41 pages • 1 hour read
Austin KleonSteal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2012A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 2 Summary: “Don’t Wait Until You Know Who You Are To Get Started.”
Kleon proposes that one comes to know who they are through the act of creation. No one should let “imposter syndrome” hold them back, because no one has a concrete sense of “where the good stuff comes from” (28). Instead, he encourages people to “fake it ‘til you make it” (30): to pretend to be an artist until you start making art.
One way to do this is by “copying”: first, copying your heroes, and second, stealing “the thinking behind [their] style” (36). This way, artists are remixing ideas rather than plagiarizing them. By getting into the minds of your artistic heroes, you don’t just mimic the material of their creations but begin to truly understand how to create.
After this type of “imitation,” artists can move on to “emulation,” where artists identify differences from their heroes and “amplify and transform” (41) them into their own work.
Chapter 2 Analysis
Kleon continues to give advice for how artists can reframe the ideas they have about making art and conceptualize Art as a Genealogy of Ideas. Following the general re-framing of how readers think about art and creativity, this chapter provides pointed advice for how individuals can identify what they want to “steal,” and use that as a jumping off point for developing their own place in the artistic community.
