Selection, Constraints, and Creativity Case Studies: Max ...

Selection, Constraints, and Creativity Case Studies:Max Beckmann and Philip Guston

Patricia D. Stokes and Danielle FisherBarnard College, Columbia University

ABSTRACT: This article presents a problem-solvingmodel of creativity based on constraint selection. In themodel, constraints come in pairs that (a) preclude reli-able solutions and (b) promote search for novel ones.The most important constraint specifies a novel goal.Other constraints—source (elements for recombina-tion), task (how materials are used), and subject (mo-tif, theme)—are then strategically selected to realizethe goal constraint. We use Fauvism to briefly intro-duce the model before analyzing the constraints se-lected by Max Beckmann and Philip Guston in the twomature phases of each artist’s career. The analyses arethen used to support our contention that constraint se-lection is central to creativity.

Selectionist models are found in both the creativity(Boden, 1991; Campbell, 1960; Perkins, 1994) andlearning (Holland, Holyoak, Nisbett, & Thagard, 1987;Palmer & Donahoe, 1992) literatures. According to thecreativity models, selection criteria include novelty,usefulness or appropriateness, and influence or do-main-change (Amabile, 1996; Gardner, 1993;Csikszentmihalyi, 1996; Simonton, 1994). Accordingto the learning models, selection increases the fre-quency of responses that precede it, thus decreasing thevariability on which creativity depends (Stokes,2001a) As a result, success—whether in shows, sales,or imitators—can leave an individual stuck in a suc-cessful solution.

This is readily apparent in the paucity of painterswho remained creative (and not merely proficient orprolific) over the course of their careers. Fauvism,which radically presented “reality” in high-keyed, un-natural colors (think of Madame Matisse with a greenline down the center of her face), provides a clear ex-ample. Of its originators—Matisse, Derain, and

Vlaminck—only Matisse continued to change hiswork in novel ways. The same holds true of the Impres-sionism movement, only Monet repeatedly reinventedhis style.

The constraint selection model used to analyzecontinuities (that make a Matisse of any period aMatisse) and changes (that make a late Matisse dis-tinct from an early one) in creative careers is derivedfrom the problem-solving literature (Stokes, 2001a,2001b, in press). Constraints both define domains andfacilitate problem solving in them. We use Fauvismto briefly illustrate these two points. We then focuson continuity and change in the careers of Max Beck-mann and Philip Guston. We close by using theseanalyses to support our argument that selecting con-straints is central to creativity.

Constraints Define Domains

A domain, like painting, is a well-developed area ofskill/knowledge with agreed-on performance criteria(Abuhamdeh & Csikszentmihalyi, 2004). These per-formance criteria can be specified in terms of goal,source, subject, and task constraints.

Goal constraints are overall criteria. Accepted by adomain, they become stylistic conventions, answers toquestions like “is this a Fauve painting?” All other con-straints are purposively picked to help realize the goal.These include source constraints, which supply stylis-tic elements for culling and recombination, subject

Creativity Research Journal2005, Vol. 17, No. 2 & 3, 283–291

Copyright © 2005 byLawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Creativity Research Journal 283

Correspondence and requests for reprints should be sent to PatriciaD. Stokes, Psychology Department, Barnard College, ColumbiaUniversity, 3009 Broadway, New York, NY 10027. E-mail:[email protected]

constraints, which specify content or motif, and taskconstraints, which govern materials and their applica-tion (Stokes, in press).

For example, circa 1905, the Fauves’goal constraintwas something like “paint the impact of what yousee”—in other words, an emotional rather than apurely optical response to reality. Source constraintsincluded the expressive primary color palettes of theNabis, Gaughin, and Van Gogh (Stokes, in press). Sev-eral task constraints are considered in the followingsection. There were no subject constraints.

Constraints Facilitate Problem Solving

Constraints facilitate problem solving by directingand limiting search for solutions (Reitman, 1965).Thus, they come in pairs. In creative problem solving,one constraint precludes (or limits search among)low-variability, tried-and-true responses. The other si-multaneously promotes (or directs search among)high-variability, novel responses. The specific pairsare strategically selected to realize a novel goal,which, as we shall repeatedly stress, is the creator’sprimary constraint. Experimental evidence suggestswhy such a strategy works. By limiting conventionalthinking (Finke, Ward, & Smith, 1992) and reliableresponding, such constraints sustain the variability(Stokes & Harrison, 2003) lost to prior selec-tions–successes.

