Stealing is not a crime — at least when you’re stealing ideas from a variety of artists. That’s the basis of Austin Kleon’s book Steal Like An Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative. (A premise that he, of course, stole from other artists.)
In the book, Kleon shares unique insights on cultivating creativity.
Specifically, he presents the below 10 tips, which he created for a talk at a community college. They represent the things he wished he would’ve known when starting out.
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Interesting article–I’ve never heard of that book before. But many of those ten tips apply to me at the moment! Thanks for writing it!
This is a fascinating article. Great job! I will definitely be borrowing this book from my public library. Thank you!
I don’t like the premise of stealing (or “stealing”) creativity from others, but I get that it’s a catchy title/concept. The author is describing the process of seeking inspiration, which is not the same as theft. Theft is snatching what doesn’t belong to you, presenting it as an original idea and “forgetting” to credit the source of “inspiration”. That is plagiarism, copyright infringement and unethical. Building upon an inspiration is sparking one’s own creative genius…that will inspire someone else. Artistic theft leads to boring, cloning output while the latter results in creative evolution; a slight yet extremely significant difference.
I agree with you! I do not paint ANYTHING like or after another artist!
If I did? Then it would not be something that I created from the soul….
I get all my ideas from nature…. now that insires me!
I agree humans cannot create things out of nothing, instead we can arrange things in new ways, taking things & putting them in new contexts sounds like the “stealing” being talked about.
I’m inclined to agree with those who say the creative process is mostly about problem solving; I give myself a problem, focus intensely on it for a while, within minutes or days “solutions”, ideas pop into my head. Then these need to be assessed & rejected or developed.
One interesting thing about having a “place” for creativity is I find I’m usually more creative in places I don’t like much, such as trendy cafes (I see them as false & pretentious) I assume my brain sees the situation as a “problem” needing a solution, so the creative juices kick in.
By the way it’s interesting TS Eliot used the metaphor of “stealing”, I saw a movie about him recently, he had his rich wife put in a mental institute (wrongly as I recall) & lived off her wealth so was able to devote his life to poetry, he really did like stealing!