Art is a personal gift that changes the recipient. The medium doesn’t matter. The intent does.
Man, sometimes it takes a long time to sound like yourself.
~ Miles Davis
Last week Ian Leslie wrote a long and fascinating post on his SubStack, called “How to be Infuenced“, I highly encourage you to read it so consider how you are influenced in depth.
One key thought from the post:
Each of us, then, has to try and strike a balance. Be impervious to social influence and you get closed off from the best that your fellow humans have to offer. Be defenceless against it and you become easily manipulable, boring, and unhappy.
Ian then references how we can learn from artists and how they receive influences, learn from them, and make them their own. In a quote famously attributed to Picasso:
Good Artists Copy, Great Artists Steal
I love to talk with and become friends with artists, but my definition of an artist is far broader. It is someone who makes art, and that art can be how you do business, how you lead people, how you interact.
Seth Godin expresses it best
Art isn’t only a painting. Art is anything that’s creative, passionate, and personal. And great art resonates with the viewer, not only with the creator.
What makes someone an artist? I don’t think it has anything to do with a paintbrush. There are painters who follow the numbers, or paint billboards, or work in a small village in China, painting reproductions. These folks, while swell people, aren’t artists. On the other hand, Charlie Chaplin was an artist, beyond a doubt. So is Jonathan Ive, who designed the iPod. You can be an artist who works with oil paints or marble, sure. But there are artists who work with numbers, business models, and customer conversations. Art is about intent and communication, not substances.
An artist is someone who uses bravery, insight, creativity, and boldness to challenge the status quo. And an artist takes it personally.
That’s why Bob Dylan is an artist, but an anonymous corporate hack who dreams up Pop 40 hits on the other side of the glass is merely a marketer. That’s why Tony Hsieh, founder of Zappos, is an artist, while a boiler room of telemarketers is simply a scam.
Tom Peters, corporate gadfly and writer, is an artist, even though his readers are businesspeople. He’s an artist because he takes a stand, he takes the work personally, and he doesn’t care if someone disagrees. His art is part of him, and he feels compelled to share it with you because it’s important, not because he expects you to pay him for it.
Art is a personal gift that changes the recipient. The medium doesn’t matter. The intent does.
Art is a personal act of courage, something one human does that creates change in another.
Art is a personal gift that changes the recipient. The medium doesn’t matter. The intent does.
Wow, this lands so strongly for me. I aspire to inspire others, to make a difference, no matter how tiny, in every interaction. Suddenly hit me that I really look forward to being a grandparent in the years to come!
Art is a personal act of courage, something one human does that creates change in another.
This too, as sometimes this comes from having the brave conversations, going deeper than the surface conversations we so often have.