CMMI Training - Day One - Picasso

One reason I was so intrigued by the Picasso question was because I watched a movie where Picasso painted... and the intent of the movie was to capture Picasso's creative "process".

There is an interesting relationship between the director of this film and Picasso. The following was taken from this article.


It doesn't take a giant leap of imagination to go one step further and wonder whether the director is usurping the role of painter.

It's probably fitting then that Picasso is ultimately constrained by the limitations of the camera's mechanics. In the film's central visual "rupture," about midway through what had been a seamless series of paintings, the camera lens suddenly fills the screen, front and center and in tight close-up (undoubtedly in conscious parallel to the placement of the painter's paper medium throughout the film). A second camera then "shares" with the audience the dynamic of camera, director, and artist.

This is a powerful self-reflexive gesture but it is not, importantly, the beginning of a self-critique of Clouzot's cinematic project. Rather, it functions almost like a pit-stop in which the director takes a step back from "Picasso-in-process," and reaffirm the central and dominant role of director and camera in the overall organization of meaning.

Presented to the viewer in a medium shot are Picasso, his palate and paper, Clouzot looking over one of Picasso's paintings, and the camera and cameraman presumably recording the "artistic event." Turning to the cameraman, the director is informed that he has only 450 yards of film remaining in his current reel. In an almost imperious tone, like a foreman to a shop-worker, Clouzot lays down the laws of production to Picasso: "So let's be clear. If anything happens, you stop. And I'll do the same, since we have so little film left." It's clear that the film apparatus comes first, the predilections of the painter second.

What could have been the beginning of a provocative dialectical dance between two creative agents, becomes instead an almost sinister affirmation of the control of the director.

As if the director could control... as if Picasso could... I think that was the whole point.

So when it comes to CMMI and process... I think there is this "sinister" element which is process *control*. CMMI processes aren't simply "sequential action", but controllable action... and removing "the people that come and go" from the equation implies it is largely impersonal... and this sounds stagnantly modern.... just like pyramid building was over generations (which was one of our slides).

This isn't to say I despise process. I love my Honda engine!

Anyhow, I think there is some sort of quantum type stuff missing in this process centric universe. I can't help but think it is the death sentence for all rock-n-roll... and this could still be just a hopeless 40 something in an interminable mid-life crisis talking :)