>> i could draw you a floor plan of virtually every room i have ever been in in my life. from the timeafs four or fiv years old. and that... that... i mean, i think that nature does... i would be totally lost as oliver often is, not being able to find where he's going. but this ability seems to have been developed to mitigate for my inability to remember an address. >> rose: the cative brain next.

captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> rose: tonight wcontinue our exploration of the wonrs of the high man brain. our subject this evening: creativity. we have been fascinated by creativity for centuries. the ancient greeks believe that inspiration comes from the four muses. during the middle ages philosophers separated artistic creativity from other kinds of ingenuity. creativity came to be thought of as a unique skill ly certain people had. today we're rethinking creativity once again. we now know that creative talent not only reserved for the special few, instead it is a crucial part of every profession from acting to engineering. tonight we will explore the sources of inspiration that we can all find within ourselves. we will learn about the

biological basis of creativity. like every other aspect of human experience, it originates in the brain. we'll also look at the connections between creativity and mental illness. in order to help us understand the creative process. we turn to two of the most talented artist working tay. richarder is. a he is a sculptor best known for working with sheets of metal. his work breaks away from the traditional definition of sculpture and places an'm a says on the experience of the viewer. and chuck close. he is a painter whose oversize portraits feature incredible attention to detail. his work is all the more remarkable considering he suffers from a rare disease that makes him unable to recognize faces. also joining me is a world renown neuroscientist oliver sacks. he has written extensively about creativity. his latest book is called "the mind's eye." like chuck close, he'slso succeeded despite lacking the ability toecognize faces, a

condition called face blindness. and ann tein. she is chief curator of painting and sculpture at the museum of modern art in new york city. she will share with us several works by mr. serra and mr. close that help us understand their unique gifts as artists. and once again, my co-host is dr. eric kandel. as you know, he is a nobel laureate, a professor at columbia university and a howard hughes medical investigator. i'm very pleased to have him here as we talk about this remarkable functioof the human brain, the capacity to be creative. where does it come from? >> it comes from the brain. the brain has enormous creative capabilities and as you indicated, it's not limited to art. we see it in exquisitely refined art, but it's evident in many aspects of human activity. we're going toave a chance to explore this with chuck close and richard serra who are spectacular examples of

creativity in art. and this is an interesting turning point in our work together in this series. in the first ten programs, we discussed how different human mental processes come fromthe brain. and then we began to ask the question to what degree can one bridge between brain science and other bodies of knowledge. in the last program, we took economics as an example as we discusd decision making. and we saw how insights into the biology of decision making can enghten our understanding of how we make economic decisions and even moralecisions. that was is simplest case because we know a lot about decision making. we're now going to the other side of the mound. the most complex human activity, to see what sort of insight we can get. and one of the amazing things about this is we speak about richard serra and chuck close is they themselves do not use the term "creativity" for their own work.

they see themselves as problem solvers. they see themselves very much as scientists do. that they define a particular area they want to work on, they develop techniques for approaching it and as they reach one impasse or another, they try to solve it. chuck close, as you indicated, works on a much smaller scale than richard serra but, still, gigantic portraits. >> rose: everybody works on a smaller scale than richard serra. >> (laughs) but gigantic portraits, photo realistic portrait bus he focuses in on the little details. pixel by pixel he paints them different colors in order to put the image together. richard serra works on enormous scale, works with steel, works we lip seize and torques in which you walk along them and you walk between them. so he's also concerned as you indicated, in the beholder's response. how people emotionallyespond to the fact that they're working into the unknown. if you now ask yourself how did

they develop their creative process, you see they devop it in very, very different ways. my guess is richard serra could have done other things besides being a sculptor. he, in fact, was a very good painter for a while and he worked in this field when he was young and began to work with other materials that finally made these wonderful gigantic sculptures. chuck close took a very different approach. he is dyslexic, as you indicated. and he felt that there are many things he couldn't do. the one thing he could do very well is to draw. and he particularly became interested in drawing and painting faces. now, this is extremely interesting because she face-blind. he is probably the only artist in the history of western art who paints portraits without being able to recognize individual faces. and how does he do it?

