BY LOUISE*SK

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En lisant l’interview de Philippe Starck dans Le Monde du 2 février, j’ai relevé un détail intéressant. Le designer français revient sur la notion d’”artiste” et sa mauvaise utilisation dans notre langage. Je me rappelle avoir parlé de cette même distinction entre “être artiste” et “être créatif” dans une dissertation de philo en terminale, du coup ça m’a interpelé.

Pour introduire le sujet, Philippe Starck nous précise : “J’ai toujours dessiné, j’ai toujours su dessiner. Mais un artiste, non, je n’en suis pas un. (…) Par habitude de langage, dès que l’on dit qu’une personne est créative, on l’appelle artiste.”

Or, si un musicien à l’Opéra peut être qualifié d’”artiste”, il ne crée pas pour autant. Il ne fait “qu”‘interpréter la musique écrite par un compositeur. Le compositeur, lui, a créé donc il est créatif mais pas forcément un artiste, car ce n’est pas nécessairement son activité professionnelle. Pour souligner la créativité d’un avocat qui écrit des romans de son temps libre, on ne devrait pas dire de lui que “c’est un artiste”, mais plutôt que “c’est quelqu’un de créatif”.

Autrement dit : “Il y a des artistes créatifs et d’autres qui ne le sont pas, et des plombiers qui sont parfois plus créatifs que des artistes.”

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I’m not sure that this post is relevant in English because I don’t think that the English language shows the same flaw concerning the use of the word “artist”. Here is what I wrote.

While reading Philippe Starck’s interview for Le Monde on February 2nd, I noted an interesting detail. The French designer comes back on the word “artist” and its misuse in today’s French language. I remember having talked about the distinction between “being an artist” and ” being creative” in a philosophy dissertation in high school, so this caught my attention.

To introduce the subject, Philippe Starck gives us a precision: “I’ve always been drawing, I’ve always known how to draw. But that doesn’t make me an artist. (…) It’s a common thing that as soon as we think someone is creative, we call them an artist.”

Yet, although a musician from the Opera can be qualified an “artist”, he doesn’t create anything. He “just” interprets music which has been written by a composer. The composer is the one who created and is creative but should only be called an artist, if he’s made a living out of it. To underline the creativity of a lawyer who writes novels during his leisure time, one shouldn’t say that “he’s an artist” because it is not his professional occupation, but rather that he is “someone creative”. 

Said otherwise : “Some artists are creative and others aren’t and there are plumbers who are sometimes more creative than artists.”

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Images from starck.com : Mama Shelter in Marseille & Kong in Paris.

“The more you know who you are and what you want, the less you let things upset you.”

“Find a penny, pick it up, all day long you’ll have good luck!” 

It’s a general observation: some people are just lucky. They seem to get what they want. A friend of mine have been very lucky this past year. She used to live in London and had always dreamt of living in Paris. One day, she decides that London is not working for her anymore, she applies for 100 jobs in Paris (even though she doesn’t speak french) and 3 months later she emails me that we should grab a cup of coffee at St Paul in Le Marais because she’s now living in Paris. Job: check! She needs to find an appartment, boom the 3rd she visits is hers. And not just any appartment. One in the Montmartre area, her favorite neighbourhood of the city, it has a view over Paris and she gets to choose her flatmate. Flat: check! Oh yeah and 3 weeks after arriving to the city, she falls crazy in love with this guy who she’s with today. Love: check! Not saying she doesn’t deserve it or anything, just stating that a bit of luck was there, you have to admit. 

Some people are born beauties, some are very bright, others always meet the right people at the right time… you know what I’m talking about. So you’d think that some people just find pennies and others don’t. Well don’t think that. Luck is not something that people are born with, it’s something you can find on your own!

Specialists like David Bellaiche especially, a French professor, say that luck is the “ability to create a favorable environment around one”. It’s about “opening the box of opportunities”: 

1. meeting the right people
2. being on the right territories
3. listening to the right needs

And for that to happen, he suggests 4 attitudes:

• CURIOSITY: if you do the same stuff all the time, how are you going to experience something new and exciting? You should keep an eye on what’s around you.
• BEING CONNECTED: the more you interact with people, help them, bring them together, the more chances you have to meet great people. 
• CHANCE DOESN’T ALWAYS WORK: accept that sometimes everything doesn’t go the way you planned it. If you look at great people who have succeeded, they have also failed a lot of times and gotten back on their feet. They have turned weak moments into strenghts (I love that philosophy). 
• ANTICIPATION: people who talk about their dreams and spread the word have higher chances of making them come true as other people might easilier think of them if they find something interesting. It’s about anticipating and picturing what you want to share it and make it happen.

In a nutshell, David Bellaiche says that “luck isn’t what happens to you, it’s what you make out of it”.

I’d also add that one should be

OPTIMISTIC: if you only see the bad things happening around you, you wouldn’t even see a great deal of luck if it hit you in the head! 

PROVOKE IT: you’ve got to take some risks because if you run safe all the time, it’s not very likely that something crazy will happen. If you control everything in your life, you don’t let space for anything unexpected.

Being lucky is something you make happen and a state of mind. Now go and get it.