PlayArt Philosophy

Carsten Höller
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Since all of culture and science are based on various forms of play, it behooves us to reexamine our negative attitudes towards this subject. Unfortunately, we are still very much victims of a culture that stigmatized play as superfluous, infantile and frivolous, a leftover of the puritan work ethic. It is the objective of PlayArt to adjust these erroneous attitudes and thereby liberating creativity and the joy of life.

Play is also often deemed too trivial and unworthy to be a subject of art. Obviously we are dealing with another outmoded misconception. Consider the art of the Middle Ages, when religious subjects alone were worthy of depiction. Secular subjects, which are the norm today, were taboo at that time. We call this progressive liberalization from old taboos the "secularization of art", and PlayArt is simply a continuation of this process.

For many years, artists have been dissatisfied with the distance that exists between museum pieces and the viewer. PlayArt is the inevitable solution to that problem.

Quotes

Throughout history many prominent thinkers have defended the cultural, spiritual and practical significance of play against prevailing negative attitudes. PlayArt, we hope, is destined to shift those attitudes in a more positive direction. What follows is a selection of relevant quotations by distinguished authors, philosophers, scientists and artists.

Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play.

Heraclitus

Life must be lived as play, playing certain games, singing and dancing.

Plato

One will only be free when one plays and one's society will become a piece of art.

Herbert Marcuse

In the true man there is a child concealed who wants to play.

Friedrich Nietzsche

In every man there is a hidden child which is called the urge to create and he prefers as play things and serious things not the miniature ships, recreated in the minutest detail, but the walnutshell with a bird feather as mast and sail and a pebble as the captain. He also wants to be able to participate and to co-create in art, rather than being simply an admiring viewer. For this "child in man" is the immortal creator within him.

Christian Morgenstern

Whoever wants to understand much must play much.

Gottfried Benn

All scientific knowledge to which man owes his role as master of the world arose from playful activities.

Konrad Lorenz

Play is a phenomenon of nature and has directed the course of the world from the beginning of time: the formation of matter, its organization into living structures as well as the social behavior of man.

Manfred Eigen (Nobel laureate in physics)

The dynamic principle of fantasy is play, which belongs also to the child, and as such it appears to be inconsistent with the principle of serious work. But without this playing with fantasy no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable.

C.G. Jung

Almost all creativity involves purposeful play.

Abraham Maslow

Necessity may be the mother of invention, but play is certainly the father.

Roger von Oech

If you want to be creative, stay in part a child, with the creativity and invention that characterizes children before they are deformed by adult society.

Jean Piaget

In my view, art and the approach to life through art, using it as a vehicle for education and even for doing science is so vital that it is part of a great new revolution that is taking place. I believe we are entering a whole new epoch.

Jonas Salk

It is a happy talent to know how to play.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

Play is how we are made, how we develop and adjust to change. It can foster innovation and lead to multibillion-dollar fortunes.

Stuart Brown

(Talking about his first computer) Like all kids we not only fooled around with our toys, we changed them. If you've ever watched a child with a cardboard carton and a box of crayons create a spaceship with cool control panels, or listened to their improvised rules, such as "Red cars can jump all others," then you know that this impulse to make a toy do more is at the heart of innovative childhood play. It is also the essence of creativity.

Bill Gates

Creativity is about play and a kind of willingness to go with your intuition. It's crucial to an artist. If you know where you are going and what you are going to do, why do it? I think I learned that from the artists, from my grandmother, from all the creative people I've spent time with over the years.

Frank O. Gehry

I'm in favor of an art that does something other than just sit on its ass in a museum.

Claes Oldenburg

It is one of the primary motives of modern art that it wants to abolish the distance which the viewer, the consumer, the audience maintain vis-a-vis a work of art. There is no doubt that the leaders of the creative artists of the last 50 years concentrated their efforts mainly on eliminating that distance.

Hans-Georg Gadamer

When God created the world he was playing.

Ernst Lurker

To the art of working well a civilized race would add the art of playing well.

George Santayana

 

For more quotes on "play" go to The Painter's Keys.