he takes a picture, flattens it out which is easier to deal with and oliver sacks will explain that to us. and then he pixelates it. heuts a grade over it, makes small squares out of it because he can deal with small forms much more easily than large forms. and he then puts all this together. so they take two very different approaches to the art. and ann temkin is going to explain to us how these two emerge out of the contemporary tradition of art and oliver sacks is going to tell us about about the neurobiological underpinnings. let me just give you an outline of that. we learn a lot from people who have compromise to their cognitive function and we learn a lot from people like chuck close. in fact, it turns out that people with dyslexia can be quite creative. there's an enrichment of creativity among people who are dyslexic just like there is an

enrichment of people who have manic-depressive disorder or autism. and from dyslexia we get an insight into the brain regions involved. dyslexia is a difficulty in reading and arithmetic. that's represented in the left hesphe of the brain. the left hemisphere concerned with language, logic, orderly organization of ideas. the right hemisphere is thought to be concerned more with fantasy, with musicality, with emergency nation. and the founder of british neurology in the 19th century had an idea that the two hemispheres of the brain, althoughhey're symmetrical, are involved in different functions and we know's a fact. he thought they inhibited one another so that if you have compromise to the left hesphere as you do in dyslexia you can free up creative elements of the right hemisphere so one of the reasons people with dyslexia might be more creative-- this is just an idea-- is that they free up create poif ten shl that is latent in the right hemisphere. and there's independent evidence

of no mall people, two young investigators taking different approaches have found that if you solve a problem with an insight, an ah-ha phenomenon, a eureka phenomeno a part of the right hemisphere, the right superior temple eye us are lights up. so this is very soft evidence but we're focusing in on aspects of the right hemisphere being important in creativity. we'll see this as we discuss it more with oliver sacks. >> rose: it can be scientists athletes, business people, it can be... >> i think one of the things you point out you had on the coach of the duke basketball te and you asked him "how doou bring out creativity involved in your players?" there's creativity in every aspect of your li but many people don't have the time to focus or free themselves up or have the intrinsic capability. there are genes involved in this as well. >> rose: one of the most remarkable things i have learned coming with you through this 12-part look at the humane brain

is the notion that the brain does so much more than we imagine, and that's part of why it's on the frontier of science. i didn't understand until we began to talk abou this how the brain was central to the eye, it was central to walk, it was central to a whole range of human emotion and now we talk about this most remarkable quality, the ability to be creative, to think new ideas. >> the brain is a cativity machine. we spoke in an early program in vision, how the investigation coming through the eyes, through retinas, are incomplete. for me to get a complete picture of charlie rose, i see the outlines of your face and i add additional features as a result of my exposure, my looking at faces, so this is what the brain recreates the outside world. it's an amazing path. >> rose: let's go to a

remarkable pan. we have had on this program people who are living with brain disease or brain disorder and now we go to people who are noted for crtivity as we explore with them this remarkable thing that our brain do. the ability to create. help us understand, chuck, and richard, in terms of creativity. give us that sort of historian's perspective. >> wl, in fact, although their work is so different, one from the other, they're both products of a very simil environment in their formative years as artists. chuck's born in '40, richard is born in '39. they both are becoming artists in their teens, in their early 20s when abstract expression schism the reigning dominant force in art. this is the masterpiece kind of

philosophy about making heroic art. for them... both of them at yale together, by the way, in the early 1960s, there was an absolute reaction against that. as much as yo were wanting in part way to emulate the majesty and therar eundof a jackson pollack or a painting by bill de kooning, there was also an absolute need to get away from there that. >> rose: is there an explanation for why there are bursts of creativity at certain places and certain times? >> well, i think both of them could speak that very much. there is no question that the myth of the isolationed genius in the studio is quite inaccurate or incomplete. because i think the generation of these two and many others-- whether you're talking about, in fact, theabstract expressionists or the french impressionists or florence in the italian renaissance, it's the togetherness that is such an

impoant factor. it's the rivalry wh your colleagues, it's the desire to support each other, it's what you get from seeing what they're doing, it's talking and talking and talking. >> rose: creativity needs what? >> i think for people who are making and doing, when you're actually making and doing something, you don't think "i'm creating." at least i don't. i don't think "oh, now i'm creating." i think that certain aspects of what i would like to find out about my own experience in doing and making lead to developed certain processes that will allow me to have a certain feedback that will allow know continue. when i first started in new york i wrote down a list of verbs and i decided i would enact the verbs in relation to material, place and sometimes time. so i would take very simple things. i would either roll that up or

