"I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it"
About this Quote
The line condenses a stubbornly practical philosophy: ability is not a prerequisite for action; action is the engine that creates ability. Picasso treats ignorance not as a barrier but as the starting block. The only way to narrow the gap between what one cannot do and what one can is to step directly into the gap.
His career gives the claim its credibility. He shattered academic drawing in his Blue and Rose Periods, then wrenched painting away from Renaissance perspective with Les Demoiselles dAvignon. Together with Georges Braque he pushed into Cubism, dissecting form and space until objects became facets and planes. He tried collage when collage was not yet art, hammered metal into sculpture, threw clay in ceramics, burned plates for prints, and even designed costumes and sets for the ballet. Each turn risked failure and misunderstanding, and each required learning in public. He did not move on because he had mastered a style; he moved on because mastery bored him and curiosity pulled him elsewhere.
The sentence also contains a paradox that is more method than bravado. To learn to do something, one must attempt it before one knows how. That means accepting awkwardness, wrong turns, and provisional results. Picasso produced tens of thousands of works, many of them studies, variations, and restarts. The studio functioned like a laboratory where trying and erring mattered as much as finishing. This attitude strips talent of its mystique and replaces it with process, repetition, and nerve.
Placed in the ferment of early 20th-century Paris, the statement reads as an emblem of modernism itself: a break with tradition guided not by rules but by experiments that invent their own criteria. It invites anyone, artist or not, to let uncertainty be a teacher, to treat difficulty as a signal to begin, and to make learning a verb rather than a credential.
His career gives the claim its credibility. He shattered academic drawing in his Blue and Rose Periods, then wrenched painting away from Renaissance perspective with Les Demoiselles dAvignon. Together with Georges Braque he pushed into Cubism, dissecting form and space until objects became facets and planes. He tried collage when collage was not yet art, hammered metal into sculpture, threw clay in ceramics, burned plates for prints, and even designed costumes and sets for the ballet. Each turn risked failure and misunderstanding, and each required learning in public. He did not move on because he had mastered a style; he moved on because mastery bored him and curiosity pulled him elsewhere.
The sentence also contains a paradox that is more method than bravado. To learn to do something, one must attempt it before one knows how. That means accepting awkwardness, wrong turns, and provisional results. Picasso produced tens of thousands of works, many of them studies, variations, and restarts. The studio functioned like a laboratory where trying and erring mattered as much as finishing. This attitude strips talent of its mystique and replaces it with process, repetition, and nerve.
Placed in the ferment of early 20th-century Paris, the statement reads as an emblem of modernism itself: a break with tradition guided not by rules but by experiments that invent their own criteria. It invites anyone, artist or not, to let uncertainty be a teacher, to treat difficulty as a signal to begin, and to make learning a verb rather than a credential.
Quote Details
| Topic | Learning |
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