Фотожурналист опровергает миф о высокой продуктивности Пикассо, сравнив его успехи со своей 17-летней карьерой

For the last few weeks this column has been a little fulminating. When something is described as fulminating, it lets you know you’re paying too much for your therapist. So, let’s switch gears and talk about hit rates. I was watching a video where this young adult (read: child) talked about how Picasso created around 150,000 works, but only a fraction of those were considered a success. His point was it takes a lot of work to be successful, and that most people grossly underestimate just how much work it takes. He’s not wrong. It’s a good sentiment. But it’s a horrible example. First, Picasso, according to Guinness World Records is the “most prolific painter who ever lived.” To get there they said over his 75-year career he produced 13,500 paintings and designs, 100,000 prints or engravings, 34,000 book illustrations and 300 sculptures and ceramics. That only adds up to 147,800, and that’s not 147,800 unique works of art. I’m looking at you “100,000 prints or engravings.” Second, of those, the guy called 1,170 of those hits and said that works out to about a .8% success rate. But that’s not fair to the world’s most prolific artist. Most people who study these things estimate that he averaged creating two artworks a day during his career. That works out to 54,750 works. Using the TikToker’s number of hits, that’s a hit rate of 2%. We’ll use that number. It’s only fair. Third, that body of work is estimated, by the aforementioned website, to be worth about $800 million. This is where I take issue with this example, because it implies if you do an extraordinary amount of work then you too could have a net worth of $800 million. It conflates a lot of work with a lot of money and says success is based on just a fraction of your overall output. It also fails to count the hours Picasso may have spent practicing. It also glosses over Picasso’s true measure of success: The fact I have not once referred to him as Pablo Ruiz Picasso and you knew exactly who I was talking about. I’d bet some of you didn’t even know he had a government name. To make my point, we’re going to have the leave the art world – because I’ve exhausted my knowledge of art – and use something I’m more familiar with – taking pictures. Now, I’ve been known to take a good photo here and there, at least that’s what my momma said. You might think that would be called photography, but you’d be wrong. To do photography, you have to take a good photo and then print it in black and white, on expensive paper with expensive ink. And there’s usually some suffering involved. While I certainly suffer (ref: fulminating) and most of my photos end up in black and white, I can assure you there’s nothing expensive about the paper or the ink, which leaves me two checkmarks short of being an artist. Since Jan. 14, 2025, I’ve “made” 25,971 photos for work with a camera. That doesn’t count any hobby photos I’ve taken or anything I’ve taken with my iPhone – or what others might call practice. That means I take about 45.5 photos a day. Over my 17-year-career that works out to 282,327.5 photos. That’s probably low because I don’t shoot as many stories now as I did when I was a young adult. But you would think, if someone has done something more than a quarter of a million times, like take a photo, then eventually every time they would snap a shutter the result would be awe inspiring. And again, you would be wrong. The other day I shot 334 photos. Out of that, 20 of them were good enough to put out into the world. That’s a hit rate of 6%, which means, when it comes to the practice of my profession, I am three times more proficient at mine than Picasso was at his. But people still call me by my full government name.