DAY THIRTY EIGHT
Strongly tempted to borrow somebody else's idea today, or at least to search around in the many creativity themed books on my shelves for a prompt, but that would go against one of the self-imposed rules with which I started this blog.
Of course, try as I might not every thought recorded in these daily posts is likely to be truly original. Indeed not any of them might turn out to be so. We are all influenced by something, somehow, the sum of everything we've heard, seen or experienced, and much of that will involve other people's attempts at originality and creativity. Also we all grow up in certain cultures and traditions which cannot but influence the way we see, think and experience the world, shaping our very world view until such time as we can perhaps start to question and reshape it for ourselves.
Perhaps that is one of the touchstones of creativity, the ability to reshape what has gone before, to use tried and tested ideas and techniques and make something new of them, though that would set the bar quite high in many instances. Take knitting for example. I would suggest that most people get pleasure from the production of a finished item following someone else's design or pattern, and the balance of the activity is in the making, not necessarily any original design that goes into it. In many other crafts though it is a case of creating something new and possibly original using established techniques.
In saying this I'm reminded of the idea in conceptual art (I think that's where it's from) that in order for something to qualify as art, with it's implications of originality, all that's required is for the 'artist' to say that something is a piece of art. There was a documentary which illustrated this by showing a well known and established artist, except the only thing I ever remember of him is that he's an American living in England, declaring that a glass of water sitting on an oak shelf, in a certain light in a gallery, was in fact a work of art. I think the fact that it was in a place known for the display of artistic works was important to the concept: I don't think he could have walked along the street randomly naming lamp posts as art. If perhaps he had taken a lamp post, hit it with a hammer to make some dings in it, then put that in a gallery it would have qualified. I'm only speculating as I write this, but perhaps some confluence of three things is required - an object, an artist who selects or does something to the object, and a place that is recogised as a place of art. I could be completely wrong about all of that.
This blog's interest is mainly in creativity, everyday creativity at that, rather than high flown artistic concepts, but I wonder if there are some parallels with the craftsperson and maker who simply by their very activity, simply by the fact that it is they rather than someone else doing the doing, so to speak, creates an original piece even if the self-same piece has been made a hundred times before by other makers. They would certainly have some claim to it being an original piece of work of their own.
Going back to the quotation I don't think its aim really has anything to do with borrowing vs stealing or good vs great artists.
I think it is trying to point up a difference between a mundane act and a more exciting or perhaps in the eye of the author, praiseworthy one. The first part of the quote suggests copying to me, whereas the second hints at something of the thief being imparted into the work. It's a circular argument in a way - what makes the artist great is that they can impart something of themselves into ideas which have gone before them, and having imparted something of themselves and changed the original they are deemed a great artist. Taking the original and leaving it pretty much in its original form is only the work of a good artist - or what comes to my mind as a copyist.
Even the distinction between a copyist and an orginal artist is now irretrievably blurred: Jeff Koons has dozens of artists working under his direction to his specifications and the work is sold as his; 'James Patterson' the best selling author, is just a name appended to works of fiction prepared by any number of ghost-writers and given a James Patterson once-over for consistency; there are any number of rap artists whose talent - and in some it is a genuine talent - is in taking and remoulding other people's works. (This last is a game I think many children play when they rework songs in their head - or was it only me?)
Well anyway. I may not have taken someone else's idea for today's post, thus playing by my rules, but I'm not quite sure what this speculation has amounted to. You are welcome to it all the same.
Onwards...bewilderedly.
Picture credit: Shafiahmedrizvi, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
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