The quote: “Good artists copy; great artists steal”, has been widely attributed to Pablo Picasso.
He probably didn’t say it. However it’s been around in various forms for ages: T. S. Eliot, Igor Stravinsky, William Faulkner, even Steve Jobs, to name a few. Our creative experience flows from what has been brought into existence by others and recognizing that immutable fact does not detract – it’s key and that’s why it hits a vein in creative minds. The unstated truth of the quote is that, before they became great, copying in some form was a rite of passage.
In a similar vein, Sir Isaac Newton famously said: “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.” (by-the-by in 1159, one John of Salisbury wrote: “Bernard of Chartres used to compare us to dwarfs perched on the shoulders of giants. He pointed out that we see more and farther than our predecessors, not because we have keener vision or greater height, but because we are lifted up and borne aloft on their gigantic stature.”)
One thing that Picasso did indeed say was: “I begin with an idea and then it becomes something else.”
Break-a-Brush!
David