Art and creation

"To understand the very nature of creation one must acknowledge that there was no light before the Lord said: 'let there be light.' And since there was yet no light, the Lords omniscience embraced a vision of it which only His omnipotence could call forth.
We poor human beings, when we refer to one of the better minds among us as a creator, should never forget what a creator is in reality.
A creator has a vision of something which has not existed before this vision.
And a creator has the power to bring his vision to life, the power to realize it.
In fact, the concept of creator and creation should be formed in harmony with the Divine Model; inspiration and perfection, wish and fulfillment, will and accomplishment coincide spontaneously and simultaneously. In Divine Creation there was no details to be carried out later; 'There was light' at once and in its ultimate perfection.
Alas, human creators, if they be granted a vision, must travel the long path between vision and accomplishment; a hard road where, driven out of Paradise, even geniuses must reap their harvest in the sweat of their brows.
Alas, it is one thing to evision in a creative instant of inspiration and it is another thing to materialize one's vision by painstakingly connecting details until they fuse into a kind of organism.
And alas, suppose it becomes an organism, a homunculus or a robot, and possesses some of the spontaneity of a vision; it remains yet another thing to organize this form so that it becomes a comprehensible message 'to whom it may concern'" - A. Schönberg, 1941

Art is something, a being, created by an artist. This means in extension, that to create a piece of art, we must first acknowledge that we are in fact, artists. This, today, is not an easy first step to take, and very few have the guts to openly and frankly stick this label onto themselves. Partly because, well it is a label, and labels have a tendency to stick. Secondly it has a negative ring to it, it proclaims to the world that you are someone of greater importance. You assume a position of power. With that power comes a responsibility. You must now never create anything that drops below a certain standard of quality, because when a person of power displays weakness, people of less power will inevitably try to overrun you.
That the concept of art is a question of quality is most defininately up for discussion! I know quite a number of creative people, creators of different kinds and of extremely shifting quality. Some of these create things of highest quality, a quality few can match. Far from all of those are in my view "artists" in the true sense of the word. This connects directly to the opening quote of this text. A piece of art must, in my view, originate in this exact way. It has to spring from ONE idea, one central nervous system that in every way is dependant on every limb, every muscle, every nerve that surrounds it. One flash of creation. The ways of working out the details is of no importance. The art is the idea, and the idea is the art. It doesn't need to have deeper meaning, it doesn't have to be well thought through, it doesn't even have to be well executed, it has to exist only because it HAS to exist.
All of that can be interpreted in a very shallow way of course. But it is no question of how long it took for someone to write a song, compose a photograph, paint a picture, write a play or make a film. Those are all ways of realization, and there are probably as many ways of realization as there are creators.
Determining objectively as an observer of a work, if it is a work of mere craftmanship or artistry is impossible. By impossible I mean, it is not at all in any way possible, ever! But there are defining moments in life, when all the pieces of the jigsaw just fall straight into place, when you truly understand that someone's creation is not an extension or augmentation of themselves, not a piece of them up for show, not the insides hanging out, not blood leaking out from the cracks in the wall, not a thought-concept, not a point of view, but an entire organism that wouldn't exist without its creator, who wouldn't exist without it.