li a piece of rubber up and i would call them "to roll, to lift, to hang, to bend, to die, to dapple, to twist" or whatever. and i thought that by just using a very simple transitive verb structurit would allow know enact processes and motor control in relation to material that would then allow me to proceed in a way that i didn't have to deal with the specific of history. it would allow me to have an own intransi can logic in relation to what i was doing. in relation to perception of what was the residue of the activity. now, that doesn't mean that all activities and the residue are going to create something that is satisfying in terms of what you would call an aesthetic experience. most of them not. but every now and then you would have a moment where you would say "ah-ha! i've done this and this satisfies certain parameters of what i can then relate to in things that have been done before but not... no pressing

for it." and the very early work was a simple taking a piece of rubber about four feet wide and about eight feet long, grabbing ges ned its edge and lifting it about. and it was called "to lif" once i stood that up, i realized that i could accept the top l logical continuousness of this form as a sculpture. now, the immediate generation that had come before had dealt with the hierarchy of the object. and they weren't involved with the process the material. and they had specific intentions. well, i was more interested in my own ysical experience than somebody else's intention. i wasn't interested in script, i was interested in how i could physically interreact with material. and what the residue would be in tes of anyone looking at it being able to reconstruct what had been done. whether or not that was satisfying aesthetically for other people or not, at that point didn't concern me.

and i was working with various people. i have a small trucking company so it was myself, chuck, phil glass, bob fiori, michael snow, steve reich. so there were a lot of painters, other sculptors, filmmakers, musicians who would help me. and there was a dialogue that went on between us that was involved with process, time, movement, place that didn't really adhere to any discipline. so there was an interconnectedness in the language that we all shared and there wasn't any competition about one outdoing thether because we were all involved with a similar language which, up to that point, really hadn't it this museums. we were doing the work for each other. >> rose: does this resonate with you, chuck? >> yeah, i was... i remember being in richard's studio and he says "look at this." (laughter) and he reaches down and he lifts that thing up and we're like, oh

wow, this is really an amazing thing. and... but i think in terms of, you know, how we ended up doing what we're doing, it's a common misunderstanding about how generations of artists move away from other people's work. there's a commonly held belief that we're reacting against work thatwe find bankrupt, uninteresting, devoid of any value and therefore you go out and make something else. i thought we loved all those people so much and we thought we were going to be doomed to be followers if we continued to make work that looked like everyone else. >> our generation really wanted to create something that was not familiar and i think to make somethat that is unfamiliar is actually probably to make something new and to create something, to make something

famili is to deal with facts th have come before. and in watching the segments of these programs-- i didn't watch the last few-- but i was struck that the passion of scientists trying to deal with something in relation to the given history of facts and then offering something new i tnk is probably fairly consistent with how a lot of artists work. >> rose: eric? >> this is what struck me and ann wilson made this point. there must be a common sort of... set of stages whereby people solve problems... >> i think problem solving is not the issue. i think that's problem creation... >> selecting what is the interesting problem... >> i think what we did was try and find a way to back ourselves on our own individual corner and ask questions of ourselves that no one else's answers would fit. and then srch was on.

but, again, it was a choice not to do something. add reinhart was very important for me. i don't know if he was for you but his writings were... he made the choice not to do something a positive decision. "no more of this, no more of that. we're not going to do this anymore, we're not going to do that anymore." i thought oh, my god, if i want to move not necessarily progress but if i want to move from where i am i could crustonct construcs of severe -ilfsemposed limitations. if'mngoilf g to make something then i'm going to.. say. i'm s of ng to purge my work souo brushmanship, i'm gsongoi try to get the artist hutngdoan of there. i'm gointoit limdo myself to onl color just black paint thinned down on a white canvass and i... my hand want a to make art shaps so i'll work from photographs so the shapes have b the shapes in the photograph. i'm plagued with indecision and

paint it in, scrape it off so i'm only going to work with one color sohat i'm forced to make decisions early and live with it. purge the work of everything else. >> rose: >> and even in terms of a personal characterization, these look much more like the kind of photo on a driver's license or a passport. no posing. >> right. >> it is interesting since you have difficulty recognizes facing how did you focus in on becoming a part rate artist? >> well, everything in my work is driven by my learning abilities. every single aspect of my work. >> i hope so for all of us. >> besides face blindness, i was very sese veerly learning disabled and i couldn't add or subtract or multiply or divide. >> rose: dyslexia. >> well, in the '40s and '50s nobody knew from dyslexia or learning abilities, you were just dumb or lazy.

