Modulating Picasso’s variations on Las Meninas: from Goodman to the definition of strategies for creative processes based on exploration

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to establish a set of procedural strategies for Nelson Goodman’s concept of variation. In «Variations on Variation» (1987), Goodman puts forward an answer to the question «when is a variation?». Goodman’s definition results insufficient due to its circularity, which arises from its emphasis on the final product. This paper proposes a dislocation towards a procedural approach: from variation to variation-making as an activity and a creative process. This will open up a way out of the circularity of Goodman’s definition by establishing a series of strategies which modulate the activity of variation-making. The five strategic elements that come into play are: (1) repetition, (2) temporal limitation, (3) harmonic ordering, (4) context-dependent preservation and (5) exploration. Finally, the potential of the proposed set of strategies to account for the variation character of the series of variations on Las Meninas by Picasso will be shown.

Keywords: Nelson Goodman, Pablo Picasso, variation, creative processes and practices, arts theory.