Abstract
This article applies David W. Galenson’s (2006) typology of artistic creativity to pastoral theology. Galenson identifies two types of painters—conceptualists and experimentalists—and shows that their most important innovations occur at different stages of an artist’s career, that their methods are very different, and that each type produces predictable career frustrations which may, however, be counteracted. The fact that these types are found among sculptors, poets, novelists and film directors leads Galenson to propose that they are also found among scholars, thus inviting application of the findings of the study to pastoral theology as a discipline and to individuals who identify themselves as pastoral theologians. Galenson’s work is supplemented by Thomas Dormandy’s (2000) study of older painters.
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Notes
An artist’s difficulty in executing color is an interesting psychological issue that is beyond the scope of the present paper. However, it is interesting to note that Erik H. Erikson considered his career as an artist a failure because he could not master the problems of color. On the other hand, he later recognized that his difficulties in this regard were related to his sense of guilt for having pursued a career other than the one his stepfather wanted him to pursue (see Capps 2008). For a discussion of the psychology of color, see Color Codes by Charles A. Riley II (1995, chap. 6). Riley praises the work of Rudolf Arnheim (whose writings on the structure of paintings informed my earlier article on the lessons of art history for pastoral theology [Capps 1999]), for its “lovely synthesis of the Gestalt attention to form and the painter’s attraction to color” (p. 302). Although Arnheim’s emphasis on the form of the painting reflects his basic orientation toward Gestalt psychology, his focus on the artist’s use of complementary colors reflects his “pragmatic” approach to individual paintings (pp. 302–303).
Ray Carney (1998) argues that Thomas Eakins “deserves to be regarded as a pragmatist” on the grounds that he understood the necessary relationship between thinking and doing. He points out that Eakins’ paintings of surgeons (“The Gross Clinic” and “The Agnew Clinic”) depict surgeons for whom “hand and mind are linked in a disciplined, productive relationship—one in which mind informs hand and hand informs mind with the same degree of subtlety that Eakins’ own hand and mind obviously worked in concert when he painted his work” (p. 382). In effect, Carney is supporting Galenson’s argument that Eakins, a conceptualist painter (who privileged the mind), could not avoid becoming an experimentalist when he began to put brush to canvas.
An especially relevant illustration of such collaboration in art is the Baptism of Christ by Andrea del Verrocchio and Leonardo da Vinci. Leonardo painted one of the two angels that appear on the left corner of the painting. He also repainted parts of the landscape and the body of Jesus. In art books on Leonardo da Vinci (for example, Zollner 2000, pp. 10–15) the painting is presented as a collaborative effort by del Verrocchio and da Vinci. It is noteworthy that the subject of the painting is the baptism of Jesus by his mentor, John the Baptist, and that Verrocchio was so impressed with what Leonardo accomplished in the painting that he felt his own life’s work was now completed.
I would like to express my appreciation to the three anonymous reviewers of an earlier version of this article. I have attempted to incorporate all of their excellent suggestions into this published version.
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Capps, D. The Lessons of Artistic Creativity for Pastoral Theologians. Pastoral Psychol 59, 249–264 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11089-009-0198-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11089-009-0198-6