so what happened was i had to find a way to distinguish myself from my colleagues. i was notood at a lot of other things--irtually any other thing. it wasn't that i cared more. i just wasn't more talented, i just had all my eggs in that basket. and if this didn't work out, i was... >> rose: >> but why faces? >> well, i'm really glad cezanne painted apples and randy painted bottles. (laughter) but i'm... i don't want to do that. and i am... since i'm face blind-blind, i want to commit images images to memory. and richard as a sculptor... i could never in a million years be a sculptor. i'm totally flat. when i tried to make sculpture i only worked onne sid.

so i... if i look at you and you move your head half an inch it's a new head that i've never see before. (laughter) but if we take a photograph and flatten itut, i now affect a translation from one flat medium to another. >> rose: and that's become more and more true for you? >> yeah. >> rose: as you've gotten older, it's become more and more true. >> this gentleman, oliver, is also face-blind and also fantastilly creative. doou think that you're... your face blindness in any way contributes to your creativity, ol sfler. >> well, it makes it necessary for me to observe voice and movement and posture and context more precisely. >> it made you a better clinician in a way. >> perhaps so. >> rose: based on what we've talked about in terms of origins of creativity, where does it come from for you? >> nee. and the... and i think perps

need to communicate in... that nathaniel haw foreign his preface to his twice told tales he said his art was not a communing of theoul itself but an attempt however imper fokt establish an intercourse with the world. and whether it was faces or sculptures or music or science one wants some sort of resonance. one wants an intercourse, one wants an exchange. >> well, one thing that both artists' work shares to a really interesting sex tent for me thinking ire the d aeys i the pe viewers' experience. and i think chuck's paintings, if we could look at the roy lech ten ein portrait, there is ltev. there's a back and forth between the abstract markets, the painting act and the

representation of somebody. and neither one is the whole experience. part of the experience is the abstract circles and squares and funny shapes that youee inou e detail. >> wonderful. >> and then part of it is, oh, but here's this person. and for chuck making it... but as much or more for the viewer painting, one isaig made to become aware of one's own perception and one's own use of one's perception because you have to look at this painting up close to see the free abstraction of the brush work, of the shapes that are made, the color form. and then you step back to see, oh, there's roy liechtenstein. and the process that you went flu making it is so embedded in the painting that as the viewer you are almost made to recreate it. >> both ofs, all the evidence of its own making is right there in the work itself. the fact that there are incremental units-- which is

true from the very beginning, even a continuous tone paintings-- were made in incremental units is also driven by my learning disability. i was overwhelmed by the whole. i didn't have any... how am i going to make a head? how am i going to make a nose? it's too overwhelming. it makes me too angs but if i break it down in a lot of little decisions, lots of... this was a coping mechanism i used all the way through school and everything that i did. take sething overwhelming and anxiety provoking and make it little not so scary decisions and have it be a positive experience. because every time i completed the square i didn't wait to the little problemneit ltle problem at a time and the pleasure came with each one of those. and this was very reassuring.

>> each someone slightly different. the number of decisions that you've involved, you painstakingly worked to see that the colors matched. it's quite amazing. >> an interesting thing about this painting was i could have done it with a diagonal grid or a horizontal vertical grid. if i made it diagonal his nose would have been a ski job. the iconography would have been the same. it would have been roy and they would have looked the me, especially reduced but i decided that i wanted to do a horizon vertical grid so your eye would splash down those shapes like water over rocks on a waterfall. d even though ne would be the same in either case, it was an entirely different experience and and i'm an orchestrator of experiences. that's what i try to do. >> it's very rare for a lainter tolpto be as explicito about that intert in the viewers' experience. but richard, for you imagine...

