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Thinking Inside the Tool Box: Creativity, Constraints, and the Colossal Portraits of Chuck Close
Author(s) -
Stokes Patricia D.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
the journal of creative behavior
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.896
H-Index - 55
eISSN - 2162-6057
pISSN - 0022-0175
DOI - 10.1002/jocb.52
Subject(s) - creativity , premise , constraint (computer aided design) , process (computing) , cliché , computer science , epistemology , identification (biology) , computational creativity , psychology , engineering , social psychology , art , philosophy , mechanical engineering , botany , biology , operating system , literature
This article presents a problem‐solving model to examine the often problematic relationship between expertise and creativity. The model has two premises, each the opposite of a common cliché. The first cliché asserts that creativity requires thinking outside‐the‐box. The first premise argues that experts can only think and problem solve inside the tool boxes of their expertise. The second cliché, that creativity requires freedom from constraints, points to the problem with expertise. Free to do anything, experts repeat what has worked best in the past. A solution is suggested by the second premise: to circumvent the liabilities of expertise, creativity requires constraints of a particular paired kind. The model is introduced as an expansion of prior process models focused on problem identification and construction. Problem‐finding is reanalyzed as constraint‐finding. A case study shows how one recognized creator, painter Chuck Close, uses constraints as a tool to solve the expertise‐creativity problem.