A short but engaging exploration of our changing perception of creativity.
Creativity was once seen as the mark of mad geniuses, troubled souls, and avant-garde eccentrics. Today, however, we expect to find the trait thriving in and around us. Why? In Creativity, Jan Lohmann Stephensen provides a historical and contemporary view of creativity and explains why it is not always the answer to every problem.
From van Gogh to Springsteen, Lohmann Stephensen explores the creative process of artists in order to craft a new theory of creativity-marking it as a collective and dynamic process in flux, rather than a finished product with a set endpoint and sole creator. Finally, he warns, in the twenty-first century, the importance that employers place on creativity has warped the concept into a ubiquitous economic commodity.