it's the opposite you didn't get any step-by-step gratification at all. and for you go through an idea in your head to what it is when these things are complete that will make the viewers' experience be what it is, you're envisioning it to be. can you at all describe that? >> i think some very simple things. i went from conical shape which is were inverted that would allow shapes away from you or you turn one up side down they would lean toward you to th en dealing with torque shapes and it evolved into a series of torqued ellipses and torqued passage ways where the viewer is experiencing a space that he's implicated in that is somewhat startling in that they have no previous information that would allow them understand the complexi of a curve leaning toward and away from you as you

move through. and it gave me a big opening into developing a language. >> i'd say what is interesting about this is one gerally thinks of the part nation the art as a moderately stationary experience. certainly conventional sculpture you walk around a built. but yours opened up a completely ne response. this is really a long walk that you'veaken some of these and the emotion changes as you move through it. i'm interested in not just the material of the spiel but the void. so the steel is just a vessel that allows one to understand one's physical relation to the space in the way that this room is round, we now in the one particular way and it's centered with this table. it was a linear table we would know each other's response very, very differently. those kinds of things have always interested me since i was a kid walking one way on the beach and walking backward the

other way completely confounded me. and those very simple things, this is a telephone booth as differentiating from being in a football stadium, i could never get back together in my head. >> at one point was building a work for jasper johns in his studio and i splashedllwawat t a agnst wa a jaspe askedt me if i wld builda piece for him in his studio and i had piece of lead wi me and i thought i'll cast off this piece of lead and shove hit in the corner. en h i putit in the corr i realized that, oh, the corner is holding the sheet of lead up. p and i thought i wonder. and so i went on and made the jasper johns piecend immediately it got me out of the studioi went and aed der rig goure, got a place ten by 20 feet long, put hit in the corner it bisect it had room, made the whole volume of the room an installati. it made the space of the place as interesting as the steel plate itself and the architecture just by bisecting the wne cror was supporting the

work. so there wasn't anydielng w, nothing, no support, the architecture itself was holding the work in place. but it's always in the process of working itself that ideas lead to other things for me. the work isn't scripted or confined only to its notion of making but in the process of it revealing itself to me is when i learn what is possible that i hadn't foreseen in what i projected. and one doesn't wa to become a slave to one's own precedence and the way to get around that is to constantly stay aware and asks questions about what it is i'm looking at and what it is i don't understand. and often times when pieces are coming together you see things that you could notave imagined and they push you in different directions. >> re: same for you, too? >> this is very important.

i've always said... for a long time i've said inspiration is for amateurs. (laughter) the rest of us just show up and get to work. (laughter) because everything grows out of work. you do something and that kicks open a door and you look through that door and do i want to go there? yes. you move right there. everything comes from... that kind of approach to... you don't want to sit around and wait for clouds to part and be struck in the head with a bolt of lightning because it may never happen. >> rose: you don't get up in the morning and say "i have to be creative." (laughter) >> that's not a word that we use. >> rose: you don't even use the word. >> we don't use "inspiration" and we don't use terms like that. >> rose: so it only happens when you do what? >> sometimes it's because you put yourself in a position where you're more likely to bump into something. >> rose: did you once telle that the creative process that you engage in... instead of

creative process you say creating art making art. you only take it halfway then the person who service it takes the rest of the way. >> desharp said the artist only had 15% of responsibility. >> i never interviewed desham. >> the piece was completeded when the viewer returned it to the artist. and we a in a business of visual communication. >> i think this is a very important point because it also points out the creativity insight is not just the artist's domain. the response to the art is also undergoing the creative process. and that's working through what thart means to them. $and the process for you becomes when the people are inside of the sculpture. >> our generation was very involved with the material aspects and one's response to the material aspects and how one could produce a certain effect thugh an activity with its

physical aspects. i'm not sure as mediaization comes in and virtual reality takes over and people are being immersed in the spectacular whether those notions of materiality still hold. i think ann may be able to speak to it because she's probably more abreast of what kids in their 20s or 30s are dng than i am. but it seems to me that the emphasis on understanding the logic of material and the manifestation of the material and relation to form and basically what i do istry to invent form. form that didn't predicate on past forms. that's what sculptors have always done. but i'm not sure if younger generations care about that... those criteria, those notions in the way that seemed to be what my task had to be. >> what do we know about the biology of creativity? >> well, in a word, not too much. >> not toouch.

