Bad artists copy. Good artists steal.

30th April, 2012

A last thought on James Webb Young’s, A Technique for Producing Ideas.

If an artist’s purpose is to explore relationships between ideas, then does it matter if those ideas are their own?  I suggest the answer is no.

I say this because perhaps the value of an artwork is not in the idea itself, but in how the idea relates to other elements.  So if you take another person’s idea but then explore how it relates to other elements from your own experience, you make it your own.

Perhaps I finally understand Picasso when he said, “Bad artists copy. Good artists steal.”

 

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