In football we find the meta, what works, who wins, and we steal those ideas and make them our own, making small tweaks. We can learn a lot about that same practice when you look at art.

20th Century Art Historians, The Canvas and Great Art Explained, on Gawx Art’s video called “Anatomy Of The Artist Brain”:

The Canvas: Sometimes it feels like art history is a huge game of telephone, as you’re saying, right? Where everyone gets inspired off of each other, which is fascinating. Because you look at Van Gogh—we were talking about Van Gogh earlier—Van Gogh did great art inspired by the Japanese. He even painted himself as a Japanese man, which it was like an homage to say, “I am inspired by the Japanese.”

Great Art Explained: Cave paintings all over the world have some similarities, you know, so it’s like the inspiration is there with the rocks or whatever’s surrounding you. By the time we get to the Renaissance, you know, people like Michelangelo and Rafa—they are definitely, definitely being inspired by other people.

Gawx Art: And when I listened to their answers, another question arose: copying, stealing, homaging—what is the difference? I didn’t hesitate to ask.

Great Art Explained: That’s, I think, a really hard question because it’s like, am I stealing because I’m reading all these books, you know? Am I stealing the ideas?

The Canvas: Some artists just reproduce the same painting by a different artist and call it theirs. It’s called appropriation. That’s the concept.

Great Art Explained: It depends on who you ask, okay? If you ask Picasso, then it’s not stealing, but if you ask Cindy Sherman, then it’s probably stealing, you know. So it depends on the artist. But I don’t think there’s such a thing as stealing in art. There are great artists like Richard Prince—he’s one of my favorite artists—and he never does anything original. He copies other people’s photographs or drawings or anything, but just by doing that, he’s making something new.

The Canvas: How much of an artist is at the origin of an artwork, right?

Great Art Explained: Is it already made, or is it stealing? That’s a really difficult question.

The Canvas: Sometimes we think that inspiration comes from, like, someone out of nowhere, like if artists had this—have this innate, uh, creative play? No. It comes with interactions with others. It comes with different cultures.

Gawx Art: And I agree. I like to say I’m a collage of all the things I love and admire, but in reality, I’m a collage of all the things I consider. My brain is like a sponge. It absorbs everything it consumes, and when I need it to, I squeeze it, mixing all of my influences together and transforming them into new things. But it is easy to get stuck and run out of ideas, and it is important to take care of what you consume, because whether you like it or not, it will eventually all influence you.

I agree. Football is an art and a massive game of telephone, with each player and manager taking something from players and managers from the past. We are influenced by what we watch.

What are our goals?

If our goal is to remain the same, maintaining the status quo of who is driving the meta now, we should only watch the top teams. We should pay attention to what works now.

If we want to find new ideas that will surprise those top teams, we should spend our time elsewhere. Find a new inspiration, a team no one is paying attention to, because the teams with less pressure or resources are experimenting more than the ones that have all the eyes on them.