Comments on: On Picasso, Copying, Stealing, and Woodshedding

By: Momekh

Momekh — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 03:06:34 +0000

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.

By: Mom

Mom — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 16:58:36 +0000

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.

By: Scott McClellan

Scott McClellan — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 13:27:57 +0000

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.”

By: Chris Jackson

Chris Jackson — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 05:39:14 +0000

Or a still unexplored option: give up on cynical quotes.

By: Anthony

Anthony — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 21:26:22 +0000

Geez! I was only kidding about stealing your TRON design!