The Myth of Originality
What does it mean for art to be truly original? In a hyperconnected world filled with references and reproductions, can any new creation stand alone as purely inventive? While the romantic ideal of the genius artist conjuring novel forms fully formed persists, the realities shaping artistic innovation prove far more complex. Upon analysis, every artwork contains traces of precedent inspiration, whether consciously integrated or subconsciously inherited. Examining the cumulative cultural and perceptual forces underpinning the artistic process reveals creativity's fundamentally collaborative essence. Art does not emerge within a vacuum. By embracing this more nuanced understanding of originality’s mythos, artists and audiences alike can evolve Their approach towards valuation and criticism.
Right: Rhiannon Piper, Memento Mona, 2021. Left: Leonardo Da Vinci, Mona Lisa, 1503.
What is Originality?
We tend to think of originality as something strikingly and utterly new. When we encounter a work of literature, music, or visual art that seems fresh and groundbreaking, we describe it as “utterly original” or “like nothing seen before.” However, if we look closer at the context and histories that all creative work arises from, a different truth emerges. Ideas do not form in isolation. Even the most seemingly “original” new works have inevitably been shaped in some way by previous influence, precedent, and cultural forces at play. Accepting this wider understanding of artistic influence opens avenues to discuss originality in more nuanced, realistic and generative terms.
The Weight of Influence
All artists work within existing traditions and cannot help but be shaped by what came before them. A poet that sets out to radically reinvent language still has language itself as their starting base. A visual artist determined to develop a new style likely borrowed techniques from their teachers. Even movements that defined themselves in complete defiance of tradition, like Dadaism arising in contrarian contrast to European bourgeois culture, cannot escape referencing the status quo they aim to upend. Influence seeps in, whether we acknowledge it or not. The artist may not be aware of just how much currents and forebears shaped their thinking. However, dismissing influence does not make art any more original in the absolute sense.
Inescapable Influence
Even art movements that overtly sought to break with convention and forge new terrain through radical creative gestures inevitably carried imprints of their cultural moment. The 20th century avant-garde project of shocking through non-representational abstraction, disorienting installations, or cacophonic atonality in music still necessarily resonated against audiences’ embedded notions of order, orientation and harmonic tradition to achieve intended effects. Likewise, individual artists striving towards wholly unprecedented stylistic innovation do not transcend their temporal surroundings either. With every stroke, they engage tools, techniques, subjects and symbols passed down, whether reacting intentionally against or unconsciously assimilating inherited elements. Their eyes, minds and hands bear imprints through each artistic epoch and life experience leading up to the moment of putting brush to canvas. Absolute originality untethered from prior forms proves statistically implausible considering humankind’s long creative history. Even apparent iconoclasm carries echoes.
The Generative Side of Influence
Paradoxically, admitting the deep creative debts we owe to history can itself become a wellspring for originality. Harold Bloom’s seminal “The Anxiety of Influence” introduced new language for discussing how poets wrestle productively with giants of the past, engaging in “misreading” and “misprision” as attempts to find space to assert their own voice. For visual artists, the long tradition of copying masters allowed apprentices to incorporate aspects of revered techniques into their own idioms. Picasso spent years rendering works after Velázquez, gaining intimacies with form and light. We see in Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills not pure invention but deliberate homages to female cinematic tropes that let her subtly subvert messaging around gender roles. Failure to acknowledge influence risks missing richness.
Mythologizing Origins
Why does the myth of radical originality persist so stubbornly? In part, because clean origin stories simplify branding complex legacies. It also allows critics and collectors to imbue special mystique upon their pet geniuses, further elevating their work as wholly without precedent. For the artists themselves, admitting sharing credit across a diffuse web of influence running backwards through time can undermine proprietary claims to signature styles upon which economic markets depend. Yet the desire to aggrandize innovation cheapens the inherently collaborative, societally-embedded nature of creativity. No one crafts outside of culture, context and tools inherited.
Evaluating Quality, Not Purity
Tracing how artists respond to influence offers deeper insight into the singularity of their visions than searching works for some purity untouched by history. A further paradigmatic shift occurs when appreciating this interplay itself as core to cultural advancement. Critics shift focus toward quality of remixing rather than quantity of reference alone indicating derivation. Artists gain freedom to openly sample from across genres and eras when expectations around sheer invention recede. Audiences access richer dialogues between past and present. With the myth of originality dissolved, engagement with the cumulative well of influence flowering into the new comes celebrated on its own terms.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on originality in the comment section below!
See you next week,
Rhiannon
