If we wish to tell the story of an artist's or a scientist's or a
scholar's creativity we need to understand what creativity is. What
does it mean to call someone 'creative'?
Strange though it may seem the very idea of creativity is
notoriously elusive. One widely held view is that it is a
characteristic of a person or being who produced something and,
furthermore, it is intimately related to the originality of the object
produced. Let us call this the 'originality theory of creativity'.
In my talk I will discuss this view of creativity and some of its
ambiguities and problems. One of the examples I will use to illustrate
these problems is Picasso's celebrated painting Demoiselle d'Avignon.