MUST WE DESTROY IN ORDER TO CREATE?

When Pablo Picasso said, "Every act of creation is first an act of destruction," his words were meant in the context of artistic creativity. He believed that we must destroy past knowledge to be truly creative. While I agree with the sentiment of this statement, I argue that it can be made simpler and more far-reaching. We can acknowledge that while destroying past knowledge is part of the process, the pure physicality of creation and destruction forms the basis.

We can imagine a simple version of this physicality play out by visualising an artistic setting up and painting on canvas. A typical scene unfolds as follows: the artist takes out her blank canvas from where it is stowed, places it on the easel, closes her eyes, and imagines the final creation. She decides where to start, sets out her oils, mixes them, dips her brush into the paint, and then begins. It is at the point of the beginning that she destroys while she creates.

The beginning of the artist's creation is the end of something that came before. The moment she makes her first mark on the blank canvas, the canvas ceases to exist as it was. The blank canvas is now no more. There is no way the artist can avoid this for her creation to begin. She must first destroy what was before. Her brush is also in a constant process of destruction and creation. Every flex of bristles on the brush destroys the current position, and every dip in the paint is an act of creation that follows the destruction.

Picasso's statement, “Every act of creation is first an act of destruction”, will form the basis of my thesis. To examine this, I will firstly look at it in the context of artistic creation by exploring a Cubist painting by Pablo Picasso. I will then look into the process of biological human creation to explore my thesis further and compare it to the process of artistic creation. Then to push out the boundaries of my exploration, I will apply Nassim Nicholas Taleb's concept of Antifragility. While his theory is based on disorder, it also demonstrates how destruction opens up creative possibilities.

Cubism was invented in the early twentieth century and became a popular visual art style. It was created by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque from 1907 to 1914. Art critic Louis Vauxcelles invented the term Cubism after seeing the landscapes Braque painted in 1908 at L'Estaque in "emulation of French artist Paul Cézanne. Vauxcelles called the geometric forms in the highly abstracted works "cubes" (Rewald, S. 2004).

At the time, Cubism was viewed as complex and wild. It was often dismissed as having “no vision and was seen as a representation of insanity. Many judged it to signal that civilisation was declining" (Bryant, J. 2014).

Les Demoiselles d’Avignon

This famous painting (see below) marked the beginning of the cubism era. The stylisation and distortion of Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907) came from African art. Picasso first saw African art when he visited the ethnographic museum in the Palais du Trocadéro in Paris (Rewald, S. 2004).

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon breaks away from traditional composition and perspective in painting. "It is of a scene in the street in Barcelona famed for its brothels and shows five naked women composed of flat, splintered planes. Their faces incorporate Iberian sculptures and African masks. The small space they stand in appears to project forward in jagged shards, while a slice of melon in the still life at the bottom of the composition teeters on an upturned tabletop. Picasso kept this painting away from public view for about 20 years. He knew that it was monumental and would cause much controversy. After months of revision, he finally unveiled it in his Paris studio” (MOMA. 2019). This act mirrors the controversy surrounding Gustave Courbet's painting The Studio (1854–55), which the Exposition Universelle rejected. He then displayed it and other works under "Realism, G. Courbet" in a specially constructed pavilion (Britannica. n.d). Many parallels between Picasso and Courbet have been observed over time, and we can see how their works support Picasso's statement. Although as both of these artists were not traditionalists, it could be a conclusion that is too easy to draw as their artistic phases were so different from one another. However, even traditionalist artists like Constable had to destroy the blank canvas to create.

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon embodies the meaning behind Picasso's statement in that he destroyed past knowledge so that he could be truly creative. In his groundbreaking creative endeavour, he destroyed his traditional painting techniques, the softness of the human and female form, and the traditional artistic portrayal of women. Consequently, he broke down western traditions, which simultaneously embraced and compromised African culture. However, the ultimate destruction in the creation of this painting is logic. Simple logic is absent because the reasoning involved when viewing this painting is challenged. You can go as far as to say that there are no truths as everything on display is not meant to be true to life representations. It is interesting to compare Les Demoiselles d'Avignon to Gustave Courbet's painting The Studio, as this painting does the opposite. Courbet's painting brought about the beginning of the Realism era, although viewing this painting was challenging at the time due to its real-life portrayal. Both paintings destroyed preconceived ideals and created new ones.

Picasso destroys many of his traditional painting techniques in Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. Prior to this, his style began with beautiful true-to-life depictions (1896 - 1900). He then moved into the Blue Period in 1901 — a phase in which he painted somber, stylised scenes in cool blue tones. After this period, Picasso's work displayed the Primitive influences evident in Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. In this painting, we see an act of destruction as he "incorporates geometry, fractured forms, thick black lines, straight-edged planes, and distorted application of colour" (Richman-Abdou, K. 2016). However, he does not lose all tradition as we can still recognise edges and understand the proportions and some perspective.

The softness of human and female forms has been destroyed in this painting, and in its place are hard edges and mutations in the form of African masks. Two women in the painting do not appear to be wearing the masks, but it is as if they are the masks.

