“It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.”

I’m not a fan of Picasso’s work.

His work’s cool, new, and edgy for that time period, as he pioneered a style that’s never been done before.

Cubism, I think it is.

I can’t say any of it’s beautiful, but I can see it as cool.

Which is all completely fine; there are cool paintings, and there are beautiful paintings.

Although I don’t love his work, the reason for these words you're reading is that I do love a quote attributed to him–one that many people should live by.

I’ve been mulling over like a fine Rhône, swirling it around my taste buds, trying to comprehend its notes.

Picasso says:

“It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.”

Raphael, an artist from the Renaissance, is what we can conclude is Picasso’s idea of artistic mastery.

Chances are you partake in some art and look to some individual or group whom you deem has achieved mastery.

Who knows how long it’ll take for you to reach that level.

Picasso claims it took him four years.

Not to paint like Raphael in the stylistic sense, but in the expertise sense.

The former part of this quote is fairly simple:

Learn from and emulate whom you respect with the intention to be just as good, if not better.

As for the latter part of the quote, the part that really catches my eye, I’m curious how he came about this.

I’d like to think he was of elderly age, rocking in a chair on a porch of a house, perhaps his house, overlooking something scenic.

In that moment, he was reflecting on his life’s work and achievements and how it all came after key moments from his childhood.

Moments that he grew from; some of which he wished, as he rocks in the chair on the porch, he revisited more often.

And in this moment, the epiphany hits him: following my inner child is what makes my art my art.

I believe his choice for using the word ‘child’ was deliberate; when you’re a child, you’re naïve to most things, asking tons of what-ifs and whys about what adults find mundane.

Rather than painting according to the book, a child’s naiveté would spawn so many ideas.

Why is that color mixed with that color? Why not another color? Why is that line straight? Does it have to be? What happens to it if we removed it? Why is the canvas so big? Why is it so small?

This inner child is what allows for the creation of true art, the exact thing Picasso’s talking about.

Or so I think.

— George