Annals of Culture: Late Bloomers: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker
A painting done by Picasso in his mid-twenties was worth, he found, an average of four times as much as a painting done in his sixties. For Cézanne, the opposite was true. The paintings he created in his mid-sixties were valued fifteen times as highly as the paintings he created as a young man. The freshness, exuberance, and energy of youth did little for Cézanne. He was a late bloomer—and for some reason in our accounting of genius and creativity we have forgotten to make sense of the Cézannes of the world.

Very interesting article in the New Yorker, comparing two types of creative people. I am sure there are many gradations in between, but for the purpose of studying creativity these archetypes are useful. Maybe we can also call it talent vs determination or born-with-it vs acquired. Ideally we would want to be somewhere in the middle, for talent without determination can be a waste, a flash in the pan, a flower that crumbles in the first storm, and a determined fellow without any talent whatsoever can be a bore, one who soldiers on despite the fact that nothing is blooming.

How to save the World: What Moves the Artist
The genius of the prodigy is electric, inspiring, lyrical, transformative, but the genius of the patient and present practitioner is ultimately more connective, recognizable, and even (I suppose I should say this with an apologetic shrug) — useful.

(((I am pausing to take a look around at the gorgeous autumn foliage)))