[Off-Topic] Great Artists Steal

Most of us geeks have probably heard the phrase:

“Good artists copy, great artists steal”

We hear it in the context of Steve Jobs, in the context of the graphical interface being copied first by Apple from Xerox, then by Microsoft from Apple.

This phrase ended up becoming something of a cult, especially after the famous TV movie Pirates of Silicon Valley. Finally, and unfortunately, this phrase ended up being erroneously associated by many with the themes of “plagiarism” and “piracy.” Even for me, for a long time, I never stopped to really think about it — I just associated the phrase with those meanings.

First of all, it’s worth naming the author of the phrase, the great artist Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso, or simply Pablo Picasso :-)

Those who’ve known me for a while and attend my talks know that I personally spend a lot of time trying to explain the association of the term “artist” applied to “software developer,” “software craftsmanship,” and more specifically to the “practice of programming.”

Programming isn’t something where you read a book, do an exercise once, and “boom,” you already know how to program. Like any kind of art — painting, music, dance — programming depends on discipline and a lot of practice. More than that, anyone who dedicates themselves to any kind of art knows very well that repetition is a technique, but repeating the same thing doesn’t lead anywhere. The process of “practice” depends on mastering a technique, repeating it many times, understanding where you’re going wrong, refining it, and when it’s mastered, quickly moving on to new, harder techniques. Continuously, without an “end.” There’s no “arrival point” for anyone who practices any kind of art. Even martial artists know that a black belt doesn’t mean “the end.”

If I were to summarize what I just said, it would be with Picasso’s phrase:

“Good Artists Copy, Great Artists Steal Take For Themselves”

Note that I removed the term “steal” for the more literal sense of “take for themselves.” And here’s the “gotcha” that changes the meaning for me.

Everything we have in the world today — knowledge, culture, technique, technology — is due to centuries of meticulous accumulation and careful refinement of this material by hundreds of great men and women who contributed to get where we are. Literally, we are small elves standing on the shoulders of giants.

A material property, something physical, when taken from a person, constitutes theft. For you to have it, someone had to go without. When someone copies a property, it constitutes plagiarism. But with knowledge, ideas, “copying” or “stealing” has several more abstract meanings, and I want to expose one of them here.

Any artist, of any field, needs to start somewhere. A contemporary painter already starts light-years ahead of his practice colleagues from a few centuries ago. Back then, getting access to paints wasn’t something obvious. From what material of nature can we extract yellow? Perhaps from egg yolk. And ultramarine blue? Things get complicated. Years and years of accumulated knowledge today give us access to all possible shades of colors without needing to think about it.

This applies to all painting techniques — pointillism, watercolor painting, oil painting. Today we don’t need to try to “discover” how these techniques are. They’re all exhaustively documented. That is:

“To become ‘good’ artists, we must ‘copy’ the hundreds of techniques that were already created by the giants before us, until we master them.”

And let’s face it, if a painter manages to copy the techniques well enough to be indistinguishable from the masters who created them, we certainly have excellent good artists.

Any practice begins by copying what has already been done. Repeating, learning the nuances, learning the reasons the techniques culminated in what they are today. Any practitioner who follows this philosophy — copying to master, always moving forward until mastering their entire area — is following in the footsteps of the giants of the past.

Now, there’s an extra step. Especially we geeks know the “cliché” of when “the disciple becomes the master.” Of course, in the movies it seems much easier, but that step means when the artist isn’t just copying what they mastered:

“To become ‘great’ artists, when we master what we copied, we can adapt it, refine it, and who knows, improve it or innovate on it — that’s when we’re no longer just copying but literally ‘stealing,’ or effectively making that property our own, taking it for ourselves.”

It’s when an Einstein succeeds a Newton. When a Plato succeeds a Socrates. In this case we use the term “steal” in the sense of “making the property effectively our own” and not the more common sense of “undeservedly taking the property from whoever it belongs to.”

Every good painter or visual artist has dozens of giants and centuries of material to “copy” or “practice” — Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Picasso.

Wall Painter vs Painting Painter

Another thing I’ve been repeating ad nauseam is that there are programmer-coders and programmer-developers. Wall painters and painting painters.

Coders don’t understand their role in this story. They understand how to copy a few techniques, perhaps master some of them, and quickly call themselves “masters.” Absolutely mediocre thinking — it would embarrass the giants of previous eras, Babbage, Von Neumann, Bob Noyce. They are mere wall painters.

Developers, as I like to call them, better understand their role in history. They understand the richness of the pre-existing material, practice without limits and without believing in an end, master technique after technique, always trying to reach a higher level than what currently exists, but will never find themselves in the position of wanting to paint a Mona Lisa without perfecting the sfumato. These are painting painters.

It embarrasses me to see programmers who read little, practiced miserably little, finding themselves in a master’s position. Just as it would embarrass a painter to hear someone say they know how to paint a fresco without even knowing how to thin a plaster base.

Summarizing my personal version:

“Good Artists Copy, Great Artists Take For Themselves, Terrible Artists Are Full of Themselves.”