Picasso represents women in a different light. There are many earlier paintings of prostitutes by different artists, but the women are strong and bold in this painting. Their open stances and the incorporation of African masks make them appear powerful and in control, which would have been a risqué way to portray women at the time. In creating this painting, Picasso destroys a level of nativity surrounding not just prostitutes but women in general. The women in the painting seem not only comfortable in their roles as prostitutes but empowered by their circumstances. In creating a representation of female sexual empowerment, the notion of women's complete sexual passivity has been destroyed.

One of the reasons Les Demoiselles d'Avignon is considered groundbreaking is that it takes on western culture. It contradicts everything that had been understood as correct in Western painting up until that point (Wolf, S n.d). Through the contradiction of western painting, western cultural ideals are tested. Geometrical shapes are used, which blur the lines between science and arts. The western ideal at the time was to keep these separate. The fractured forms celebrate brokenness which was not celebrated in the West. The thick black lines, straight-edged planes, and distorted application of colour are unsophisticated and in keeping with the primitive cultural influence. This last observation leads me to note that it is the destruction of western traditions that simultaneously embraces and compromises African culture.

While primitive painting techniques are embraced, primitive culture is compromised. By incorporating African masks into a controversial and risqué painting, the masks become shock-inducing props rather than the cultural bonds they are designed to be. In this creation, the masks' purpose and representation have been destroyed. The reverse is also true to a certain point as western culture is being manipulated skilfully or even arguably unskilfully through the blending in of African culture.

To conclude this part of the exploration, and before we move into a new direction, I will highlight a hypothesis and a counterargument to the hypothesis. The thesis 'every act of creation is first an act of destruction is demonstrated profoundly through the creation of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and the destruction of simple logic. My hypothesis is simple - nothing in the painting is true to life; therefore, our reasoning is challenged. For example, I outlined earlier that there are four women in the painting. Nevertheless, each woman is distorted to a varying degree, to the extent that the woman at the front seems to have a mask as a head rather than be wearing one, and her body is contorted in a nonhuman way. It is as though her face sits above her back. The distortion is also prevalent in portraying the fruit at the front of the painting. The melon is hard-lined and looks more like a geometric shape than an appetising snack.

The counterargument to this hypothesis is that perhaps it is not the destruction that comes first but the creation.

Consequently, every act of destruction is first an act of creation. In the case of logic, it could be argued that the creation of Demoiselles d'Avignon came first, and the act of logic destruction in this painting came after.

We will further explore the original thesis and counterargument to the hypothesis in the next part of this essay by looking at biological human creation.

Biological Human Creation

Referring back to the outline in the introduction, I will now focus on six stages of biological human creation and three biological milestones.

The six stages are: preconception, gamete, zygote, embryo, foetus and Infant. The three milestones are fertilisation, pregnancy, and childbirth.

The preconception stage of human creation can be likened to the artist's blank canvas - in that the blank canvas is like an unpregnant woman. The creation starts at the beginning of the fertilisation milestone, which parallels the moment the artist makes her first mark on the blank canvas. At this point, the artist destroys her blank canvas to begin to create her painting. The same happens to the unpregnant woman. As fertilisation begins, she is no longer unpregnant as human creation has begun.

Human creation begins when the male and female gametes meet in a woman's reproductive system. This pairing begins the pregnancy and creates a zygote. Here again, we have an example of destruction before creation. The gametes cease to exist to make way for the creation of the zygote. The same can be applied to unpregnancy and pregnancy and the destruction and creation of the embryo and fetus. A successful pregnancy creates a fully formed fetus, and after childbirth, the birth of an infant. These milestones and stages are further examples of destruction before creation. However, the creations during this process are tangible, while the destructions are not. Nothing has been damaged to create the next as there is nothing to repair. Each stage ceases to exist, but it does not go away as it morphs into something new. However, we can say that each stage is ruined by the next. This type of destruction applies to the biological human and artistic creation processes. We can view destruction positively as it makes way for possibility.

The artist's final painting and the infant would not have come to fruition without the cycles of destruction and creation. The main difference is that the artist decides when her creation is finished, whereas the pregnant woman does not.

Reflecting on my earlier counterargument to my hypothesis, every act of destruction is first an act of creation (rather than the original thesis (every act of creation is first an act of destruction). At every stage of biological human creation, destruction and creation occur, but it is not apparent which comes first.

It could be argued both ways; for example, the embryo destructing before the creation of the fetus seems just as likely as the fetus being created before the destruction of the embryo. The synthesis to this argument is that both are happening at once. This process can be viewed from a temporal or conceptual perspective. Both are valid, and I could speak to the conceptual, but I am focusing on just temporal for this essay.

In my previous essay, 'In What Ways is the Imagination Limited?' I highlight that the ego and surrender create a beautiful process of holding on and letting go, which parallels the temporal viewpoint of the biological human creation process. Moze (2018) states that "surrender is simple and yet complex. It can be inviting, not threatening. It can be fulfilling, not defeating. It is an act that does not merely affect a natural progression of change; it is alchemical in its magical ability to transmute us from one state of being into another. It is a tool that we can wilfully employ for beneficial development" (pg 1). This statement also describes the destruction and creation synthesis I mentioned in the paragraph above.

