Michelangelo and Raphael; Leibniz and Newton; Constable and Turner.

Does every c
reative genius need a bitter rival?
Jacob Burak is the founder of Alaxon, a digital magazine about culture, art and
popular science, where he writes regularly. His latest book is How to Find a Bla
ck Cat in a Dark Room (2013). He lives in Tel Aviv.
2,900 words
On 25 May 1832, John Constable was busy adding the final touches to his masterpi
ece, The Opening of Waterloo Bridge. One of England s greatest 19th-century landsc
ape artists, he had been working on the painting for more than 10 years and was
finally set to reveal it to the world the next day, at the opening of the Royal
Academy of Arts 64th annual exhibition. Next to his piece hung Helvoetsluys by J
M W Turner, an artistic genius in his own right. Watching Constable s last-minute
efforts, Turner decided to add an extra brushstroke of his own: a red buoy float
ing on the water.
That single daub of red paint against a background of grey sky and sea was so ar
resting that visitors couldn t take their eyes off it, certainly not to look at Co
nstable s painting. It was yet another landmark in the bitter rivalry between the
two artists. A year earlier, Constable had used his position in an exhibition co
mmittee to have a Turner painting taken down and hung in a side room, replacing
it with a painting of his own.
Turner and Constable are not alone in the pantheon of epic rivalries between cre
ative giants. Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz, two of the most brilliant math
ematicians and thinkers of the 17th century, laid claim to the development of ca
lculus, the mathematical study of change. Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla both in
vented electrical systems in the 1880s. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates went head-to-h
ead as pioneers of the computer age. If you Google almost any famous figure alon
g with rivalry , you ll find some interesting results.
Think of rivalry as a type of ber competition driven by mutual obsession, with th
e rivals propelling each other to spiralling achievement, and investing more men
tal and emotional resources in each other than circumstances would ever dictate
on their own. In 2014, across two sets of studies involving undergraduate studen
ts and runners, Gavin Kilduff, a psychologist at New York University, found that
rivals tend to be the same age, gender and social status. True rivals know each
other and, indeed, often have long, enmeshed histories. Rivals are, by definiti
on, evenly matched but the higher the level of their attainment, the more they p
ropel each other on.
Rivalry can be double-edged: it motivates not just heightened accomplishment but
, sometimes, unethical behaviour such as lying, cheating or stealing. In a serie
s of studies, Kilduff found that those primed for rivalry were more open to Mach
iavellian acts and more likely to exaggerate positive results in a cognitive tas
k. Rivalry could account for scandals and malfeasance at the highest levels of i
ndustry, and might even explain some of the risky behaviour behind the economic
collapses of the recent past.
The social drama of rivalry, with its hostility and aggression, masks a deeper s
ubconscious dynamic. We might think of our nemesis as the polar opposite of ours
elves, but as Kilduff s research suggests, our rivals are much more like us than w
e dare admit. While this might seem counter-intuitive, it follows that rivalry c
an actually be good for us: acknowledging that our rivals share our most essenti
al traits, good and bad, can help us up our game and gain some of the insight we
need for greater success.
Orson Welles summed up this idea in his movie The Third Man (1949):

In Italy, for

30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed
but
they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerlan
d, they had brotherly love they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what d
id that produce? The cuckoo clock.
Although this might seem cynical, art historians tend to agree: the birth of the
Renaissance is attributed to the rivalry between two artists over who would des
ign the bronze doors of the Florence Baptistery. In 1401, the cloth importers gui
ld declared a competition to design a set of doors for this building one of the
oldest in Florence, where the poet Dante and members of the prominent Medici fam
ily were baptised. Lorenzo Ghiberti, aged 23, won the commission, ousting his mo
re established opponent, Filippo Brunelleschi. Ghiberti s victorious design ushere
d in a new style of art, more naturalistic and with greater emphasis on perspect
ive and idealisation of the subject. While it took him another 21 years to compl
ete the assignment, the episode began a competitive frenzy that became a tradema
rk of the Renaissance.
In fact, the most important artistic achievements of the Renaissance occurred in
the small area between Rome, Florence and Venice, home to just a couple of hund
red thousand people at the time. One of the largest cathedral domes in the Chris
tian world, the Duomo in Florence; the realistic representation of the human bod
y; and linear perspective in painting all came into existence thanks to the riva
lry between Renaissance giants such as Brunelleschi (1377-1446), Da Vinci (14521519), Michelangelo (1475-1564), and Raphael (1483-1520).
Raphael s results were applauded by all

