Do we need each other?

Do we work better in groups? Consider some high performers in disparate fields that required different levels of community: Picasso, Einstein and Mozart.

Picasso: Needed people

Picasso benefited from his friend’s Georges Braque critiques. They shared all their artwork and were very dependent on the others review. Picasso made the relevance of his relationship with Braque clear, saying, “almost every evening I went to Braque’s studio or Braque came to mine. A canvas was not finished until both of us felt it was.” In addition, Picasso benefited from the art community that cleaved from the established art schools, such as Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, and Sisley. Would any revolution start without a gathering of like-minded people?

Einstein: Used people

Einstein didn’t think math was useful to a physicist. He only wanted to study what he thought would be useful. For example, he scored poorly in his compulsory French studies. As it turns out, his work in general relativity needed a type of math with which he was unfamiliar. He leaned on his old friend Marcel Grossman to deal with non-Euclidian geometry to give language to the ideas of general relativity. This is the most common category of genius, where people use the knowledge and abilities of others to fill in their gaps, but their vision and insight dominate the pursuit. Michelangelo used thirteen artists to paint the Sistine Chapel. The artists’ names are lost to history and only Michelangelo’s remains.

Mozart: Trained and released

Mozart was unique because he was a lonely genius. He had formal training, his father was a composer and Amadeus Mozart was raised in a musical community. However, he took his training and ran into the night, developing music that was amazing. He grabbed the tools of Western music and the inspiration of Bach to create wonderful things. There are others in this camp, like the poet Emily Dickenson and jazz pianist/composer Oscar Peterson.

We often ascribe names to important works as a means of illustrating human potential and elevating our self-concept, but most people do better with colleagues…but sometimes they can hold you back.