The search for solutions takes place in a problemspace, defined as how a solver views a problem (New-ell & Simon, 1972). It has three parts, an initial state, agoal state, and a series of operators (condition-actionrules of the form “if the condition is X, then do Y”) thatprovide a solution path from the initial to the goal state(Newell & Simon, 1972). The goal state includes a cri-terion for knowing if the goal has been reached. As anew style develops, its goal criterion will be specified,albeit gradually. For illustration purposes, Figure 1presents a simplified problem space for Fauvism. Theinitial state is accepted painting styles circa 1905, oneof which is Impressionism.

Figure 2 replaces the operators from Figure 1 withthe paired constraints that generated them, and specify-ing the criteria for Impressionist (“paint how you see,”or more specifically, “how light breaks up”) andFauvist (“paint the impact of what you see”) styles(Stokes, 2001a, in press).

The paired task constraints were strategically cho-sen to realize the new goal. Impressionism’s local,closely valued hues and overall compositions wereprecluded. In their places, sparsely painted, saturatedcolor streaks and their compositional consequence—abrilliantly colored, albeit ambiguous, oil sketch—werepromoted.

The later development of the first-among-Fauves,Matisse, has already been analyzed using the con-straint model (Stokes, in press). Here, we apply it totwo painters, also accomplished colorists, with goalsquite distinct from Matisse, but distinctly related toeach other. The first, Max Beckmann, precluded theFauve style for being overly hedonistic and decora-tive, searching further back in art’s history for sourceconstraints, “first choruses” on which to improvise(Rivers, 1987). The second, Philip Guston, includedBeckmann’s work among his source constraints.

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P. D. Stokes and D. Fisher

Figure 1. Simplified problem space for Fauvism.

Figure 2. Paired constraints for Fauvism.

Constraints and the Careerof Max Beckmann

Beckmann’s two major stylistic phases are closelyrelated, the second maintaining and extending, indeedexaggerating, task constraints selected in the first. Thefirst extended roughly from 1917 to 1932; the second,from 1932, when he adopted the triptych format, to hisdeath. Figure 3 summarizes his goal, subject, and taskconstraints.

1917: Selecting Constraints for a RedefinedRealism

Beckmann’s experiences off and on the battlefieldduring World War I were the catalysts for his first set ofnovel self-selected constraints. To visually express hisresponse to this shattering of reality required retaining,but reconceptualizing, painterly realism. Given his ar-tistic training and current painterly production, thisspecifically precluded German Impressionism (thinkof Corinth) and European Romanticism (think ofDelacroix), as well as more recent stylistic innovations

too removed stylistically and emotionally from Beck-mann’s goals. Cubism was too complicated andcerebral, and—as mentioned earlier—Fauvism wastoo overly decorative and hedonistic.

Goal constraint. This was clearly articulated bythe artist: “Most important to me is volume, trapped inheight and width; volume on the plane, depth withoutlosing the awareness of the plane; the architecture ofthe picture” (Beckmann, 1918/1997, p. 184). Simplerways of saying this are “abstract presentation of realis-tic motifs” or, more graphically, “bas-relief on canvas.”

Source constraints. Beckmann’s goal precludedboth the late 19th century’s illusions of depth (think ofCorot or Courbet) and the early 20th’s flat decorativesurfaces (think of Matisse or late Monet). In theirplaces, it promoted the compressed (on the plane),cluttered (trapped) volumes characteristic of LateGothic altarpieces—particularly, we believe, thecarved wooden ones, as well as the interlocking organi-zation of space developed by Cezanne.


Beckmann & Guston Case Studies

Figure 3. Beckmann’s constraints.

Task and subject constraints. From thesesources, Beckmann derived his major task constraintin this period—fully modeled objects in shallowspaces. To make this constraint concrete, we use a (rel-atively) simple example, Lido (1924), a painting of fivepeople at the shore, three in the water, two walking onthe beach.

Rather than rolling toward us or receding into thehorizon, Beckmann’s waves, like Cezanne’s tables, tipslightly forward in stacked rows. Like carved NorthernGothic altarpieces, there is no space between the rows.As a result, the (fully three-dimensional) arms of onebather (whose legs are five waves out from shore) areon the same plane as the walking women. The settinghas become a “set,” a stage of sorts appropriate toBeckmann’s subject constraint, promoting the enig-matic, theatrical, role-playing self. The walkingwomen are both “costumed”—one wears a long capeand a cap that covers her eyes; a long towel is dramati-cally draped to reveal only the eyes of the other.

