Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative

Content Warning: This section discusses drug use and mental health.

Art is a changeable and flexible expression of human culture and its definition varies across time, geography, and traditions. In the Western critical tradition, art has often been defined quite narrowly and could be confined to “high” art, practiced by professionals and, usually, the highly trained and educated. Over the course of the 20^th and 21^st centuries, the concept has increasingly broadened in popular consciousness to mean the “creative expression of our thoughts, emotions, intuitions, and desires” (Nieters, Joseph. “What Is Art? And/or What Is Beauty?” Philosophy Now, 2015). Austin Kleon’s book draws on this expansive definition of art and encompasses all kinds of creators, types of practice (music, visual art, physical art, and literature), and even creative thought processes. In challenging rigid and narrow definitions of art and the artist, Kleon shows himself to be part of this contemporary trend to broaden and democratize art.

Archaeological evidence shows that visual art has been part of human culture for at least 45 millennia. Because material evidence of art forms such as (vocal) music, dance, spoken poetry, and storytelling tends not to survive, it is hard to know how far back artistic expression goes.