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        The lonely creative genius: 
            a myth to be exploded  

Famous artistic, scientific and entrepreneurial masterpieces have always involved the cooperation of several people. Nowadays we tend to emphasise the importance of the isolated genius, building on the myth through romantisised television productions. However, if we analyse some specific cases we realize that creative ideas are born in a very fertile cultural environment.This involves direct contact and cooperation between the most brilliant minds of a generation.

At the beginning of 1900 Modigliani was living on the fringes of the middle class society. His work broke the academic tradition of his age. He was a troubled artist and died young and very poor. Looking at his work we are surprised by his creativity, which was not influenced by other works of his generation. It seems that his creativity comes from nothing but his “crazy” geniality.

Cyclades Islands, 3000 years before Christ: the face of the statue is long and linear, its nose is the only plastic element in relief and it enables us to recognise the face of a woman from thousands of years ago. We do not know who the artist is. This sculpture reminds us of Modigliani masterpieces, even if we cannot know if he had ever seen it. Some African masks and sculptures also bring to mind the expressivity of Modigliani’s works. At the time Modigliani, along with many other artists, led innovation in art, looking back at the archaic cultures. Therefore, even if he seems not to refer back to anybody or to anything, he in fact looks at primitive sculptures, he absorbs and reworks them. His works are still very up to date; they comment on the contemporary human condition. 

A notable example is shown in a photo of three artists: the young Picasso who like other artists was searching for his way and would create some of the most important masterpieces of 1900s. On the right stands the critic André Salmon with Modigliani on the left. From this picture we can see that artists met frequently to talk and exchange ideas. That is to say that they grew and matured together, not in isolation as the romantic tradition would have us think. In all fields it is important to grow in a cultural and creative environment. By the end of the 1800s and the early 1900s Paris was one of the most lively cultural centers in the world, as was Italy and in particular Florence during the Reinaissance and New York in the twentieth century.

An apparently isolated artist, like Modigliani or Van Gogh, aborbs a lot from everything that surrounds him. It is often said that Picasso was like a sponge, he was able to absorb and rework everything he approached in a very creative and original way. It is probable that some ideas which other artists had had before him, such as cubism, were fully absorbed by Picasso and he made them his own.

Sometimes artists are not alone when they create their works: in the uncomfortable Parisian quarters in Montmartre, several artists lived together in cramped spaces with a lot of coming and going and no privacy at all.

This makes us reflect that the creative genius does not live in an ivory tower, isolated from the world. The creative works of an apparently lonely genius are, in a certain sense, collective works, born from indirect influences and absorption of foreign cultures and the world around them, but sometimes also the direct cooperation of other people.

End of the first part

Enio Pallaracci

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