Space Structures: Their Harmony and Counterpoint by Arthur L. Loeb (review)

248 Books which they have been produced’, Kavolis finds that ‘cultures as diverse as those of the Fiji Islands, Greece, Japan, the United States and the BaKwele have shown considerable agreement in ranking individual works of art according to merit’. A sociologicalcycle typically consists of four phases: latency, goal-direction, integration and tension-reduction. The latency phase is one of resignation or of exhaustion after the struggles in a prior cycle. Both achievement-motivation and artistic creativity are low. Concepts of reality are either wholly sensate and rational, or wholly ideational. In the goal-directed phase, a movement for change arises out of dissatisfaction with the existing culture. This movement may be repressed with a return to latency, or it may grow as increased social resources are devoted to it. Artistic creativity is likely to suffer. In the integration phase, which follows, society settles into a new consensus. Past cultural patterns are remembered and tolerated. Sexual controls are moderate, suicide decreases, and foreign trade contracts, as do both invention and discovery. Social resources for art are generous and creativity is high. Kavolis has an explanation for the eftlorescenceof visual art in an integration phase. The social need for art lies in its ability to integrate the new ideology into society, to merge sacred with secular, sensate with existential. Art is the most effectiveagent to reconcileconflictingsubcultures, to reverse socialdisintegration following war or other major upsets, to heal the wounds of change and to stabilize healthy human relationships. The final stage, just preceding a return to latency, is tensionreduction . A new equilibrium sets in. What was radical becomes the new conservatism, and achievementmotivation declines.Art, having completed its task of reconciliation, atrophies, even though its social resources are still adequate. Many historical cultures have passed through a tension-reduction phase and a subsequent latency phase to start the cycle afresh, but ‘no industrial economy as a whole has yet passed into the stage of tension reduction’. The several types of cycles are frequently concurrent but the resulting effect on artistic creativity depends upon their relative phases. A coincidenceof severalintegration phases is most likely to produce an artistic eftlorescence. The average time for a complete cycle is 420 years. The integrative phase lasts about 100 years, while the latency phase takes 120 years. There is some evidence that these time periods are becoming shorter. Kavolis’phase-cyclehypothesis implies that superposed upon the personal factors influencingthe creativity of individual artists is a web of numerous interacting sociological cycles that dominate artists over long periods of time in ways from which only a rare genius, such as a Goya, can escape. This view of creativity has implications not only for the visual artsbut also for an understanding of the broad spectrum of social organization and some of society’s current problems. The Universal Traveler. Don Koberg and Jim Bagnall, Kaufmann, Los Altos, Calif., 1974. 128 pp.. illus. Paper. $4.95. Reviewed by Harold K. Hughes* With breezy writing, catchy page titles, antique illustrations and a wealth of practical advice, this book on learning how to be creative, by an architect and a graphic coordinator, should disrupt the thinking routines of any reader. The authors set out to prove that experts develop, they do not just happen. Definingcreativity as ‘both the art and the scienceof thinking and behaving with subjectivity and objectivity’, Koberg and Bagnall discussfive keys to developing one’screativity, ten fears that block it, seven traps along the route, creativity games, the three stages in synectics, a procedure for self-hypnosis during which one programs oneself for a desired behavior, and how to criticize others painlessly. The title of this easily read travel guide to all one will likely need to know in order to bestir one’sown creativity describesthe whole design of the book-a series of road signs pointing from the befuddled problem state, where one is, to the brightly illuminated solution state where one wants to be. *State University of New York, Potsdam, NY 13676, U.S.A. In common with many other writers, the authors divide the creative process into distinct segments, which they call ‘energy states’. The first three are acceptance, analysis and definition. Thefourth state, and for many...