Breaking up with your creative past

How creative destruction can help comedians (and any artist) start anew.

Maria Brito wrote about creative destruction, when you “break up with something that no longer works and start anew from scratch or reassemble the pieces that have been taken apart and discard those that aren’t needed.” In it, she mentions how artist John Baldessari burnt all the paintings he had made during previous years.

It was a hot July in 1970 in San Diego, California, when the legendary John Baldessari gathered some friends and a few of his own students to drive to the local mortuary to burn all the paintings he had made between 1953 and 1966…This radical act marked the end of Baldessari’s formative years as a painter and opened the door for his breakthrough years as a conceptual artist...Baldessari is teaching us to not be afraid to make a clean break with the past. You may not have paintings to burn, but if you need to wipe something out in your business or practice that isn’t performing, allow yourself to get rid of it and open the space for creativity to flow.