in the context of an artist in her article, 'Signature Style'.

...We'd all like to do consistently excellent pieces. For me, even "consistently good" works. I'm talking basically good art, good aesthetics, good technique, workmanship, etc. But what many art dealers want, besides this, is sameness - same media or subject matter, lots of things done in a similar style. They call it "signature style". It is easy to sell, since the client doesn't need an education to see that the artist did it, and does it well.

One of my college ceramic teachers said about my year-end project: "make about 50 of those and you'll have a style". His goal was to teach me to be a "consistent" potter. But my goal wasn't about doing 50 pots in the same style. My style was already there, if he'd looked through the whole body of my work to date. My goal is communication using several media--and my signature style and worldview naturally come out when I honestly do that. Sameness doesn't mean signature style, nor is it another word for consistency. Consistency to me means high quality with an understanding and mastery of media, in the overall body of an artist's work...

...The fact that a signature style can be a philosophy or principal, as well as a brushstroke or a color palette, is something that art dealers need to learn how to sell. This starts with us practicing artists, defining what "consistency" actually means. There is a new world full of young artists who can write an aria as easily as a watercolor, and equally well. What happens when they start synthesizing disciplines? We can't rely on "sameness" as a definition of mastery or consistency. If we're smart we'll pass our careful definition along to the schools and gallery owners. This has exciting ramifications for the art world, so we should be ready for the ride...

Synthesize. Remix. Make what is better. A distinct parallel with technology is here as well.

Aside from the obvious - meeting the basic requirements of food, shelter, clothing, electricity and internet access - there is another requirement that the average business person (or person trying to become a business person) cannot understand. Where the modern culture seems to say, "You did that well, you should do that forever and make lots of money!", we respond, "We already did that. Why on Earth would we want to do that again?".

Some people just aren't cut out to become the modern day automatons that modern society seems to require. Under the conformity within the system, there is a drive to do more and become better by diversifying - something seemingly non-intuitive in this day and age of specialization. As Robert A. Heinlein said,

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

While there is much to be said for discipline, many people do not understand the discipline of a creative mind - and also, many people are creative or who think that they are creative do not understand discipline. But there is discipline to be had in the creative mind, though it does not suffer boring repetition well. Paul Graham touched on it ever so fleetingly in Hackers and Painters, which in retrospect was somewhat of a dull tap in the darkness to try to get the business world to understand creative process.

Creative Process. If you're not creative, it's likely you'll never understand the creative process. Some people play solitaire while listening to music from the 1960s, some people read quotations (as I do) or classic works, or modern works - and some people just play a musical instrument. Everyone is different. But another part of the discipline of the creative process is to s t r e t c h. Automation is stagnation, specialization that works for selling pet rocks or operating systems (if you want to commoditize software and say it's an object, let's call it pet rocks) does not allow the creative person to stretch.

The creative mind does not suffer boredom - it's a rebellion against the discipline of the creative mind. Sometimes repetition is necessary, but in most cases the creative mind will evolve new ways of doing things - usually because they do not feel that the ways they have used are quite good enough. While some balk at the distance to the horizon, the creative mind often imagines what is possible past that same horizon. Making it to the horizon and beyond it takes discipline, whereas for the non-creative mind the discipline is in doing the same thing consistenly.

So while some talk of a 'signature style', I think the creative mind is more disciplined toward 'evolution'. Signature Style sells, but doesn't improve beyond it's own scope. Evolution, on the other hand, is a lot more work and while there are low valleys, the peaks are things which cannot be understood by signature-style, gold-seeking dwarves mining under the mountain. Where one's treasure is the gold, the other's is the sky.

Specialization is for insects.