The Creative Process of Pablo Picasso, Article Review

Pablo Picasso’s approach to art is one which stimulated a controversy. Researchers desired to analyze his creative process as evidenced in the film, “The Mystery of Picasso.” Picasso’s drawings either represent a systematic, expertise driven process or a Darwinian, blind-variation and selective-retention approach, according to Simonton (2007). Those influential, inventive individuals of the twentieth century, such as Picasso, maintain a creative pathway which can never be fully understood. However, in attempt to define some patterns, several judges observed his work. Their conclusion is that Picasso implemented a Darwinian nonmonotonic variant approach to art and creativity: “Not every step moves the artist forward, because he is actively engaged in exploring the range of possibilities before he selects that subset that will define the completed project.” (Simonton, 7007, p. 333).

Psychologists define creativity in various ways. The cognitive psychologists position states that creativity is “just one particular manifestation of straightforward problem solving” (Simonton, 2007, 329). Whereas, the Darwinian psychologists express it to be “an unpredictable, chaotic, even inefficient process driven by an indulgent wealth of diverse and unusual imagery, associative richness and originality, and divergent, sometimes even autistic, thinking” (Simonton, 2007, 330). In the first, an artist’s technique may be predictable when observed multiple times. The latter, however, will leave the observer feeling uninvolved and left behind amidst the creator’s internal, mysterious, cognitive process of imagination.

A quantitative, objective analysis of Picasso creating his work was implemented in this study to obtain the least subjective and most accurate identification of his technique. The end state of each piece was compared to the beginning sketch and received a score based on their similarity. Multiple judges from varying backgrounds of Psychology shared reflections on the works and all were complied to provide the least biased interpretations possible.

Results showed very similar “concordance rates” between anti-Darwinists’ and Darwinists’ explanation for Picasso’s creative steps. All perceive nonmonotonic variation in his works. For example, Picasso takes ten sketches to achieve his desired outcome of a figure of a bull. It is noted that he could have used far fewer sketches, had he implemented a montonic approach and improved upon each new drawing using the one prior. However, he reveals no relation between each bull drawing and instead varies significantly, creating what seem to be new sketches. One witnesses this in the film “The Mystery of Picasso” when he actually paints over the base layer of his original drawing to create something new and leaves only a small portion of the first layer visible in second or third design. We witness his active exploration of ideas. The author states that “clearly, this is a messy, inefficient, even chaotic manner of constructing a creative product” (Simonton, 2007, p. 340). Even so, Pablo Picasso had such an incredible influence in twentieth century art that his approach is treasured. It seems this technique would prevent any attempt at replication of his work, because only he could compile such abstract ideas and piece them together to become world renown masterpieces.

Simonton, D. (2007). FEATURED ARTICLE: The Creative Process in Picasso's Guernica Sketches: Monotonic Improvements versus Nonmonotonic Variants. Creativity Research Journal, 19(4), 329-344.