(laughter) >> but it certainly entail it is lifting of various inhibitions and the strengths as well as stimulate and you were speaking before aut the two halfs of the brain and how different they are. and certainly when the left half of the brain there has more concern for language and abstract thought gets damage as it may in some diseases or with a stroke, you will have a release of conptual powers and artistic powers from the other hemisphere. >> do you think the fact that we both have face blindness is an area of damage in both of our brains that can be pointed to. >> yes. yes. i... not so much damage as a failure of development. and, yes, and a failure of

development and in areas which are similar to those who had strokes or whatever can suddenly lose facial recognition. >> there is an amazingly large reputation in the brain faces. there are six or seven what are called face patches in which you record from them you see that 90% of t cells respond to fas. and you know it much better than i do but there are different kinds of face blindness. there are blindnesss in which you don't recognize a face as a face at all in which the blindness i recognize a face but i don't always check the closest face. so you have no difficulty recognizing the object as a face but you can't identify it as a specific person. and the areas which that are involved in that have been recognized. these areas don't responsibility if you just show two dots for an eye and a nose in between. it has to be surrounded by a circle so you get the sort of feeling of an actual face being there and as a caricature, the more you exaggerate the face,

the moreramatic the cell response. if you push the eyes apart or bring them together t-cells respond more dramatically. >> rose: let me just ask both of you. suppose there is someone who you've never seen before come into your field of vision what would you see? >> i would see them but the next day i wouldn't recognize them. >> rose: that's... would not recognize them the next day? >> it's identity association with the face. >> you have to see it over and over. >> but what would be very interesting about richard's brain is he's very space conscious and there's an area in the brain called theippompus that's also involved in memory. and if you look at london taxi drivers who, unlike new york taxi drivers, really know their way around town, they have to take examinations, the size of the hippocampus varies as a function of how long they've en driving. so the longer they drive-- win limits-- if you ask a taxi

driver write now to think of going from one place to another in london, the hippocampus lights up. >> i don't recognize faces but i have an incredible facility in finding one largely because i can't remember the address i have to know how to get there using other indicator and i feel like i'm float over the world. i see the entire world in plan and i know i'm going to go here and then turn left and then right and i'm going to get where i'm going. i could draw you a floo plan of virtually every room i have ev been in in my life from the time that i was four or five years ol and that... i mean ihink that nature does... iould be totally lost as oliver often is not being able to find where he's going but this ability seems to have been developed to

mitigate my inability to remember an address. >> rose: let me ask you this because we touched on this earlier. right brain, left brain. what's the evidence that if there is something wrong with right or left brain it enhances the ability of the other. >> some of the clearest evidence or suggestion is the occurrence of diseases or damage to one hemisphere. >> rose: give me an example. so if your vision is impaired... >> so in this frontal temporal dementia, part of the temporal lobe is affected in the left hemisphere and the there tends to be some release of activities in the right hemisphere >> 40-year-old man who did very little painting suddenly has an outburst of painting. >> or musicality.

>> two young investigators who've been using different approaches to what is called the aa ha phenomenon. i can give you a problem that you can solve in one way systematically by going through the alternatives and immediately seeing the answer. if you see the answer imdiately, a certain area in the right term porl lobe lights up. and this is in the variety of different tasks so even though this is very early stage one is beginning to get insight into the fact that some aspect of creativity-- this isn't going to cover all of it-- seems to be including the right hemisphere. >> rose: being an artist and a scientist both is there difference in scientific creativity and what we might call artistic creativity for lack of a better board? >> it's answer to argue both for the similarities and against them. a great fizz zigs who was also a very fine amateur pianist has a

chapter in his autobiography called "mozart in quantum mechanics." >> rose: (ughs) >> and he says that for him when he's doing one or the other they ar profoundly different for me narrative-- which is my dium-- somehow seems tocombine them all the while. at least i hope it does. >> i think the problem that chuck and i may have with w the word "creative di" is that seen from the outside it seems like a very exaltederm and people attribute various status symbols to it or whatever. seen from the inside it's probably an unending question mark if not paranoia and...

