Fundamentals

From a recent New Yorker article quoting dress designer Rick Owens:

"Picasso did classic figure drawings in the begnning, and then, after that, he abstracted...You can't convincingly get abstract until the know the fundamentals [italics mine]. It is the same thing with pattern making [and I would add, acing]. You can't start distorting things unless you kind of know what you're doing."