Forget

DEFINITION

To lose memory. Forgetting (like remembering) is key to the incubation (Getzel's third) stage in the creative process. At this stage, the artist must mull over the problem in a sort of chaos of ideas and knowledge (remembering), letting go of certainties (forgetting), as the artist engages the intuitive, non-sequential, or global thinking at the core of creativity.Since before the twelfth century English speakers have employed the word "forget", but in 1815 a synonym for it ? "disremember" ? first appeared in print. A critic in the 1860s called "disremember" both "obsolete" and "a low vulgarism," and later strict grammarians have typically agreed. As it happens, "forget" is indeed the vastly more popular word, but "disremember" still turns up occasionally, often in dialectal or humorous contexts.Quote: "There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted." Henri Matisse (1869-1954), French artist. Quoted in obituaries reporting his death, Nov. 5, 1954. "We must smash, demolish, and destroy our traditional harmony, which makes us fall into a gracefulness created by timid and sentimental cubs. We disown the past because we want to forget, and in art to forget means to be renewed." Umberto Boccioni (1882-1916), Italian Futurist painter and sculptor. Pittura, scultura futuriste, 1914. "...art does not lie down in the beds that have been made for it. It flees as soon as its name is mentioned; what it likes most is to be incognito. Its best moments are those during which it has forgotten its own name." Jean Dubuffet (1901-1985), French modernist painter. Quoted by M. Th?voz, The Art Brut Collection, Lausanne, 2001. p. 13. "For me art shouldn't be a fixed idea that I have before I start making it. I want it to include all the fragility and doubt that I go through the day with. Sometimes I'll take a walk just to forget whatever good idea I had that day because I like to go into the studio not having any ideas. I want the insecurity of not knowing, like performers feel before a performance. Everything I can remember, and everything I know, I have probably already done, or somebody else has." Robert Rauschenburg (1925-), American artist, quoted by Michael Kimmelman in an article about Rauschenburg, New York Times, "Arts & Leisure" section 2, August 27, 2000, p. 26. Also see d?j? vu, destruction, placeholder, and Stendhal syndrome.