1932: Selecting Constraintsfor a Secular Mythology

By 1932, the year he began his first triptych, Beck-mann, along with other “degenerate” artists, was al-ready under attack by the National Socialists in Ger-many. By 1937, he and his wife were in exile, first inAmsterdam and, finally, in the United States. With thestate culpable and the church incapable of counteringthe increasing brutality and impermanence of the time,the task of the artist changed. The task became sacred,the creation of an alternative, aesthetic universe thatwould fill the emptiness, the horror vacuii, of the alltoo real one (Belting, 1989).

Goal constraint. Beckmann’s second goal—re-demption through art—was articulated, and in manyways, by the artist. “Self-reliance,” he said, “is the newidea that the artist and, with him, humanity, must graspand shape. Autonomy in the face of eternity.” God, inthis new religion, is the “collective intellectual prod-ucts of humanity” (Beckmann, 1927/1997, pp.287–288). As we shall see, to help realize and centerthis new conception of the sacred, the artist borrowedabundantly from the forms and formats of the formerlysacred.

Source constraints. To create his mythology forthe early 20th century, Beckmann borrowed fromNorthern Gothic as well as Early Renaissance art fromGermany and the Netherlands. Newly appropriatedwere the triptych form of altarpieces, the saturated col-ors and black outlines of stained-glass windows andthe exaggerated graphics of Brugel, Gruenwald, andvan der Weyden. Because these provide his task con-straints, we elaborate on them in the next section.

Task constraints. As we know from his first ma-ture phase, Beckmann’s pictorial architecture predatedthe triptychs, structuring the single panels (like Lido)that preceded them. Figures and objects were modeledto appear three dimensional, but because (as earlier)Beckmann painted no space between them, they pileone on another like cutouts. However, the unnatural-ness, the strangeness, of the space now had anotherpurpose. It signified the space as sacred, in much thesame way that flat gilt backgrounds did in medieval re-ligious paintings.

The triptych form also served two ends. With its ob-vious religious associations, it too signified the sacred.With three separate panels, it precluded easel paint-ing’s single window onto nature, its setting limited intime and place. Instead, the panels promoted multiplesettings where Beckmann’s characters and objectscould appear and reappear in a kaleidoscope of times,places, and guises. Recall his earlier use of compressedspace to create stage “sets.” The panels became multi-ple sets, each presenting a single mythic variation.

The stained glass windows were, like the triptychform, appropriated for their religious association, aswell as their seductive beauty. From across a room,their brilliance beckons, promising redemptive, uplift-ing beauty. Beauty lures the viewer into close-up con-templation of Beckmann’s otherwise off-putting con-tents, the contrast makes them even more startling.

To produce these shocking, enigmatic subjects andobjects, Beckmann’s graphic constraints precludednaturalism and promoted distortion and exaggeration.As mentioned earlier, Northern sources proliferated,providing “constraining formats, angular composi-tions, hard modeling, and … ‘brutal’ descriptiveness”(Storr, 2003, p. 25). Likely borrowings included cari-catured buffoonery from Brugel, expressive and chro-matic distortions from Gruenwald, and sculpted angu-larities and symbolically sized figures from van derWeyden. Symbolic here means that the size of a person



or object reflects its importance to the story being pre-sented. For example, the bellhop in the right panel ofBlindman’s Bluff (1944–1945) is diminutive comparedto the other characters, just as the newly risen (savedand damned) in van der Weyden’s Last Judgment Al-tarpiece (c. 1445–1448) are insignificant compared tothe saints and the angel holding the scales.

Subject constraints. Realizing the mythic gen-erated an extended set of subject constraints. First, in-dividuals were replaced by a limited number of types(the king, the warrior, the woman, the young man, thebellhop). Settings (theater, bar, studio, place of ritual)and objects (fish, candle, sword, gramophone) toowere restricted in number (Spieler, 1996). The limita-tions derive from the nature of myth—its structure isrepetitive, its story told over and again with variationsprovided by recombining a limited number of ele-ments (Calasso, 1994). The variations elude explicitinterpretation, thus satisfying the second subject con-straint, precluding the overt and promoting the enig-matic.

