There’s a famous Pablo Picasso quote about what it means to make quality art. The expressionist and surrealist known for capturing hearts and helping provide the foundation for the 20th century’s modern art movements was never full of himself. The humbled Spaniard turned adopted Frenchmen understood where he came from, and how he attained his success. There was never mincing any words about his career.
“Good artists borrow, great artists steal.”
Debate reigns as to whether Piccasso ever said these words, in this specific order, but then again, that’s the point! The best work, in any field, is a blob of an amalgamation of the previous great works of others. Whether you believe in the “End of History” or not, and, in turn, modern culture settling into its final resting place of stasis, it doesn’t change that there is no truly original idea anywhere.
How could there be?
Everyone is influenced by something in their life that happened to resonate. Everyone has a hero or heroine who they saw as a role model for the creative life they wanted to live. To create a work of art, any work that is entirely out of the blue, would mean you’ve never read anyone else’s words; never watched their movies or programs or plays; never played their games; never heard the earnest opinion of another person. The moment you were exposed to outside stimuli, it would have an eventual effect on your own output.
A virtual impossibility in the past, if you were a somewhat social person that didn’t live under a rock anyway, but especially in the technological, always-connected virtual scape of 2022.
Steal and you win. Borrow and you apologize. There’s no in-between.
We’ve already diagrammed what each of the NFL’s 30 loser teams should avoid when copying the Super Bowl LVI finalists: The Bengals and the Rams.
Now comes the fun part: We soon learn which general managers and coaches are the truly great artists of their football craft. It’s time to separate the mere, tepid borrowers from the NFL’s den of thieves and their stolen ingenuity.