The Art of Creative Destruction

“Every act of creation is first an act of destruction”

~ Pablo Picasso

During a conversation one day, a friend of mine said something that struck a chord in me. She said that she feels women these days seem like they’re defining their source of power by how much they can destroy and be destructive. I felt really hurt by the statement when it was spoken in the context of our conversation, but the second thing that popped into my head was “what’s wrong with that?”

Now hear me out. I laughed at myself because I didn’t know why I felt this way or why I felt like ‘finding your source of power in destruction’ wasn’t a bad thing in the context of our conversation. I remembered Pablo Picasso’s quote and immediately went diving for it because in the moment it stated exactly what I was feeling.

There is so much wisdom in this quote, knowing that every process, even one as revered as creating, starts off first with the destruction of something. There’s a give and take in all processes in life, and I think as artists and creators we get stuck on creating the next big thing and trying to find inspiration in the building of something new, something never before seen, and we often forget about the duality of something as complex as creativity. Destruction. The yang to the yin.