For example, in Departure (1932–1933), the fishappears in all three panels of the triptych. Its meaningis nonliteral, ambiguous, open—like myth itself—tomultiple interpretations. On the left, two fish aretrapped by the young man (in the role of a torturer).In the center panel, many small fish are released bythe king; an enormous one is kept by the warrior. Onthe right, the (blinded) bellhop carries a single fish.Since Beckmann reportedly said that “fate appears asan elevator boy” (Spieler, 1996, p. 61), this fish mustbe a message, albeit an obscure one. A variation onthis theme—the unreadable, recondite message—oc-curs in the right panel of Blindman’s Bluff(1944–1945). The aforementioned diminutive bellhopholds a paper with writing on it; the young man towhom it is delivered cannot read it. He is now the onewearing a blindfold.

Like religion, the triptychs speak to the viewer onmultiple levels. Their visual impact, their seductive,shocking beauty, command attention on emotional,visceral, and aesthetic levels. Their complex mythol-ogy and enigmatic value system sustain that attentionon intellectual, philosophic, and moral ones. As greatart, they continue to influence us, and importantly, byexpanding the domain, other artists. One of those otherartists was Philip Guston.

Constraints and the Career of Philip Guston

Paintings from Guston’s two mature stylistic phasesare starkly different, yet recognizably Guston’s. Thecontinuity came from Guston’s adapting his “signa-ture” task constraints to reversed goal and subject con-straints. The first phase lasted approximately from1948 to 1968; the second from 1968, when the firstshoe and boot paintings appear, to his death. Figure 4summarizes his goal, subject, and task constraints.

1948: Selecting Constraints to PrecludeSocial Consciousness

Guston’s first mature goal was shaped by earliermembers of the New York School. The goal was to lib-erate art from didactic, social commentary or con-sciousness. Stylistically, it precluded realism to pro-mote a formalism that emphasized the act of painting,painting as a process, a production, not a reproduction.Each of the Abstract Expressionists developed a “sig-nature” style based on a set of personal task con-straints—Pollack’s drips and splashes, Kline’s blackarchitectural armatures, Motherwell’s hovering ovoidelegies, Guston’s small, centered, repeated brushstrokes.

Goal constraint. The goal for Guston, as for allthe Abstract Expressionists, was to replace social con-sciousness and its accompanying realism (think ofWPA murals and American regionalism) with purepainting. How does the painter know when a goal thisabstract is realized? Guston described it this way: “Topaint is a possessing rather than a picturing. Usually Iam on a work for a long stretch, until a moment arriveswhen the air of the arbitrary vanishes and the paint fallsinto positions that feel destined” (Mayer, 1956/1997, p.63). What feels “destined” becomes the goal criterion.

Source constraints. Though Guston’s goal pre-cluded representation, it included scaffoldings, arma-tures, from both realistic and abstract sources. Fromthe realistic, Guston borrowed Cezanne’s breaking apicture into separate planes, as well as the Cubist’sgrid, which focused on the center of the canvas. Fromthe abstract, he appropriated Mondrian’s “plus-minus”grids, in which the recognizable elements of church fa-cades and harbors were replaced by crosshatches indi-cating their relative locations.



Subject constraints. Because abstract expres-sionism precluded realism, it had to replace the now“missing” objects. Guston’s replacements were thebrush stroke, the relationships between individualbrush strokes, and the emotions those relationships ex-pressed.

Task constraints. Guston’s first set of task con-straints—limited palette, grid armature, buttery tex-tures, density contrasts—are completely realized inZone (1953–1954). The densest, heaviest strokes clus-ter in the center of the canvas, emphasizing that paintand its application are the work’s subject. There arefour colors—pink and cadmium red, which predomi-nate, green and gray. Irregularly cross-hatched brushstrokes, repeated and thickly layered red over pink,center the composition’s grid structure. Beyond thecenter, the densities decline, the strokes are single col-ors—pinks or reds, a zig-zag of green at the bottom, across-hatching of grays to the left, all dissolving intostill paler grays and pinks. Zone has the kind of seduc-tive, shimmering surface that earned Guston the label“Abstract Impressionist.”

Ten years later, New Place (1964) reinterpreted thesame constraints darkly. Now the pinks are relegated tothe edges, almost suffocated by an opaque grid of darkgrays with three slightly off center black areas. Thebrush strokes are fatter, closer, and chaotic in their ir-regular, oppressive interactions. What is expressed isneither Platonic formalism nor hedonic Impression-ism, but angst, raw and anxious. The angst was soon totake on realistic form.

