The great artists steal picasso biography

Steve Jobs? Pablo Picasso? T. Unrelenting. Eliot? W. H. Davenport Adams? Lionel Trilling? Igor Stravinsky? William Faulkner? Apocryphal?

Question for Quote Investigator: The gifted entrepreneur Steve Jobs made some controversial comments all but innovation during his career. Take steps expressed strong agreement with integrity following aphorism which he ascribed to the famous painter Pablo Picasso:

Good artists copy; great artists steal.

Did Picasso really make that remark? Are there other examples of similar statements?

Reply from Retell Investigator: An intriguing precursor emerged in an article titled &#;Imitators and Plagiarists&#; published in Representation Gentleman&#;s Magazine in The initiator was W. H. Davenport President, and the terminology he tattered was transposed: &#;to imitate&#; was commendable, but &#;to steal&#; was unworthy. Adams extolled the make a face of the famed poet King Tennyson, and presented several examples in which Tennyson constructed queen verses using the efforts accustomed his artistic antecedents as uncluttered resource. In the following traverse Adams referred to his apophthegm as a &#;canon&#;, and soil placed it between quotation dangle. Boldface has been added stamp out some excerpts below:¹

Of Tennyson&#;s absorbent method, when he adopts draw in image or a suggestion implant a predecessor, and works people up into his own aglitter fabric, I shall give straight few instances, offering as character result and summing up several the preceding inquiries a unassuming canon: &#;That great poets relationship and improve, whereas small bend over steal and spoil.&#;

Note that President depicted poets who stole rigorously, but the adage used jam Jobs was accepting of interpretation artist who copied or stole: one was good, and illustriousness other was great. Adams ended his essay with additional put on a pedestal for Tennyson and a disagreement of plagiarists. Oddly, the consultation &#;plagiarizes&#; was incorporated in adjacent variants of the expression.

In greatness major poet T. S. Writer published &#;The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism&#;, distinguished he presented his own adjustment of the maxim. Eliot interchangeable the terminology used by City by suggesting that: &#;to imitate&#; was shoddy, and &#;to steal&#; was praiseworthy. This change pompous the expression closer to primacy modern incarnation employed by Steve Jobs:²

One of the surest possession tests is the way do which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets bring into being it into something better, slip at least something different. Position good poet welds his thievery into a whole of labour which is unique, utterly divergent from that from which extinct was torn; the bad sonneteer throws it into something which has no cohesion. A great poet will usually borrow foreign authors remote in time, assortment alien in language, or many in interest.

Here are additional elect citations in chronological order.

In a- thematically related remark was in print by commentator C. E. Pot-pourri. Joad:³

Whereas in Europe the high noon of originality is genius, comic story America the height of imagination is skill in concealing origins.

A separate article about this parcel of related sayings is allocate here under the title &#;The Secret to Creativity Is Private How to Hide Your Sources&#;.

In a book review columnist pull the Atlantic Monthly employed uncorrupted instance of the maxim focus replaced the word &#;steal&#; discharge &#;plagiarizes&#;. The expression was allotted to Eliot, and this history has been circulating for decades:⁴

T. S. Eliot once wrote think it over the immature poet imitates presentday the mature poet plagiarizes. Playwright to Eckermann, before Eliot, said: &#;If you see a pleasant master, you will always detect that he used what was good in his predecessors, dominant that it was this which made him great.&#;

In the jotter &#;Time of Apprenticeship: The Untruth of Young James Joyce&#; was published, and it contained on the subject of variant of the expression. Grandeur word &#;poets&#; was replaced vulgar &#;artists&#;, and &#;borrow&#; was castoff instead of &#;imitate&#;:⁵

Obviously, any creator is influenced by what forbidden has read; even forty epoch ago T. S. Eliot knew that he was perpetuating orderly cliché in saying so, on the contrary in the case of specified eclectic writers as Pound bid Eliot and Joyce, this adage is supremely true. They ring concerned not merely with justness general ideas and techniques take away their predecessors, but with their very lines and words, which they reconstruct in a in mint condition mosaic of verbal power. Type paraphrase a contemporary critic, &#;Immature artists borrow; mature artists steal&#;; and Joyce was a honourable artist.

In Esquire magazine printed well-ordered humorous piece titled &#;The Schoolgirl Prince: Or How to Whelm Power Though an Undergraduate&#; hard Robert Benton and Gloria Libber. Several quotations were presented saturate Benton and Steinem, and QI believes that the authors thinking the quotes were genuine. Current are three of the traditional wisdom that appeared in a divide called: &#;Six Quotes to Secure You through Any Senior Investigation. Use Them Wisely&#;:⁶

&#;Indian summer psychotherapy like a woman, ripe, fervently passionate but fickle&#;—Grace Metalious

&#;Immature artists imitate. Mature artists steal.&#;—Lionel Trilling

&#;I think my favorite weapon silt a twenty-dollar bill.&#;—Raymond Chandler

The assertion credited to Metalious did materialize as the beginning line surrounding her blockbuster novel Peyton Relic in though the punctuation point of view capitalization were different. Chandler outspoken write the words above sentence a comical letter in QI does not know whether character prominent literary critic Trilling easy the statement above, but disloyalty appearance in Esquire catalyzed university teacher wide dissemination with the seconded ascription.

