An upcoming exhibition at The Phillips Collection museum in Washington, DC has caught my eye. It’s called, “Snapshot: Painters and Photography, Bonnard to Vuillard.

The exhibit will not only feature the works of seven leading post-impressionist artists from the 1890s to the early 1900s, but it examines the new media format these artists used to produce their notable works of art: the snapshot.

According to the cover article in The Phillips Collection’s Winter 2012 magazine, the arrival of the Kodak camera in 1888 provided artists a new tool by which to study their subjects via the snapshot. Prior to the portable Kodak camera, photography was a painstaking process which was typically inaccessible to the general public. Large format cameras were big, cumbersome and required a heavy tripod and lots of patience to capture a still image on film.

This new Kodak camera allowed artists the opportunity to take numerous photos of subjects with relative ease for later study and consideration. As the article points out, “the camera did not supplant the sketch but rather added a different dimension to a wealth of visual information that could be drawn upon.”

The exhibit opens on February 4 and runs through May 6, and will feature 200 largely never-before-seen photographs alongside the 70 paintings for which these seven artists are best known. The artists include: Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis, Felix Vallotton, George Hendrik Breitner, Henri Evenepoel, Henri Riviere, and Edouard Vuillard.

“Snapshot marks the dawn of an era when artist used their Kodaks to explore new realms that would inform their creative output,” as noted in article’s conclusion.

Today, businesses small and large could learn from these seven artists – even companies like Kodak which itself is ironically and unfortunately on the verge of bankruptcy.

Leverage the latest tools that can help your company improve upon, not replace, what it already does well. What got you to this place is core to your business and its identity. What you use to enhance your company’s and employees’ core talents will continue to make your business successful for years to come.

You know, I think that would make for a nice snapshot.

I admit it. I have a foot fetish. It’s not exactly what you think. My love for feet is of the inanimate kind – stone feet sculptures, that is.

I just returned from my second trip to Rome this year. And based on my well-trained and traveled eye, I must say that Rome is probably the foot sculpture capital of the world. Everywhere I turned, there was another marble-carved foot. They were in museums, shops, piazzas, flea markets, and basilicas. Stoned feet in every direction.

The largest foot sculpture I’ve ever seen was in the courtyard of the famed Musei Capitolini, the oldest public museum on the planet which dates back to 1471. (This date is not a typo.) The really big and old foot is shown above. The courtyard also showcased a number of other large marble body parts, such as fingers, elbows, and heads.

The museum’s shop had a small marble replica of the big foot, which I wanted to buy, but my husband — as always – gave his standard complaint: “It’s too heavy to carry home.” Most of the time I ignore him, but given he ends up carrying the heaviest bags, I relented this time.

Of course, I regret not buying that foot. Its image is now plastered inside my head. I think I need therapy.

But great art, even in the sculpted foot variety, has a way of possessing the mind and soul.

And whether you call it a fetish or a passion, the positive effect of art and design can turn the ordinary into the extraordinary.

This effect just might help you ultimately lap the competition by a mile – give or take a foot.

The I Love Lucy television show first aired on this day in 1951. It starred then-Hollywood legend Lucille Ball, whose zany and fresh comedic antics helped turn the sitcom into the most watched television show of its era.

Ball’s trademark blazing red hair and slapstick humor was an unlikely pairing with her co-star, Desi Arnaz. Arnaz, who played Lucy’s husband Ricky Ricardo, was also her real-life husband during the run of the show. Arnaz was a dark-haired Cuban American singer and bandleader, whose memorable heavy accent and exclamations on the show continue to resonate to this day.

CBS executives at the time questioned whether the U.S. television audience would accept the idea of an All-American redhead married to a Cuban. Those fears quickly turned to celebration as I Love Lucy went on to become one of the most popular television sitcoms of all time. Sixty years after its debut, reruns of I Love Lucy are still viewed by more than 40 million Americans each year.

On the show, Lucy and Ricky were joined by co-stars Vivian Vance and William Frawley, who played Ethel and Fred Mertz. Vance and Frawley were perfectly cast as the Ricardos’ neighbors, landlord, and best friends. To this day, I still laugh thinking about the scene of Lucy and Ethel working in the chocolate factory on the production line.

Lucille Ball not only broke new ground as a leading female character of a television sitcom, she also served as the first woman to head a television production company, Desilu, which she and Arnaz formed. As a very active studio head at Desilu, Ball “pioneered a number of methods still in use in television production today such as filming before a live studio audience with a number of cameras, and distinct sets adjacent to each other.”

Whether it’s a television studio, and large corporation, or a small or medium size business, chief executives need to be willing to move outside of their safe zone in order to innovate and try new approaches. Success in business comes from bold leadership, a strong team, and promoting a culture that embraces an inventive spirit.

That’s a winning formula I know your shareholders will love.

I was recently in Rome where I toured the artistic creations of the 173-year-old marble floor company, Ditta Medici.

Located on Via dei Papareschi not far from the Tiber, Ditta Medici has been designing and restoring marble floors for some of the most discriminating clients on the globe since 1838. Clients have included the Vatican, Westminster Cathedral, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the Getty Museum, several Bulgari stores, and hundreds of private clients.

