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I often see this quoted, typically justifying inspiration, plagiarism, lack of planning, or laziness:
“Good artists copy; great artists steal.”
— Pablo Picasso
You know what the problem with this quote is? Picasso was a childhood prodigy so talented that his art professor father vowed to give up painting when Pablo’s technique surpassed his own—Picasso was 13 at the time. Picasso created more than 1,800 paintings and 12,000 drawings in his lifetime. He was also an accomplished sculptor, potter, and occasional architect. And by the time this quote was attributed to Picasso, he had mastered (not just dabbled in) every existing painting style and moved on to help create new ones. So when Picasso says, “great artists steal” he has an extremely different definition of “great artist” than you and I do.
When this quote is used to justify how there aren’t any new ideas so you borrowed someone else’s, or how you’re getting started and still learning so you ripped off someone’s website and called it your own, you’re not a great artist. You’re missing the point.
The poet T.S. Eliot, in the quote that likely inspired Picasso’s more famous quip, says:
“Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole feeling which is unique, utterly different than that from which it is torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion.”
—T.S. Eliot, The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism (1922)
Better. Utterly different. Unique. Let’s aim for those first, then we can quote Picasso.
Geez! I was only kidding about stealing your TRON design!
said Anthony
at 4:26pm on Thursday
Or a still unexplored option: give up on cynical quotes.
said Chris Jackson
at 12:39am on Friday
I love Eliot’s observation that the different between good artists and bad isn’t whether they take from others or not. The difference between the two is the capacity to make something “different” and something “better.”
said Scott McClellan
at 8:27am on Friday
I think perhaps Picasso was truly speaking tongue in cheek. Perhaps the difference between Picasso’s or anyone else’s ‘good’ or ‘great’ might have something to do with what you have referred to in the past as that innate desire to ‘do something.’ You might not have been referring to art at the time. But I think ‘great’ artists in general must, MUST share their art, are born to it, and tend to produce it with an abandon that does not have regard for what others think.
And what one has to share comes from what has already been given. Not from inspiration, or theft, or snatching of ideas. One just knows that this (painting, words, clothing design, pottery, etc.) is what one was born to. There are many, many talented people in the world who can do and LEARN many different and wonderful things, and produce many lovely things, and in so doing may discover more talents, and how to do more things, and are no less artists in the process.
But GREAT art, I think, always results from such gifting.
But how can we say we are not inspired, or steal, when visual inspiration is all around us all the time, and stored without intent? When passion and heartache is seen and felt in the human condition everyday?
Great artists will continue to be gifted and celebrated and imitated. We should continue to try and be “Better. Utterly different. Unique.” But always, always authentic to our own gift.
said Mom
at 11:58am on Friday
Well said!
I love your ‘more verbs, less adjectives’ line. Of course, I will ‘steal’ it, but you won’t know :)
nice to see your blog. Good luck and God bless,
hope to see you around,
M.
said Momekh
at 10:06pm on Thursday