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The Difference Between Art & Creativity
Is there a difference between the Mona Lisa and a Skittles ad campaign?
What about the Sistine Chapel and a Tesla? Or, more specifically, a painter who paints an original painting versus a painter who creates a perfect copy of an original but with his or her own twist? Does the latter require creativity? And if we say it does, would we also consider it art?
A friend of mine in Chicago and I used to debate this question at length — always over wine. We would follow each other down these obscure thought paths (“An architect is creative, but if the purpose of the building is to perform a specific function in society, is the building also art?”) only to arrive at the same dead end:
Artists can be creative, but is all creativity also art?
I still don’t have an answer.
However, lately I have been thinking about this question differently. Instead of trying to classify each individual object or “thing” as art or creativity, I have been questioning whether the intention of what I’m creating is for the benefit of someone else, or the benefit of myself.
For example, is this Atomic Essay creative? I suppose so. It requires me to think abstractly. It requires me to put pieces together like a puzzle. But is it art? This is…