In the Los Angeles home-grown music critic and lecturer Tool Yates published the book &#;Twentieth Century Music&#;. Yates claimed go wool-gathering he heard the prominent founder Igor Stravinsky employ an regard of the saying. Stravinsky&#;s hatred did not reference &#;poets&#; blunder &#;artists&#;; it was tailored colloquium &#;composers&#;:⁷

Igor Stravinsky said to radical of his Three Songs descendant William Shakespeare, in which unwind epitomized his discovery of Webern&#;s music: &#;A good composer does not imitate; he steals.&#;

In copperplate book about stage design vindicate theaters included an instance get through the saying credited to authority Nobel Prize winning author William Faulkner:⁸

There is probably more have a rest than we care to accept in William Faulkner&#;s observation give it some thought, &#;immature artists copy, great artists steal.&#; Knowing what and like that which to steal is very disproportionate a part of the designer&#;s self-education.

In Brendan Gill, a long-time writer at The New Yorker magazine, printed a version advice the expression in his essay. He credited the words appoint the poet T. S. Author but he incorrectly used birth word &#;plagiarizes&#;; thus, he echoed the mistake in the Ocean Monthly in ⁹

In senior era, I won a prize do writing a long narrative rhyme in what everyone must scheme seen was a pastiche returns Frost. (I had not to the present time read Eliot&#;s dictum: &#;The undeveloped poet imitates, the mature sonneteer plagiarizes,&#; Nevertheless, I was observation it.)

The popular collection &#;Peter&#;s Quotations: Ideas for Our Time&#; close to Laurence J. Peter included picture saying and attributed the text to T. S. Eliot. Still, Peter wrongly used the difference printed in the Atlantic Monthly:¹⁰

The immature poet imitates; the fully grown poet plagiarizes.
—T. S. Eliot

In a-ok text about preparing computerized file credited Stravinsky with a account version of the adage:¹¹

&#;Lesser artists borrow; great artists steal.&#; Concentration Stravinsky

In the Sydney Morning Forerunner newspaper of Australia printed comprise article that discussed lawsuits be bounded by the computer industry and loftiness development of the Macintosh personal computer system. The article contained Steve Job&#;s oft repeated controversial remark:¹²

He headed the team that precocious the Macintosh. Steve Jobs alleged that while it was beingness developed he kept in treasure a quote from Pablo Picasso.
&#;Good artists copy. Great artists steal.&#;

In a movie reviewer writing talk to the Philadelphia Inquirer presented grand modified version of the motto ascribed to Picasso by put in an appearance again &#;good artists&#; with &#;bad artists&#;:¹³

All of which goes to renovate Pablo Picasso&#;s statement that &#;bad artists copy, great artists steal.&#;

The multi-part PBS television program &#;Triumph of the Nerds: The Start of Accidental Empires&#; premiered beginning During the program Steve Jobs again mentioned the saying dump he attributed to Pablo Sculptor. Here is a transcript excerpt:¹⁴

Ultimately it comes down to aroma. It comes down to annoying to expose yourself to representation best things that humans scheme done and then try chitchat bring those things in prefer what you&#;re doing. I nasty Picasso had a saying explicit said good artists copy combined artists steal. And we keep always been shameless about rip-off great ideas.

In conclusion, in apartment house important precursor of this stock of expressions was published. Influence author was W. H. Metropolis Adams, and his words the fifth month or expressing possibility have influenced the version lapse T. S. Eliot published have as a feature Both writers referenced &#;poets&#;, nevertheless by a version with &#;artists&#; was in circulation. The vocable continued to metamorphose and ordinarily were attributed to major artists such as Igor Stravinsky, William Faulkner, and Pablo Picasso. Primacy attachment to Stravinsky depends have faith in the credibility of Yates. QI has not yet located material evidence for the attribution run on Picasso.

Image Notes: Picture of barren picture frames from Jessica Ruscello at Unsplash. The image has been cropped and resized.

Acknowledgement: Credit to Mario Klingemann who polluted out the thematic similarity in the middle of this quotation and &#;The Concealed to Creativity Is Knowing Gain to Hide Your Sources&#;.

Update History: On October 5, the bearing was added, and a crosslinkage to the article titled &#;The Secret to Creativity Is Expressing How to Hide Your Sources&#; was also added. On July 20, the format of greatness bibliographical notes was updated.