Abandoning Assumptions

Abandoning Assumptions

(From the book: "Visionary Creativity: How New Worlds are Born," by John Lobell)

One key to Visionary Creativity is the courage to reject established assumptions. Here are three examples. As we will discuss later, Einstein’s relativity addresses the observation that the speed of light is always the same for all observers no matter their motion, and makes the constancy of the speed of light a fundamental part of his theory in violation of the principle of the addition of velocities. The Dutch physicist, Hendrik Lorentz, attempted to resolve the issue with what is called the Lorentz transformation that made assumptions about the dimensions of an object changing as it moves through space. In developing relativity, Einstein began with the Lorentz transformation, but changed one thing. He said that the speed of light is always constant and the addition of velocities does not apply because there is no fixed absolute space. Einstein was able to jettison an assumption that Lorentz held on to.

Another example involves John von Neumann. A towering genius born in Hungary who immigrated to America, Von Neumann was a polymath. He was a leading quantum theorist, he codified the architecture of the modern computer, pioneered game theory, worked on cellular automata, explored self-replicating machines, and he played a key role in creating the hydrogen bomb. While at a meeting he worked out on the fly an interpretation of quantum theory based on Hilbert space, which extends Euclidian space to infinite dimensions, so that the aging mathematician, David Hilbert, could understand the theory. Between 1905 and 1971, eight Hungarians won Nobel prizes, and there would have been at least two more if there were a Nobel Prize in mathematics. When asked why so many geniuses came from Hungary, Eugene Wigner, himself one of the Hungarian Nobel Prize winners, replied, “Hungary has produced only one genius. His name is John von Neumann.”

Von Neumann also made major contributions to logic and wrote papers that hinted at the possibility that logic was built on a foundation of sand. But he did not make the leap, and it was left to his colleague at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Kurt G?del, to show the inherent inconsistency in all of logic and mathematics. It would have been a short step for Neumann to reach the same conclusion earlier, but he did not take it.

For our third example of abandoning assumptions, let’s look very briefly at Andy Warhol. Later we will refer to David Karp, founder of the social networking site, Tumblr, as a “mobile online digital native.” Let’s see how Andy Warhol was a “popular culture native.” Later we will refer to Cezanne and to Picasso. By the 1960s and 70s we can see how the bowls of fruit in muted colors by Cezanne and Picasso would have looked antiquated to Andy Warhol. His world was one of fluorescent-lit supermarkets, brightly colored packaging, images in magazines, and pop celebrities. Andy was immersed in that world, and continually documented it. And he not only abandoned European assumptions about art, he also rejected the entire notion of high culture.

The fact that Andy Warhol began his career as a commercial illustrator doing images for advertising played a role in this. But equally important was the decade of the late 1960s through the late 1970s in which he did his pioneering work, which also influenced him, and which he did much to create. Before this period, there was a sharp distinction between popular culture and high culture. In high school you listened to Rock and Roll. In college you switched to jazz, and later to classical music. In junior high you read comic books. In high school you switched to Camus, and in college to the serious stuff like Dostoyevsky. Hollywood made popular culture movies. The Swedes, French, and Italians made high culture movies. But then the influential New Yorker movie critic, Pauline Kael, blurred the distinction and found serious intensions in popular American movies. The distinction between popular culture and high culture broke down. The emerging generation, as it grew up, continued to read comics, which became serious in the form of comix. Rock and Roll became Rock. And you could read Kurt Vonnegut as a kid and as an adult.

That was the world in which Warhol launched his career. He would not play by the rules of the past, and in his art he mixed the worlds of nightlife, the society pages, the drug culture, and his superstars, the strange orchids who gathered at his Factory and who are celebrated in Lou Reed’s 1972 song, “Walk on the Wild Side.” Andy’s work included, besides paintings of soup cans, sculptures that looked just like the cartons in which Brillo pads were delivered to the grocery store, silk screens based on tabloid photos, and portraits of celebrities including Marilyn, Liz, Elvis, and Jackie. And he collected just about everything, going on endless shopping sprees.

Andy was a brilliant artist, but his success was as much due to the fact that he was a “popular culture native,” living in the world of popular culture, not the previous world of “serious art.” And he did as much as anyone to create that emerging world. Andy abandoned the assumption that art had to be “serious,” and took us on a joy ride with his Pop Art and his antics, but more than that he brought us a new culture, one that broke down the barrier of a fortified high culture exclusivity.

And today? After all, Andy Warhol did much of his work a half a century ago, and although it still rings true for many of those who grew up with it, we need to ask, are we still in that world? Looking at the work of Jeff Koons, we might answer, yes. But what about much younger artists? Since 1923, the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards have recognized creative accomplishments of American teenagers. Previous winners have included Truman Capote, Sylvia Plath and Lena Dunham. And Andy Warhol. Seventeen-year-old Ellie Braun is a recent winner who is about to enter art school, and while Cezanne painted bowls of fruit and card players, Picasso painted guitars and art dealers, and Warhol painted soup cans and celebrities, Braun paints boys in girls’ clothes. And cupcakes. Will Braun become the next Warhol? No way to tell, but someone like her, immersed in our time, will.