all, that is, except Michelangelo

According to their contemporary, the art historian Giorgio Vasari, rivalry was c
ommon among elite artists of the period. Renaissance Rome was home to any skille
d artist aspiring to work for the Vatican the biggest and almost single employer
of the time. The natural intensity of competition in such a restricted setting
yielded works of art that still hang in the world s elite museums. The practice of
exhibiting paintings by different artists side by side in order to compare tech
nique and style naturally heightened the pressure on each artist. Raphael achiev
ed new heights in his work when he designed 10 tapestries, commissioned by Pope
Leo X to hang in the Sistine Chapel under Michelangelo s divine ceiling. The resul
ts were applauded by all all, that is, except Michelangelo.
That should come as no surprise. The famous sculptor and painter was also renown
ed for his temper. When the handsome young Raphael first arrived on the Rome sce
ne and was quickly commissioned by Pope Julius II, Michelangelo labelled him a b
itter rival and proceeded to repeatedly accuse him of plagiarism. At one point,
Michelangelo worked on his ceiling masterpiece behind a partition in order to hi
de it from Raphael. The latter, no shrinking wallflower himself, managed to arra
nge a view of it and later, in his fresco The School of Athens, incorporated a s
eated figure taken straight from Michelangelo s work. Thanks to these machinations
, the rivalry between the two giants became one of the most famous in the annals
of art.
It wasn t until the establishment of science societies in the late 16th century th
at major scientific rivalries reared their head. Perhaps the most notable early
outbreak was the fierce war between Newton and Leibniz, each of whom claimed to
be the first to invent calculus
today widely considered to have been developed i
ndependently by each of them. The feud caused such a rift between the English an
d European mathematics communities that, for more than a century, almost no scie
ntific knowledge was exchanged between them.
In the early 18th century, Newton balked at nothing in his campaign for priority
over the invention of calculus: in 1712, the Royal Society of London published
a document granting Newton ownership of the invention and discrediting Leibniz.

The paper, however, should be taken with an exceptionally large grain of salt, s
ince Newton, who was president of the society at the time, personally appointed
all the committee members and even wrote large parts of the document himself. Th
e two colossi of mathematics never met in person and it is not clear that Leibni
z was ever exposed to Newton s work. One can only imagine how a productive exchang
e of their ideas, disputed over a public platform, could have enhanced the intro
duction of calculus and the scientific developments that followed.
The aim of argument, or of discussion, should not be victory but progress, said th
e French 19th-century essayist Joseph Joubert. Once the new societies and their
publications made information more accessible, rivalry between scientists, resea
rch institutes and even states began to drive new discoveries. Journalistic inte
rest in the drama enabled more public exposure to science. In one notable case,
the dispute between Thomas Huxley and Richard Owen, two of the leading biologist
s in 19th-century Britain, shined an important spotlight on Charles Darwin s theor
y of evolution, little-known to the general public at the time.
One of the stormiest scientific rivalries of recent years raged between the pale
oanthropologists Donald Johanson and Richard Leakey over the discovery of some o
f the oldest fossils from pre-human species. Johanson discovered the skeleton Luc
y , thought to be around 3.2 million years old, while Leakey discovered the Turkana
boy , believed to be more than 1.5 million years younger than Lucy
each cited by
its discoverer as the proverbial missing link between humans and apes. Their publi
c falling-out was remarkable even for science. The researchers had refused to sh
are a platform since 1981, but finally met on stage in May 2011, explaining thei
r positions and giving interviews at a highly publicised event at the American M
useum of Natural History in New York, where their vocal discord first erupted 30
years before.
Thirty years later, older and wiser, they expressed a genuine desire to integrat
e their findings with many of the dramatic discoveries that took place since the
ir feud first erupted. It also became clear how those two men complemented each
other: while Leakey generated an abundance of fossils, it was Johanson who was b
etter at interpreting his findings.
The qualities in our rival that arouse our hostility are exactly the ones we pre
fer to repress in ourselves: weakness, anxiety, greed, aggression, lust
Entire societies and social groups can rival each other, too. Cruel is the snow t
hat sweeps Glencoe and covers the graves o Donald, begins a ballad by Jim McLean ab
out one of the most brutal events in the bloody history of Scotland. The massacr
e of Glencoe took place one early morning in February 1692, conceived by the Bri
tish authorities as a punishment for the failing of the MacDonald clan of Glenco
e to swear allegiance to William and Mary, the new co-regents over England, Scot
land and Ireland. Thirty-eight men were killed by British soldiers who lived amo
ng them, and 40 women and children were killed when their homes were torched or
died later from starvation. The mass murder was presented to the MacDonald clan
as a revenge spree by the Campbell clan a claim that fell on willing ears given
the long history of clashes between the two groups. This bitter tribal rivalry,
which began in the 14th century, continues in different forms to this day.
The rivalry between Sunnis and Shiites started after the prophet Muhammad died i
n 632, when both groups vied to succeed him as leader of the Muslim community. T
he ancient divide between these major denominations of Islam is a major source o
f unrest in the Middle East to this day. In other cases, tribes have fallen out
much more recently: the divide between Hutu and Tutsi that resulted in the Rwand
an genocide of the 1990s was less than 100 years old and partially created under
colonial rule in the 1920s.
Competitive sport is rife with rivalry. Glaswegian football fans can back either

