Talent
Does talent exist or is it a myth? It seems to be a popular attitude today to regard it as the latter. A colleague of mine refuses to believe in talent as an innate gift and he subscribes instead to the belief in the 10.000 hours worth of practice. Through that, everyone can become a talented genius.
When I claim that I didn’t need to put down 10.000 hours to become as skilful as I am today as a draughtsman, illustrator and cartoonist, he scoffs at me and says that I’m of course free to call all the hours I’ve been working, for talent. The problem with that is that I could draw just as well before I managed to get the job I have and there were periods when I didn’t touch a pen or pencil, but when I did it again, I didn’t feel rusty and out of touch. I just picked it up from where I left it.
I don’t know why some people show so much animosity towards the idea that talent may exist. My wife has another talent. She can sew without using a pattern. If she wants to make a blouse or a dress or whatever, she just imagines what she wants to do and gets down to it. No measuring up or anything. My father could also do that, according to my mother. We were dirt poor, but she had a sewing machine and a roll of fabric. They were invited to a party once, but she had “nothing to wear”. Not to worry, my father told her, and sat down by the machine and fixed her a dress without taking any measurements at all. She had never had a dress which fit so well, she claims.
Was my father a tailor then, who had spent endless hours by a sewing machine? No, he was a fisherman, farmer and a quarry worker. Sewing was just something he had picked up, somehow.
Quite recently, my wife had to work together with a woman who was a very skilful seamstress, but she became irritated when my wife refused to use patterns and measurements and just did her thing, with good results. In the end the woman stopped talking to her without my wife understanding why.
I think the woman felt offended by my wife’s obvious talent. I can understand why, even. If you really have put down those 10.000 hours to become skilful in what you’re doing, and you still struggle doing what you do, it must feel like an offence meeting someone who doesn’t. Still, I don’t see how closing your eyes to reality and declaring it a myth, will make anything better. In fact, it makes things worse for talented people.
The tendency within the art world, at least, is to disregard talent altogether. That may seem puzzling to an outsider, but I think that’s a fact today, at least in the Nordic countries. There has even been a tendency to disregard drawing skills altogether. You don’t need to draw to create conceptual art or performance art, right? One reaction to that has been the so called kitsch painters, led by the highly gifted and eccentric Odd Nerdrum and his disciples. ‘Clones’ as I prefer to call them. Google his name if you please.
In my opinion talent is real, but so are the 10.000 hours. One doesn’t eliminate the other. And, what is more important; talent is no guarantee for success. On the contrary. We tend not to evaluate that which comes easy to us, compared to what we have had to struggle to achieve. That’s one side to it.
There are more, though. Cleverness and skilfulness can be a trap. I was around twenty when I finally started to put some effort into drawing, taking it seriously. Until then, it was just something I just did occasionally, scribbling and doodling away when I was bored. It didn’t take me long, however, before I could copy anything I looked at, to the minutest detail. It gave me a wow-feeling at first, but I became bored soon enough. What was the challenge now? I knew I could do it, so then what? It only required patience of which I must admit I haven’t got too much of. And the simplest camera could beat me at it anytime, just with a click.
I began to call it my skilful play with dead forms.
It was then when I realised that skills, or talent if you will, is just a starting point. To create art, something more is needed, something which I don’t think we have an exact term for, I’m afraid. Creativity, yes, but what is that, really?
I think it had to do with enthusiasm. Obsession. To indulge oneself. Joy. Pleasure. And you can have all that without any talent whatsoever.
So yes, talent exists, but is it important? Not so much, I’d say, so why get offended by it? It would be better to help the talented ones to find joy, pleasure and enthusiasm in what they’re doing. Without it, talent might become more of a curse than a gift.