Priscilla Grazioli Medici is the latest family member to run the oldest marble workshop in Rome, who gave me a tour of her factory. She showed me some beautiful and unique marbles, which I have not seen in the States — some of which have not been quarried for two thousand years.

Ditta Medici has a number of floor designs which they can customize to your floor, or they can work with you to design a completely one-of-a-kind floor using the rarest of marbles.

You clearly pay a premium for custom and unique. It’s always been this way. Yet, what is a relatively new phenomenon in today’s flatter world is less emphasis on creativity and design, and more on instant gratification, low cost and sameness.

Today, you can buy the same designer label dress or suit in London, Tampa, Minneapolis or Beijing. Is this ubiquity a bad thing? Yes, if it means that many small, individual designers are pushed to the curb in the process.

Have you happened to stroll through the storied neighborhood streets of Greenwich Village in Manhattan in the last two years? Gone are many of the decades-old, sole proprietor shops where you could find rare books, clothing, art, and household items. They have been replaced by global designer brand stores that drive up the rent for everyone else, and in turn, drive out the eclectic and the exceptional.

Unfortunately, a similar fate may await Ditta Medici of Rome and many exclusive and creative shops around the globe.

But I’m not counting out the creative class just yet.

All of us should do what we can to celebrate the artisans and innovators still among us, and those young artists and designers who aspire to make a career in the creative arts.

I’m still convinced that the most creative businesses will not only succeed, but will far outlast the competition. Much like the lasting beauty of a fine Italian marble floor.

On this day, Swedish film star Ingrid Bergman was born in 1915; and it was on this same day she died in 1982 from breast cancer on her 67th birthday.

Bergman was one of the most accomplished and recognizable actors of the 20th century. Winner of three Academy Awards, four Golden Globes, two Emmys, and a Tony Award, Bergman is ranked as the fourth greatest female star of all time by the American Film Institute.

She is best known for her role as Ilsa Lund in Casablanca (1942), in which she starred alongside Humphrey Bogart. It was in that iconic movie that Bogart uttered one of the most famous lines in cinema to Bergman, “Here’s looking at you, kid.”

Bergman’s movie career spanned six decades from 1939 to 1982. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for Gaslight in 1945, Anastasia in 1957, and A Woman Called Golda in 1982. She was nominated for an Academy Award in For Whom the Bell Tolls in 1944, The Bells of St. Mary’s in 1946, Joan of Arc in 1949, and Autumn Sonata in 1979. She won the Best Supporting Actress Award in 1975 for Murder on the Orient Express.

Ingrid Bergman was born in Stockholm in 1915 to her Swedish father, Justus Berman, and to her German mother, Friedel Berman. Her mother died when Ingrid was three. Her father, who was an artist and photographer, died when she was 13. She went on to live with two different aunts, and later studied at Stockholm’s Royal Dramatic Theatre School, where actress Greta Garbo had studied years before.

During the 1930s, Bergman starred in more than a dozen films in Sweden and one in Germany. Unable to speak English, she was brought to Los Angeles by Hollywood producer David Selznick in May 1939 to appear in Intermezzo: A Love Story. She fully expected to return to Sweden after the film, but the American public quickly accepted her as one of its most promising stars.

Biographer Donald Spoto described Bergman as “arguably the most international star in the history of entertainment.” She successfully acted in five languages and won top awards for her work on stage, screen, and television. Director George Cukor once said to Bergman, “The camera loves your beauty, your acting, and your individuality. A star must have individuality. It makes you a great star.”

Today, global appeal and individuality also are key to success in business. Identify what makes your product or service unique, and talk about it in a language that a customer can understand.

Like it did for Bergman, it will likely make your company a great star.

British painter and portrait artist Lucian Michael Freud died last week in London at the age of 88.

Not as famous as his grandfather, Sigmund Freud, Lucian was well-known nonetheless in the world of art for his “stark and revealing paintings of friends and intimates,” according to the New York Times.

Lucian Freud was born in Berlin on December 8, 1922 to Sigmund Freud’s youngest son, Ernst Ludwig Freud, who was an Austrian architect. Lucian’s mother, Lucie née Brasch, was German. As both parents were Jewish, the Freuds moved their family to the St. John’s Wood district of London in 1933 to escape Nazi Germany.

I know St. John’s Wood well and have walked down many of its streets given my grandfather lived in that district for many years. I also know the work of Lucian Freud and have always respected it for its thought-provoking nature. His earlier Surrealism works gave way to bluntly-presented nude portraitures by the 1950s, which served to shock the senses. For example, his “Naked Man with Rat” (1977-1978) depicted a man lying on a couch holding a sleeping rat.

The central figures of Freud’s paintings many times appear tired, aged, and distressed – which has unnerved some observers over the years, particularly in the United States. Yet, no matter what one thinks of Freud’s work, there is an undisputed market for it. In May 2008, his 1995 portrait “Benefits Supervisor Sleeping” sold at auction by Christie’s in New York City for $33.6 million, which set a record for sale value of a painting by a living artist.

Conformity is the enemy to both the artist and the innovator. Corporations are generally expert at promoting conformity, but seldom proficient in providing for a culture that promotes creative thought and action. And they do so at their peril.

The next time you find yourself trying to conform, ask this question: “What would Freud do?” No, not the father of psychoanalysis, but his grandson.