1968: Selecting Constraints to Promotea Social Conscience

Guston’s conversion from the sublime to the squalidfollowed what the painter described as feeling “split,schizophrenic. The war, what was happening in Amer-ica, the brutalization of the world. What kind of manam I, sitting at home, reading magazines, going into afrustrated fury over everything—and then going intomy studio, to adjust a red to a blue” (Mayer, 1997, p.171). Vietnam and Watergate had changed the Zeit-geist, and not just for Guston. The startling first show-ing of his “seething, lumpish, nightmare cartoon im-



Figure 4. Guston’s constraints.

ages: hooded Klansmen painting pictures, ridingaround in jalopies, smoking stogies” (Kimmelman,2003, p. E37) coincided with the critic HaroldRosenberg’s (1970) call to liberate painting from Ab-stract Expressionism’s ban on social consciousness.

Goal constraint. To object to society’s ills,Guston’s art became objective, albeit enigmatic. Theartist continued to adjust his hues, but now they filledin the crudely outlined subjects (Klansmen, disembod-ied heads) and objects (fat gloved hands, garbage pails,shoes) that (meeting Guston’s goal) shocked and evenscared viewers.

Source constraints. Unlike Beckmann, whoborrowed from past centuries, Guston’s borrowingswere both more current and more common: AbstractExpressionism and Beckmann, of course, and quite un-expectedly, the funnies (Berkson, 2003). From his Ab-stract Expressionist phase, Guston retained his gor-geous coloration and paint application. FromBeckmann, he borrowed goal (art as a vehicle of re-demption, of return to true community), task, and sub-ject constraints (discussed later). From the funnies, heborrowed format (the theme-and-variation narrative ofHerriman’s Krazy-Kat and the brick-tossing mouse)and form (the bristley, bulbous characters of R.Crumb).

Subject constraints. Guston’s subject was, defacto, what Hannah Arandt called “the banality of evil”(1963). The artist imagined that banality by askinghimself questions: “What do they [the Klansmen] doafterwards? Or before? Smoke, sit around in theirrooms (light bulbs, furniture, wooden floors), patrolempty streets; dumb, melancholy, guilty, fearful, re-morseful, reassuring each other?” (Mayer, 1997, pp.149–150).

Realizing the banality and the evil precluded boththe nonobjectivity of Abstract Expressionism and thetoo-overt objectivity of Pop. In their places, it pro-moted an absurd, increasing dark and (a la Beckmann)mythic reality. An extended set of subject constraintsensued. Sans triptych form, Guston’s settings were sin-gle and increasingly apocalyptic: bare studio or emptystreet, single bed or brick wall, garbage heap or floor.Guston limited his types to an even more restrictednumber than Beckmann: hooded Klansmen in patchedrobes spattered with blood or paint, both red; a sin-

gle-eyed, unshaven, male head shaped like a lima bean;a woman’s head, with braids, always cut off just be-neath her two long-lashed eyes; a junk-yard dog.

Like Beckmann’s, his inventory of objects was re-strictive and repetitive—bare light bulbs, booze,beat-up cars, gloves, studio stuff, shoes, hairy arms andlegs, the soles of shoes—ordinary things made crypticand chilling in their juxtapositions. The red-glovedhand holds a paintbrush or cigar, sometimes it simplypoints. The soles are particularly poignant: they stickout from the back of a car or a bed sheet, hang over abrick wall, pile up in a dump or doorway. A show ofByzantine icons at the Metropolitan Museum (2004)highlighted a related, religious use of the sole: the in-fant Christ leans his cheek against his mother’s and ex-tends toward us the bottom of a tiny bare foot that weknow will be nailed to a cross.

Task constraints. The proclivity for “bad paint-ing” (Hentschel, 2004) precluded balanced composi-tions and promoted awkwardness. One way Gustonachieved this was randomly scattering his figures andobjects. Another was massing them in piles that clutterthe canvas. The space in which the objects accumu-lated was itself compressed. As in Beckmann’s paint-ings and in comic strips, all the volume belongs to thethings. There is no breathing room in a late Guston.

The proscription on “good” painting promoted ex-aggerated, cartoonish graphics. “All hell doesn’t domuch break loose as move in and set up housekeeping”(Schjeldahl, 2003, p. 103). Readily recognizable, si-multaneously laughable, and lamentable, Guston’s im-ages were closely related to contemporary funnies. Hislima-bean shaped, single-eyed heads are slightly lesshirsute cousins of R. Crumb’s caricatures. Like Beck-mann’s bellhop and warrior, and Herriman’s Krazy Katand brick-throwing mouse, his Klansmen with their ja-lopies, red gloves, and cigars appear and reappear inever varied, always related vignettes.

