There once lived a well-respected liar whose art consisted of never telling a lie. His friends were puzzled: “How do you do it?” He shrugged his shoulders and smiled. “I make up the truth as I go along,” he said modestly. His friends perceived this as a divine lie. They were correct, too.

Addendum I (December 13, 2000)

When the liar eventually died—and he lived for many, many years—it was discovered that some remote rooms of his house were crammed with extraordinary objects of art. Most of the paintings, pieces of sculpture, and the like, appeared to be rather old, but none of them belonged to any school or movement or region or period anyone was familiar with. Even some of the materials used were unfamiliar, if not odd. At once it was assumed by most that these were the liar’s own works, but a few argued that some of them were so old that not even he could have made them. The mystery has never been resolved, but the suspicion that art is inextricably bound with lying has remained. Of course, this only exposes a very narrow and potentially pernicious conception of creativity.

Addendum II (August 19, 2001)

If evolutionary psychologists are correct that intelligence has evolved to help us cheat others while being able to tell when others are attempting to cheat us, then the connection between creativity and lying is perhaps too obvious to warrant further elaboration. And so is the connection between art and artifice in all its guises, including cunning, deceit, scheming, duplicity, trickery, and double-dealing. But what if the evolutionary psychologists are not telling the truth, or are at least exaggerating it? They would not be lying, of course. Or would they?

To Diane Pernet