Extraordinary creative activity has been characterized
as revolutionary, flying in the face of what is established
and producing not what is acceptable but what will
become accepted. According to this formulation, highly
creative activity transcends the limits of an existing form
and establishes a new principle of organization. How-
ever, the idea that extraordinary creativity transcends
established limits in misleading when it is applied to the
arts, even though it may be valid for the sciences.
Difference between highly creative art and highly creative
science arise in part from a difference in their goals. For
the sciences, a new theory is the goal and end result of the
creative act. Innovative science produces new
propositions in terms of which diverse phenomena can be
related to one another in more coherent ways. Such
phenomena as a brilliant diamond or a nesting bird are
relegated to the role of data, serving as the means for
formulating or testing a new theory. The goal of highly
creative art is very different: the phenomenon itself
becomes the direct product of the creative act.
Shakespeare's Hamlet is not a tract about the behavior of
indecisive princes or the uses of political power; nor is
Picasso's painting Guernica primarily a propositional
statement about the Spanish Civil War or the evils of
fascism. What highly creative artistic activity produces is
not a new generalization that transcends established limits,
but rather an aesthetic particular. Aesthetic particulars
produced by the highly creative artist extend or
exploit, in an innovative way, the limits of an existing
form, rather than transcend that form.
This is not to deny that a highly creative artist some-
times establishes a new principle of organization in the
history of an artistic field; the composer Monteverdi,
who created music of the highest aesthetic value, comes
to mind. More generally, however, whether or not a
composition establishes a new principle in the history of
music has little bearing on its aesthetic worth. Because
they embody a new principle of organization, some
musical works, such as the operas of the Florentine
Camerata, are of signal historical importance, but few
listeners or musicologists would include these among the
great works of music. On the other hand, Mozart's The
Marriage of Figaro is surely among the masterpieces of
music even though its modest innovations are confined
to extending existing means. It has been said of
Beethoven that he toppled the rules and freed music
from the stifling confines of convention. But a close
study of his compositions reveals that Beethoven
overturned no fundamental rules. Rather, he was an
incomparable strategist who exploited limits—the
rules, forms, and conventions that he inherited from
predecessors such as Haydn and Mozart, Handel and
Bach—in strikingly original ways.