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In his preface to this very readable book, the author states his purpose in writing it as follows, “Artists share our aspirations, frailties, joys and sorrows. These profiles of the artists are not meant to be a complete analysis of their personalities.” Further on he adds, “Most of this work is designed to promote emotional as well as intellectual stimulation and controversy.”
The first chapter, “Abstractions and Inner Reality,” posits a maxim first stated by Samuel Coleridge in his essays on creative work and its audience. Coleridge spoke of a “suspension of disbelief” on the part of the reader or the viewer of a work of art, this being necessary in order to fully enter the vision of the artist. Turco states, “Artistic creativity is the result of the complex interplay of intellectual, cognitive and affective processes with the intuitive ability to discern truth” (p. 16). He then adds, “Truth is Beauty. The experience of beauty, perhaps originally sensual, becomes an abstraction.” This metaphoric process he later describes as synthesis: “The artist's inner self resonates with external reality.”
Turco speaks of a similar process in the experiencing of art, especially when he talks of “peak experience” when entering the vision of the artist. He invokes Winnicott's “transitional space” and theories of play as precursors of creativity, a view shared by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his book Flow the Psychology of Optimal Experience, which explores creativity in the workplace and the role of playfulness in productivity. Quoting Handler Spitz, Winnicott, and Phyllis Greenacre, he develops an argument for a reworking of early childhood experience of play and problem solving on the part of gifted children and artists, which he calls “collective alternatives.” “The objects created are sophisticated versions of the original transitional object of the child and give pleasure by allowing the inner world, unacceptable to many, to be available through illusion without conflict.”
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