The realisation that destruction can have a positive effect on creation and creation and destruction can happen simultaneously leads me to the work of Nassim Nicholas Taleb. In his book Antifragile (2012), he explains how things can gain from disorder. In the last part of this essay, I examine how things also benefit from destruction while drawing upon Taleb's claim about disorder.

Antifragility

Antifragility is summed up as a simple metaphor in the opening sentence of Taleb's book Antifragile: Things to be Gained from Disorder. He states, "wind extinguishes a candle and energises fire" (Taleb, N. 2012). We can gain a real sense of what he means by noticing some things in this statement. The wind is a natural force, and so is fire. Although the fire on the candle is natural, it is burning a manufactured object. We can conclude that nature enhances nature, but it can destroy the manufactured without benefit. All things in nature grow and repair to a certain point. If you cut yourself, you heal. A tree's branch grows back. Artificial things do not heal themselves or grow back and are considered fragile. If you sit on a chair and break it, you need to fix it as the chair does not fix itself.

The antifragile benefits from shocks such as volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors; they also thrive from adventure, risk, and uncertainty. Taleb explains that antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. "The resilient resists shocks and stays the same, and the antifragile gets better" (pg 3). This thinking is a form of evolution and can be applied to everything that has changed with time, such as culture, ideas, and good recipes.

To summarise the differences between what has been outlined above, you can view it as a triad - "the fragile wants tranquility, the antifragile grows from disorder, and the robust does not' care too much" (pg 20). We can apply this to the artistic creation process through how the artist views mistakes. She can hate mistakes (fragile), see them as just information (robust), or love mistakes (antifragile). An artist would hate mistakes because she does not make them very often as she views them as significant problems. Nevertheless, if she were to start making them regularly, she would view them as minor problems. Through trial, error, and tinkering, she would be able to open herself up to more opportunities, information, and growth.

We can apply the triad to biological human creation by looking at mollification (ageing), mithridatization (recovery), and hormesis (enhancement). Taleb considers mollification to be fragile, mithridatization to be robust, and hormesis to be antifragile. We have already looked at ageing as every stage of the biological human creation process (preconception, gamete, zygote, embryo, fetus, and infant) requires time. We identified that the process is a cycle of simultaneous destruction and creation. This self-regulating homeostasis cycle is designed to maintain stability while adjusting to conditions that are best for survival. While we can view this cycle as being positive as it paves the way for an infant to be born, it is still fragile in that any of these transitions can end the potential life of the infant.

In his book, Taleb explains how vegetables can enhance us. Most of us eat them as we believe the vitamins in the vegetables are good for our health. Taleb points out that it is not the vitamins that cause the most benefits but the toxins in the vegetables. We fight and overcome the small number of toxins, which makes us stronger. With this viewpoint in mind, the vegetables the woman eats during pregnancy are an act of hormesis (antifragility). By using the example of vegetables, Taleb attempts to highlight the positive nature of risk exposure. Consuming toxins is a risk, but the outcome can be positive. Eating vegetables cannot guarantee a successful outcome. However, like the artist learning to love mistakes, this 'tinkering' can provide benefits such as a stronger immune system for the pregnant woman, which adds a layer of protection to the pre infant. Likewise, regular moderate exercise undertaken by the pregnant woman could be considered mithridatization as the exercise, while not toxic, will strengthen her heart, allowing her body to provide a more robust environment.

The antifragile benefits from shocks such as volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors, they also thrive from adventure, risk, and uncertainty, but I also believe they can benefit from destruction.

In his book, Taleb mentions three Greek mythologies - the sword of Damocles, the Phoenix, and the Hydra. He classes the first as fragile and the second as robust (the Phoenix is reborn after setting itself on fire). The third, the Hydra, is considered to be antifragile as it symbolises not only regeneration but an enhancement.

When one of the creature's heads is cut off, more heads grow back immediately, making it a more voracious predator. Here we have a mythological example of the antifragile benefiting from destruction as it is the destruction of a head that creates enchantments.

Throughout this essay, a theme has formed, leading me to a natural conclusion, and this theme is time. It is time that allows the artist to embrace her mistakes or not. It was time that allowed Picasso the luxury to destroy past knowledge and to be genuinely creative. A woman hopes to create and give birth to an infant through time. It is time that paves the way for the benefits from destruction to fruition for the Antifragile. Time allows the destruction and creation cycle to occur, and time is why we must destroy to create. Taleb expresses that "contrary to initial instinct that old is superior to new, time allows the fragilities to occur and break when necessary" (pg 309). Like creations standing up to the test of destruction, the old has stood the test of time; the new has not.

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This essay forms part of a portfolio of essays that were submitted as part of the Diploma of Creativity Theory, History and Philosophy undertaken at the Institute of Continuing Education at The University of Cambridge.

The title of the assignment has been taken from the course.

All images in this document that are not cited are from www.canva.com and can be used for free for commercial and noncommercial use.