>> paranoia or? >> sublimation. and that's an interesting point i'd like to bring up. how does one account in science or in brain science for the activity of sublimationor is it accounted for? because it ctainly is apparent to me-- and i just gave a talk on louise bourgeois who tooked autoit all her life-- that her sexual drive was sublimated in her work. that was the manifestation of her work. now does sublimation play a role in the synapses that occur in the brain? >> i think there may be an interesting historical example with hermann melville. hermann hman melville wrote several popular novels in the 1840s. he was highly talented but not particularly original: and then something happened around 1850.

is he fell in love. in fact, he fell in loveng nathaniel hawthorne. >> ros oh! >>nd this was not reciprocated and therefore the lib doe didn't have its normal outlet and it was in this state of passion and restraint that moby dick emerged. a work of genius from the first sentence. >> rose: we can thank... the less of this we can thank nathaniel hawthorne for "moby dick." >> and nathaniel hawthorne thanked melville with a great, great article about that. >> that's a very nice story. >> rose: stay with me, this is very interesting. because the scientists... i know many scientists and many artists who have an a fantastically rich sexual life. it enhances their productivity ratherhan decreases it. i think there are a thousand ways to be creative.

a lot of different ways. what i think is a similarity between artists and scientist which is emerge very interestingly is finding the problem. i think the scientific career finding an interesting problem is one of the most important aspects of it. it has a futur to it that you see won't be a one-shot affair. >> rose: >> this makes me think of an artist, a great german sculpture joseph boyce and his most famous assertion is that serve an artist. and i think a lot of these men have been saying is that, yes, they are processes can be extended to the way a scitist works tohe way a banker works, a baker works, there's a certain amount of... >> creativity in all of us. >> in everybody. and the kinds of normal ways in which they go from day to day and year to year and their work can be shared by people are doing other things. >> this is the artist or the worker i think. >> yes.

>>. >> rose: and i think that's a very important point. >> and yet you're richarder is. a you are chuck close. oliver sacks. eric kandel. there somehow is the ultimate mystery of what is the distinction between the people with those achievements, yes, great to think about everyone as an artist. thinking of ourselves that way everyday. >>. >> rose: what's the difference between everybody has the capacity to engage in process and a richard serra who's done it at a level that at the end of the road there is something extraordinary that people say homage to? >> i think it has a lot to do with internal motivation about what... why you're driven and i can't answer that question. i was in analysis for eight years and i still can't answer that question. >> rose: the question of why you're sdplichb >> why you're driven why i'm drif on the want to invent form. i can't answer that. >> or why i work so hard.

>> but there are thousands of... >> rose: ol sfler >> one drive for me depends on the fact that i fl like i cannot come to terms with experience completely until it is rendered into language. >> how do i know what i think unless i read what i write? (laughter) >> rose: auden. that was auden, right? >> yes. >> rose: what's the takeaway on creativity here? >> the takeaway is, for me, there's a lot we can know by circumstance, behavior, psychology and so on way, way more. we can't know. can't understand at this point. >> i've known rhard for a long time but i've never seen him more excited than when he's an explaining an idea. when he goes... i've been with you when you've taken lead and rolled it up and shoved hit in

the sand and then explain to me how this bisects the shape and, you know, you light up. you light up in a way and your desire to share... artists are very generous people. we're also narcissistic and self-involved but we... there is the desire to share this. and there's a little bit of the child in all of us that's saying look at me, i am here, i am somebody. let me take you on a little voyage. i'm going to show you something. i'm going to take you somewhere. i'll make an experience for you. and and i hope you enjoy it. >> i want to ask you different question, oliver. what is it you most want to understand as a scientist and as i person who engages in a narrative form about the act of creating and creativity.

