Artistic Genius

Author:Ivo Makianich. All rights reserved

Well, my son Ivo has made this great illustration 2 or maybe  three years ago, approximately, now he is 18 years old since June 6th. He never took courses of Arts, nothing. So, my husband and me think, if he is an intuitive boy, or maybe he has a hidden genius for Arts or is it the result of  combined genes of two architects parents? Modesty apart, this is from Benedetto Croce´s book AESTHETIC AS SCIENCE OF EXPRESSION AND GENERAL LINGUISTIC :

¨Nor can we admit that the word genius or artistic genius, as distinct from the non-genius of the ordinary man, possesses more than a quantitative signification. Great artists are said to reveal us to ourselves. But how could this be possible, unless there be identity of nature between their imagination and ours, and unless the difference be only one of quantity? It were well to change poeta nascitur into homo nascitur poeta: some men are born great poets, some small. The cult and superstition of the genius has arisen from this quantitative difference having been taken as a difference of quality. It has been forgotten that genius is not something that has fallen from heaven, but humanity itself. The man of genius, who poses or is represented as distant from humanity, finds his punishment in becoming or appearing somewhat ridiculous. Examples of this are the genius of the romantic period and the superman of our time.

But it is well to note here, that those who claim unconsciousness as the chief quality of an artistic genius, hurl him from an eminence far above humanity to a position far below it. Intuitive or artistic genius, like every form of human activity, is always conscious; otherwise it would be blind mechanism. The only thing that may be wanting to the artistic genius is the reflective consciousness, the superadded consciousness of the historian or critic, which is not essential to artistic genius.¨

From AESTHETIC AS SCIENCE OF EXPRESSION AND GENERAL LINGUISTIC

TRANSLATED FROM THE ITALIAN OF BENEDETTO CROCE

BY DOUGLAS AINSLIE B.A. (OXON.)1909

Chapter II Intuition and Art