"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up"
About this Quote
Picasso’s line lands like a compliment and a warning, delivered with the casual authority of someone who made a career out of breaking the rules other people were still trying to master. Calling every child an artist isn’t sentimental; it’s strategic. Children draw with the confidence of the unpoliced: they’re not yet bargaining with taste, market value, or the fear of looking foolish. Picasso is pointing to a baseline human capacity for invention that gets trained out of us by adulthood’s incentives.
The subtext is less about talent than permission. Growing up, we learn to translate imagination into “acceptable” outputs: neat handwriting, correct answers, practical careers, art as hobby. Institutions reward compliance, not weirdness. Even the art world can become a factory for adulthood, pressuring artists to brand themselves, repeat a style, and monetize originality until it becomes predictable. Picasso knew that trap intimately: his own reinventions were partly an escape from becoming a museum of himself.
Context matters because Picasso wasn’t advocating childlike naivete; he was talking about unlearning. Cubism, collage, the aggressive simplification of form - these aren’t regressions, they’re acts of refusal against polished realism as the default measure of skill. Remaining an artist, in his sense, means sustaining a tolerance for mess, risk, and misunderstanding. It’s a discipline, not a mood: the stubborn practice of staying open when the world keeps offering you reasons to close down.
The subtext is less about talent than permission. Growing up, we learn to translate imagination into “acceptable” outputs: neat handwriting, correct answers, practical careers, art as hobby. Institutions reward compliance, not weirdness. Even the art world can become a factory for adulthood, pressuring artists to brand themselves, repeat a style, and monetize originality until it becomes predictable. Picasso knew that trap intimately: his own reinventions were partly an escape from becoming a museum of himself.
Context matters because Picasso wasn’t advocating childlike naivete; he was talking about unlearning. Cubism, collage, the aggressive simplification of form - these aren’t regressions, they’re acts of refusal against polished realism as the default measure of skill. Remaining an artist, in his sense, means sustaining a tolerance for mess, risk, and misunderstanding. It’s a discipline, not a mood: the stubborn practice of staying open when the world keeps offering you reasons to close down.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
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