>> i want to understand how the new can come into being. and this... again, to... i want to give a concrete example. a little bit was said earlier about imitation being bad. i think imitation may be an essential preliminary to any achievement. for example, with a poet like poke, like alexander poke poik, his first publications were called imitations of english poets and he is first concerned to get the technique or develop the language as you said, richard. and only when it's developed he then infuses it with his imagination. buyou can't have anything new until a great deal has become automatic and send nature but

it is i thk the spontaneous responsibility spontaneity and novelty and the most challenging problems in the world. >> when we were a yale. >> rose: "we" being you and richard. >> and there were so many other interesting people there at the same time. we unbashedly worked through other people's work. we were students and... you could always tell who richard was into because all the pages of the book where glued together with paint because the books would be spreaveryrue. you get your chopstoind somethi. >> if you can leavet alone y may be stuck in imitation virtuosity for your whole life. >> i think that's a problem with propriation, it's a prime modus operandi >> andck in imitation virtuosity for your whole life. >> i think that's a problem with propriation, it's a prime modus operandi >> and it may notccur early

li life. >> i think that's a problem with propriation, it's a prime modus operandi >> and it may notccur early life. say with someone like wagner, all his early works like men doll son, they're all mixed together and then suddenly when he's 40 years old he does something which has never been done before, in particular a dominant music always resolves but he opens with a dominant seventh which is the resolution, this sounds tiny but it was unprecedented. this would open the door to muse chick i wait. >> you make a point and that is, in addition to have having ideas selecting a problem, you have to have competence. and one of the ways that developing competence and s learning the task.

>> chuck has this great comment about how you made more decon anythings than dedecon ng, right? >> i said it's very nice to meet somebody who's made a few more de kooning's than i. >> but it's also greatness because unless the newness contains it's not going to achieve the stature. >> when was free to do anything i wanted to, do i did the same things over and over d over. once i constructed a situation in which i couldn't do certain things, i found that those limitations rather than con strinting me and rather than limiting what i could do on the other hand... on the contrary open things up and i was far more intuitive than i ever had been without those limitations. >> rose: i have to close this. go ahead, make the point. >> i think there are two other

points. we real fries a variety of levels we know very little about creativity. this should inspire people to look intthis. number two the two of you give a remarkable example we've mean? other contexts as well and that is the social determinants of creativity. you are a wonderful generation of students, you mustave had a faculty at least encouraged, permitted this: and to think the environment so much encouraged your creativity, two outstandings artists to come out of one class. >> that's amazing. there are social determinates that encourage the outburst of creativity. that's very important. >> and it was the yale atmosphere i think you have to stress was repeated in downtown new york at the end of the 60s where they all ended up and work together. >> rose: richard, i want to give the last word to you.

>> i think what i... i'm interested in this consciousness and how the brain actually allows peoe to become more conscious,. how es one understand others in relation to one's self and where is it that... what triggers that consciousness of the other? we actually had a whole program on this that is the biology of each think. how i have an idea of where you're at and where you're going and what your aspirations are as a different person than mysf. we're developing ideas of certain areas of the brain and how at functions but i want to stay two issues you've brought up we're very far from understanding that. but hopefully we want to give something for the younger people to do and i feel my job is to give job opportunits. >> rose: on that note, thank you very much.

>> chuck close, thank you. thank you ann temkin and olive sacks columbia university neurologist. i should note you're wearing this cap not because we want to promote anying but because you thought it would shield your sensitive eyes from the bright television lights we are thrilled to have you here without a hat. thank you very much. and eric kandel and i havebeen on a journey. it has been a journey that i have learned as much as i have on any series. it has opened up to enormous possibilities. i think ic and i could sit here tonight and say let's go do ten parts of creativit just the questions we have raed at this table show you the extraordinary thing we've been talking about which is that as we understand the complexity of the brain just a little bit it hop up and shows us the possibilities of understanding so much more and understanding who we are and understanding where what we thought o as in a

sense didn't quite understand about behavior and how there was a connection to biology. and eric has helped us understand that he is my great friend and has been the guiding hand and light and mind... $it's been a shared experience if i may interrupt you. >> i am pleased to say this is 12 parts. we will do more. captioning sponsored by rose commucatis

captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

>> "body electric" is brought to you by new phase, to relieve the miseries of menopause naturally. new phase. the following program has been made possible by the generous support of the "body electric" friends.

>> ♪ i sing the body electric i celebrate the me yet to come i toast to my own reunion when i become one with the sun and i'll look back on venus i'll look back on mars and i'll burn with the fire of ten...♪ [song fades] >> hello, and welcome to "body electric." i'm margaret richards, your "body electric" host and along with bev. well, we're going to have a workout--a warm-up and it's going to be great. of course, a cool down will follow. let's start with a deep breath. all the way up with the