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Paul Brutsche's new book on creativity outlines what he believes and sees as major elements of the creative process. He rightly notes the role of the shadow for many artists, ‘the visibility of destruction’, as a necessary ingredient, and he identifies five aspects of creative fantasy: ‘fresh insight … of meaning discovered in known things; the confrontation with outer and inner images; the mediating quality of the sensuous medium; the binding of the creative impulse to the individual person; and the paradoxical creative power of negation’ (p. 16). He is less interested in art history per se and does not discuss many of the social disruptions that these artists, chiefly painters, represented to aesthetic sensibilities and to established perceptions of beauty. For example, he discusses Manet's Le dejeuner sur l'herbe, but makes no mention of its rejection by the official Paris Salon jury and Manet's subsequent showing at the Salon des Refusés; this controversy marked a new turn in artistic freedom and fostered the roots of impressionism. However, his highlighting of loss as a factor in creativity helps the reader to appreciate that artistic endeavour is precious for many reasons, not least being its emotional cost to the artist.
Brutsche primarily analyses the creative impulse by using the four temperaments from ancient and medieval humourism, namely sanguine, choleric, melancholic, and phlegmatic. He looks at over twenty paintings (and a few etchings and photographs) to explain how these four appear as expressions of the creative process. This archetypal approach to imagery can at times be illuminating, although on occasion, for me as a reader, it veers into a kind of saturated interpretation that forecloses a viewer's own understanding of what he or she sees in looking at art.
Brutsche will often explain precisely where he sees the four temperaments in a work of art, for instance in Dürer's, The desperate man, in which he finds figures representing mania, addiction,