the Rangers or Celtic, a late sublimation of the warring Scottish clans mention
ed above, and there is an endless array of favourites from boxers to racing car
drivers. Nothing can match the fervour that caused El Salvador to declare war on
Honduras following the Football War of 1969. While the true causes were economic,
emotions first flared when fans of both teams clashed violently at a FIFA World
Cup qualifier. The third, decisive game was held in Mexico City on 26 June 1969
. El Salvador won 3-2 after extra time. The same day, El Salvador dissolved all
diplomatic ties with Honduras and the two countries were at war less than three
weeks later.
When people get so worked up over a rival, isn t something deeper going on? The fi
ercest rivals are often firstborn, says the American science historian Frank Sul
loway in Born to Rebel: Birth Order, Family Dynamics, and Creative Lives (1996).
Sulloway cites evolution as the basis for his claim that the finite resource of
parental attention is a source of sibling rivalry. Firstborn children use their
size and strength advantage to uphold their status, and are more likely to comp
ete over physical or intellectual territory. Younger siblings tend to undermine
the status quo and develop a rebellious personality. In a particularly meticulou
s study, Sulloway analysed the biographies of almost 4,000 researchers and scien
tists from the 18th and 19th centuries, including 83 pairs of siblings. He found
a younger sibling was 7.3 times more likely than a firstborn to support an inno
vative theory. But a firstborn s chances of engaging in rivalry were 3.2 times gre
ater than those of younger siblings. You guessed it: Newton and Leibniz were the
eldest sons in their families. Turner was an older brother, and Constable s older
brother was intellectually disabled, so the onus of success fell on him as if h
e were the eldest.
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impses of colourful past lives
The prototype, of course, is Cain, who committed the first envy-driven murder in
the Bible. A comprehensive study of sibling relations by the Dublin Institute o
f Technology in 2012 found that, although most people support their siblings, so
me exhibit signs of rivalry verging on outright hostility. Given our achievement
-oriented culture, it should come as no surprise that a third of siblings report
rivalry and emotional distance, with 15 per cent not even talking to each other
. Sibling rivalry is greater when there is a small age gap, no gender difference
, or when one sibling is intellectually gifted.
An especially profound exploration of rivalry comes from the psychologist Carl J
ung, the founder of analytical psychology, who said that we have more in common
with our rivals than we would like to admit. The qualities in our rival that aro
use our hostility are exactly the ones we prefer to repress in ourselves: weakne
ss, anxiety, greed, aggression, lust and rudeness are a few common examples. Jun
g called this panoply of traits the shadow .
In Freudian theory, we defend ourselves from urges we don t want to acknowledge by
denying their existence and projecting them onto others. This makes us attribute
qualities, intentions and desires to others that are actually our own. According
to Jung, such urges are buried deep within the shadow part of our mind. The less
cognisant we are of the shadow inside us, the darker and denser it becomes.
If we project qualities from our own shadow onto a potential rival, we can easily
find ourselves spiralling into a heated conflict when our rival behaves like us.
Even worse, without our rival, we might feel that we lack an independent existe
nce and wallow in the darkness of our shadow with no one to project it upon.
Look to your shadow to identify your lifelong rival
y and, perhaps, your rage

