Apparently our (UK) government resisted instigating lockdown because they thought, if it started too early, people would get fed up with it and break the rules, so it was important to do it ‘at the right time’. They seem to have been wrong about the willingness of the public to follow the guidelines, so far. It looks more like the government itself is getting fed up and easing the lockdown sooner than many members of the public, teachers, trade unions, scientists, other national governments, etc. would like. Clearly certain government advisors lost patience with the lockdown rules very early – maybe they mistook their own lack of resilience/altruism as a general trait.
I wonder whether, in spite of the financial and social burdens of lockdown, the general acquiescence involves an element of relief from the burdens of perpetual choice, perpetual activity imposed by ‘business-as-usual’ in consumer societies. As has been pointed out by one of XR’s facebook memes, the economic slowdown results from us only shopping for essentials, only travelling because we have to. Maybe (for those of us who were affluent enough not to live that way before), this decluttering of our time and to-do lists is not so bad. Let’s not forget the value of stillness when the rat-race restarts.
Another little incongruity showed up in the polling about Dominic Cummings’ travels. In answer to the question about whether people in general would be more likely to break the rules because of this story, the majority said yes, but in answer to the question would you be more likely to break the rules, the majority said no. Interesting how we tend to assume we will behave differently/better than average/others. I hope we all live up to our own self-images and carry on being altruistic, in spite of the high profile examples we are set.
(Notes for a zoom discussion with a small group of local artists)
Originality in art – what is it? Does it matter? Who exemplifies it?
Relevant words/concepts: ‘derivative’ (a bad thing), ‘in the school of’ (neutral), ‘there’s nothing new under the sun’.
What is originality?
doing something that hasn’t been done before – in subject matter, or method or medium
not imitative
not formulaic
breaking the accepted rules of a practice or medium
using a new medium
doing something that is new for the maker? that is, does it matter whether the work is similar to something already existing if the artist was not aware of that thing? This goes back to the first bullet above – ‘something that hasn’t been done before’ by whom? The individual, the local culture, humanity as a whole?
Does it matter? If so, why? Is it more important/’better’ to do a new thing than to do an old thing well? If originality matters in art, why is reproducing reality, and particularly photorealism, so popular? How does the concept of originality relate to that of creativity?
Is originality prized by the art market because it implies rarity and hence financial value?
I came across this artist years ago when I googled ‘tree drawing’, looking for drawings of trees. His work (including drawings by trees) stuck in my head ever since, and luckily google found him again.
his work uses natural phenomena (including people) to translate movement in through space/time into images – traces, time lapse photographs – very different results/methods but unified by a single intelligence.
distinctiveness and individuality are important …. Perhaps those attributes, however, are a bit like destinations in Alice Through the Looking Glass: you get where you want to go more quickly by setting off in another direction.
Cork:
If art is to be life-changing, it must break the rules, even if we find that unsettling…
True originality in art can never be overrated….we should all engage with even the most unsettling experiences that originality in art provides. Nothing is more depressing than the attitude of viewers who approach innovative work with all their prejudices rigidly intact, refusing to accept that art has a fundamental right to defy even our most hallowed preconceptions. If the importance of originality is not recognised, academicism becomes rampant, repetitive dullness prevails and artists lose their crucial ability to renew our vision of the world with outstanding, revelatory verve.
Which led me to this reaction:
Gayford and Cork seem to be talking past each other. Gayford approaches it from the artist’s perspective while Cork is talking more about reception – and that may explain why they answer the question differently. It doesn’t make sense for an artist to ‘try and be original’ as their main goal (because it’s too abstract and it implies you have to learn about the whole of art history first in order to know whether you are being original). But a viewer may be looking for the new, or the original, when they go to the gallery.
Cork finds it necessary to point out that originality is not the preserve of the young and gives several examples of artists whose late work was ground-breaking. I’d think that ‘true originality’ (though that’s a loaded phrase – what would ‘false originality’ look like?) is likely to arise after someone has developed their skills and applied their mind to an artform and then chosen to pursue their own path, whether that means breaking with or continuing a tradition.
If we think of other art forms such as music, I suspect that rule-breaking is not necessary for a work to be ‘life-changing’. Cork’s view seems to imply that originality cannot be a feature of any individual work that is part of a tradition, which again ties the concept to an art historical context, and suggests that you can’t have originality without a tradition whose rules can be broken, and only an informed audience can recognise. And surely what is ‘life-changing’ or ‘revelatory’ will depend on the viewer as much as on the innovativeness of the work. Part of what was life-changing for Picasso seems to have been exposure to art from the traditions of other cultures. It was new to him and this fed into his own (from a European point of view) revolutionary art.
Anecdote:
When I was at art school, one of our tutors (whose remit was the more abstract/conceptual end of the course, as opposed to figurative drawing and modelling) used to irritate us students by saying, when we had explained our idea for an assignment, ‘have you seen the work of so-and-so?’, thereby pointing out that something like what we had thought of doing had already been done. At the time this seemed distinctly unhelpful. I don’t want the wind taken out of my sails by seeing someone else’s similar approach. But these days, having been inspired by Lucian Freud in trying to paint, if anyone said, your work is a bit like Freud, I’d be extremely pleased! What’s wrong with attempting to following a master?
And because words are boring without pictures here’s something I did recently which I haven’t done before. The wasp found its way into my bedroom, buzzing loudly and then died. So I drew it, and then made a linocut.
wasp, charcoal and pastel wasp, linocut, with date added because this feels like an important time
Random irrelevant image, painting with coffee
ideas melt like snow 