Are Creatives Nervous About Creativity?

An interesting blog article by Grant McCracken titled "Creativity's Brief Moment in the Sun" suggests that we are facing the sunset of a creative era. He is concerned that the supply of professional "creatives" is growing so fast that soon no one will want to pay for creative work anymore, because companies will outsource creative work to online artistic hopefuls willing to work for free in exchange for "exposure." This does not seem like a new predicament in the art world.

To me, the growth of creative professionals is a natural progression from the essay, Art Alienated, which argued against the artificial commodification and separation of art from daily life. I hope that we are leaving a time where we depend on an elite to finance and frame our experience with the creative arts. McCracken's article ponders what designers and other professional creative types are supposed to do now that "everybody" is getting more creative. He worries that an oversaturation of dilettante creatives will dilute the market and make it even harder for professional creatives to pay for their health insurance. I say, let's celebrate! Isn't increased awareness and inclusion of creativity in U.S. culture something that we're aiming for? Now that it's happening, let's encourage it -- we have a long way to go before the average U.S. citizen has too much creativity in his daily life.

When we talk about art being expensive and valuable, remember that it's unlikely that the artist herself received worldly comfort in the process of sharing her vision and skill with the world. The more likely story is that the artist traded his or her artworks for doctor's visits and rent, or was perhaps lucky enough to support an art career on the income of a spouse or inheritance. To a certain extent, the production of such fine art is the creation of an artificially scarce supply of "creative products" that further ensure scarcity after the artist's death. These scarce artworks ultimately become a currency by which capital can be traded among a particular group of economic elite. So protecting who counts as an "artist" doesn't solve this payment problem either.

I think it would be great to see designers and artists 1) employed as the resident creative type, or as McCracken has crafted it, the "Chief Culture Officer," to consult in the "non-art" strategic vision of a company to bring creativity and, 2) called on to facilitate and provide a framework by which citizens (not consumers) can experience and develop their own creative side. I imagine that McCracken's book covers the first topic, but I'm interested to see if it also addresses this second point. That is, let's not accept the status quo -- let's move designers, artists, musicians, etc. into a new role, where they craft frameworks and experiental installations, websites, environments, etc. where non-artists can develop and strengthen their own creative practice.