Re: On Originality

On a completely unoriginal way I to ended up writing to much in the comments section to your question Sam, so here is my comment...

As long as art is made will originality exist? I’m not Shaw ItWill.

 When you are in the adolescents of the creating and of the learning of art, originality is immediately pushed to the back of one’s priorities as a means of justifying what has been made as an art work. This is through the contextualisation of what is being made in relation to other pieces of 'art' that have been made by other individuals in a contemporary or historical time. If there is an attempt at originality in ones work, the decisions of what you are doing and why those concepts are embedded within your outcomes are critiqued and understood in terms and associations of other concepts and theories that relate to your own. This is intended to give you a better grounding of those particular interests but also results in the wiping away of the originality of the idea, by making you aware of other individual ideas and interests in that field of interest, making you bow down and reference and relate to them so that it expands and widens the breadth of your concepts, endorsing them as art and as a result making them far more reaching and 'better'. This forever referencing and supposed understanding of theories and outcomes makes your art art. Without those things ticked off how can it be art? That forces the originality of your outcome and subject into the void of oblivion.

Is originality a Modernist mentality? If it is then the need for originality died with Modernism, as it is a progressive term to push forward art to its epitome. Art is a maelstrom of heterogeneous multiplicity. In an attempt by many, to understand it and in its many diverse forms, the critiquing and justification of art through the need to relate it to prior contexts and philosophies results in art becoming homogenised and this homogenisation squeezes out any inkerling of originality.

But is there still a way for originality to be within the circle of art? When originality is confused and conjoined with the individual, originality exists and exists because the individual is that and that alone. The way things are created will be produced through very individual ways even if they relate to something else. But it is also always important to remember that the individual is unique, just like any other individual.

As long as art is made, looked at and spoken about – in its current state (whatever that may be) - originality will eternally exist and be non-existent. What is made and the reasons for its creation will always be individual to that particular maker but those ideas, devices and materials will be placed within a contextual bracket of theory and history (by that maker/creator or by someone else) resulting in it being original and unoriginal.

As long as art is made will originality exist? I am Shaw ItWill.

So what of this piece of text? Is it an attempt at critiquing originality in a way to explain the un-explainable in an original or unoriginal fashion? Where are the references? Oh I’m sure their in there somewhere placed neatly inside, but only those who are in the know will understand what I mean... Or maybe there is none, and then this merely will be left in a corner as a mockery to show you how it is not done and will end up as an embarrassing piece of mumbo jumbo trash talk.

Kit