Separating Guston’s grotesques from the merelycomic was the lush, buttery paint and brush stokes car-ried over from his Abstract Expressionist period. Atthe Metropolitan’s Guston retrospective (2003), youcould both look at Zone (1953–1954) and see, out ofthe corner of your eye, the same beautiful palette andpaint in Bad Habits (1970). In Bad Habits, a clock be-side a bare hanging light bulb reads 11:30. The twoKlansmen and their liquor bottles alike are puffed outlike pillows, mottled and modeled with pastel pinks



and blues that soften not only their edges but also theirsignificance. The smaller bottle rests on a red garbagecan; the neck of the larger bottle is the same green asthe zig-zag in Zone. The overt badness of the subject isobscured. Guston’s gorgeous paint handling workedlike Beckmann’s stained-glass brilliance: instead ofbeing repelled, we are wooed into the work. Even moresurprising, this is also true of the last works, in whichthe paint is no longer predominantly pink and red, butmore ominously, black, gray, and blood red.

Guston’s work triumphs as something deeply dis-turbing, an utterly compelling, seductive, subversiveidiom. His legacy and influence are seen now in con-temporary socially conscious painters (like Jenny Se-ville) who learned this from the late paintings: paint it-self can be the painter’s most powerful weapon,making us look closely at things we would otherwiseavoid.

Constraint Comparisons:Beckmann and Guston

Shared Constraints

It is not surprising that Guston would have looked toBeckmann’s work as inspiration late in his career. Bothresponded to troubled times with similar goal con-straints. Both aimed at conversion from brutality, fromwar, from dark secular “religions,” to something re-demptive, to a social conscience or consciousness thatwould restore civility and civilization. Beckmann’ssecular mythology was a response to the tragedies oftwo World Wars. His brilliant hues and religioustypology dramatized the terrifying, dark “religion”dominating Europe at the time. Guston’s synthesis ofbeautiful Abstract Expressionist technique and gro-tesque subject matter created an emotional depth ap-propriate to his fury and frustration with a later war thatpolarized America.

They also shared subject and task constraints. LikeBeckman, Guston created a cast of enigmatic charac-ters and objects that continually reappear in his work,exaggerated, distorted, vile, or pathetic figures whosedepth and versatility equal those in the triptychs. Theimportance of these types and objects was emphasizedby the way both artists compressed space: There isnone between them; all the volume in the paintings be-longs to things. The space becomes sacred in Beck-

mann, apocalyptically so in Guston. The seductivebeauty of Guston’s paint also borrows from Beck-mann, whose saturated hues and rich blacks outlinedimages of beastliness as well as of redemption.

These similarities are easily overlooked in the verydifferent physical realizations of their shared concernsand constraints. The differences emerge from eachone’s selection of other constraints, particularly theirchosen sources.

Separate Constraints

Sources, like all other constraints, limit and directsearch in disparate ways. Beckmann’s sources in-cluded, in close physical proximity, Northern Gothicand Early Renaissance religious art, from which he de-rived the triptych forms, the stained glass colors andoutlines, the exaggerated graphics, the relative sizingof sacred space. A continent away from Germany andFlanders, Guston’s sources included Beckmann in itsart history, the Klan in its social history, and in closeproximity, both comic strips and Abstract Expression-ism. From the funnies came his caricatures, distortedand dislocated; from Abstract Expressionism came hissensuous paint and brush stroke.

What makes a painting recognizably a Beckmann orunequivocally a Guston is each painter’s uniquely se-lected sets of constraints, early and late, shared andseparate.

Concluding Questions

What About Artistic Freedom?

After all this constraint talk, someone has to bethinking “What about artistic freedom?” One answercomes straight from any introductory textbook. Free todo anything, most of us do what’s worked most often inthe past. This is the definition of an operant, a behaviorthat increases in frequency because it’s been success-ful. Successful solutions, as we said earlier, are easy toget stuck in.

The other answer is this: Artist freedom exists onlyin the choosing of one’s own constraints. This ofcourse anticipates to a “yes” answer to our secondquestion.



Is Selecting Constraints Centralto Creativity?

We believe so, and hope that our analyses will con-vince our readers to agree. Novices have their con-straints selected for them by their teachers. Expertsearn that rank by mastering existing constraints in theirrespective domains. What is common to creators—par-ticularly the ones we call great, the ones who remaincreative over the course of their careers (like Matisseand Monet, like Beckmann and Guston)—is the ability,after attaining mastery and after experiencing success,to first, select novel goal constraints and second, tostrategically select source, task, and subject constraintsto help realize them.

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