Copycats?

"Self Portrait with Vase of Flowers"
Emile Bernard, 1897

I recently saw a wonderful exhibit at the Musee de l'Orangerie in Paris--a retrospective of the works of the French painter Emile Bernard. Bernard lived from 1868 to 1941. Lots of water went over the artistic dam in that time period, and Bernard did his fair share of experimentation with various styles that came in and out of vogue. Eventually, he developed a strong affinity for 

the Renaissance masters, and drew heavily on them for inspiration.

"Still Life with Apples and Breton Pots"
Emile Bernard, 1892

I loved seeing the progression of Bernard's work over the decades. If you are familiar with painters of the time, you can easily see their influences in Bernard's work. Cezanne was one of his great role models. In fact, the influence of Cezanne is clear in Bernard's painting above. (If you're not familiar with Cezanne, here's one of his paintings--you can't miss the similarities).

"Still Life with Curtain"
Paul Cezanne, 1895

Ultimately, it was the masters of an earlier era (Michelangelo, Raphael, da Vinci) who exerted the greatest influence on Bernard. Their influence is obvious in the paintings below. I loved what Bernard had to say about following the masters: "It is a little hasty to call anybody who draws inspiration from a master an imitator". He noted that every artist has role models, and that it is "no crime when you are young to resemble...what you love."

"Baigneuses"
Emile Bernard, 1926

But here's the key: Bernard writes that the true artist is not trying to imitate or reproduce the work of his masters. Instead, he is examining their work in order to extract the rules for creating beauty. And--and this is important!--he is developing those rules even further, trying to take his work to a higher level. 

As soon as I read Bernard's thoughts on the matter, my mind flew to the often-quoted saying, "Good artists copy. Great artists steal." 

Steve Jobs said that he kept this quotation (which he attributed to Picasso), in mind when he was developing the Mac. The quote can be traced back to W. H. Davenport Adams, writing in 1892 about the poet Tennyson. He wrote that Tennyson had an assimilative method, in which he would adopt an image from an earlier poet, and "work it up into his own glittering fabric." Tennyson's approach led Adams to posit this canon: "That great poets imitate and improve, whereas small ones steal and spoil."

"Le Repos du berger"
Emile Barnard, circa 1905

Imitating the masters. It's a theme that came up again this month in my reading of Twyla Tharp's book, The Creative Habit. Tharp wrote that the novelist Raymond Chandler admired Hemingway as the greatest American novelist of his time. So he wrote imitations of Hemingway's prose, in order to absorb what he liked about it. Likewise, Proust wrote a series of articles imitating the styles of the great literary figures Balzac and Flaubert. In the same spirit, Twyla Tharp herself, as a young dancer, stood behind every great dancer then in New York and literally mimicked them, imprinting their movements into her own creative DNA.

We all hope to learn from the masters we admire. But we must take the earlier idea and run with it, lest we become copiers rather than creators.