the source of your creativit

Jung s notion of the shadow adds dimension to the relationship between our rival and
ourself. Jung calls that conscious self the ego . The shadow , meanwhile, is the dark
part of our personality hiding behind our social mask the persona . As soon as we
are old enough to comprehend the cultural mores around us, we select those parts
of the self that are socially acceptable and classify them as ego , while repressi
ng socially undesirable traits transporting them to the shadow, where they conti
nue to exist unbeknown to us. Jung claimed that the ego and the shadow have the same
origin and maintain a perfect balance: the clearer the conscious part of our pe
rsonality, the more well-defined our shadow self. The opposite is true, too: a shad
ow that is not contained can wreak mental havoc.
Look to your shadow to identify your lifelong rival
the source of your creativit
y and, perhaps, your rage. If you have a particularly strong negative response t
o someone and think he or she is a real jerk, think again. That might be a refle
ction of your shadow in action.
Edward Bennett, a friend of Jung s, elaborates on this in What Jung Really Said (1
967). He describes the phenomenon as a gut reaction that projects the source of
our emotion onto another, usually by means of sharp criticism or outright accusa
tion. When we hate someone, we hate something in them that is part of us; if we
do not subconsciously recognise our own traits in the other person, then we will
not be too bothered by them.
Projecting our shadow onto someone else is always easier than acknowledging and
containing it. When someone else projects their shadow onto us, it encourages us
to project our shadow back onto them, unless we are aware of what is happening.
But withstanding that dynamic takes an unusual level of self-awareness
even for
brilliant minds. And why would we want to resist? The shadow is the seat of cre
ativity, as far as Jung was concerned. In Owning Your Own Shadow (1991), Robert
Johnson, a popular American Jungian author and analyst, explains why rivalries t
end to erupt between especially creative people: Narrow creativity always brings
a narrow shadow with it, while broader talents call up a greater portion of the
dark. The more creative you are, the greater your chances for rivalry. And the fi
ercer your rivalry
the higher your chances of remarkable progress.
8 October 2015
Observe Reason - 3 days ago
It is a melodrama, scandal obsessed public that needs conflict. True Creative ge
nius needs no rivalry; genius is only concerned with the object or concept of it
s fascination.
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db - 3 days ago
"...we have more in common with our rivals than we would like to admit. The qual
ities in our rival that arouse our hostility are exactly the ones we prefer to r
epress in ourselves: weakness, anxiety, greed, aggression, lust and rudeness are
a few common examples. Jung called this panoply of traits the shadow ."
Is 'lying' a quality? If another lies to me, and I get upset, or hostile, does t
hat mean I really want to be, or am, or should be, more of a liar than I am?
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DonPhil - 4 days ago
The feud between Newton and Leibnitz "caused such a rift between the English and
European mathematics communities that, for more than a century, almost no scien
tific knowledge was exchanged between them." --"For more than a century, almost
no knowledge . . ." ? You would think that by now some historian of science migh
t have noticed.

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Maggiemay - 4 days ago
"Does every creative genius need a bitter rival?"
No. But every narrative does.
If there's no conflict about something, it's too boring to write or read about.
But if you got two guys who disagree AND hate each other? Well you can rewrite t
hat story over and over forever.
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moondog - 5 days ago
The central thesis of the article that creative rivalry is inevitable is quite s
illy. We just need to look at all the creative efforts that did not give rise to
any rivalry, and which instead gave rise to cooperation and mutual respect. All
the scientists that work in Cern, people who come together to make internet pos
sible, Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace, Euler and the Bernoullis. Surely there
is a healthy competition, but rivalry no. The focus is lopsided because the acr
imonious ones always steal the limelight.
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obsrvdiscord - 5 days ago
Some individuals could defy, if not at least severely test this: "we hate someon
e, we hate something in them that is part of us." Argue that the thou-protests-t
oo-loudly is universal in application. Could not one see and loathe attributes o
ne wishes to avoid, not ones that are shared? Creative rivalry could more simply
enhance creative effort through added challenge.
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G Singh - 2 hours ago
There are many false statements in this article, which wouldn't be troubling if
they didn't form part of the argument; for one, Newton and Leibniz developed cal
culus independent of one another, without knowledge of the other working on it.
What can be termed their rivalry, was actually just a lot of bitching about prec
edence and trademarking work which had already been produced - the rivalry didn'
t actually lead to the work. Secondly, the Michaelangelo/ Raphael stuff is all j
otted down in Vasari who wasn't reliable as a historical source.
I'm sure rivalries can be good for us, but I wish the author didn't make that po
int with recourse to such lazy thinking and ill-thought out examples.
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David Wilson - 2 days ago
Many eyebrows must have twitched at your reference to The Third Man as an Orson
Welles movie. But this is no worse than calling Casablanca a Humphrey Bogart mov
ie, I suppose. Far more heinous was using the ugly word "shined" rather than the
euphonious "shone."
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j. p. ward - 4 days ago
As an undergraduate in the early 1950's I was disconcerted to find that a physic
s lecturer in Scotland (himself an Englishman) used Newton's dot method in diffe
rentiation in calculus, while we at school only months earlier had used Leibnitz
's method dy/dx etc, and the long s for integration.
I thought for a long time that the dot was the lecturer's own shorthand and I di
dn't like it at all.
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Avatar
JohnB - 4 days ago
You can see a replica of the Florentine doors at the Grace Cathedral, San Franci
sco
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Martin Lindenberg - 4 days ago
Actually, this is fascinating and one thing the author didn't point out was the
rivalry between Freud and Jung!
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boonteetan - 4 days ago
Rivals do not like each other generally. But rivalry is the hidden driving force
that often propels rivals to greater height of achievement.
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JackKraven - 4 days ago
I have many bitter rivals...
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