How exactly does everything already having been created somehow dissuade someone from becoming an artist? I’ve been getting into the Russian landscape painter Ivan Shishkin, and many of his paintings look exactly like photographs. Perhaps everything has been created, but not recreated. That’s the point of art: recreated images, feelings, thoughts, et cetera.
No, look, everything has not been created already.
Fine, there are more artists in the world than you can shake a stick at. Fine, when you count all the artists that have ever lived you get quite a few trillion, and the score of art pieces created must reach the quadrillion and more. But the full spectrum of ideas that could possibly be created is INFINITE. Take out the mediocre or horrible ideas. You still have infinity. Can’t divide or subtract from that number. Compare any multitude of already created ideas to infinity, it’ll still look stupidly small.
Lack of creativity constricts our originality. A glut of ideas never does.
AND I’ll leave the building you don’t have to call security.
@James – I would disagree, though I’m no proper student of postmodernism. I’ve read that all the essential insights of postmodernism were promulgated under the banner of modernism. I think Jameson wrote about this — the fracturing of society into shards was perceived by modernists. But the curatorial postmodernists are good at composing shard-salads; often quite tasty.
I also used to think that it was written about everything worth writing about (there is a nice quote concerning this in Max Frisch’s book “Stiller”, maybe some of you know it) and I still think that, with centuries passing by it’s getting harder and harder to be original (in any medium).
Of course, many leitmotifs have already been invented/discovered and one can at best re-invent them. But since I started writing more or less regularly, I changed my opinion and I think there are still, and in any age will be stories to write.
Before copyright put art into a straight jacket, it was about shameless copying and retelling. The best artists had a repertoire of original and recast material. After the creation of copyright in order to maximize profit did the rather silly idea come about that all art must be original. Raven finds your pretense amusing, little humans.
January 15, 2010
Oh how that went from rock hard truth to angst-fueled blabbery.
January 28, 2010
How exactly does everything already having been created somehow dissuade someone from becoming an artist? I’ve been getting into the Russian landscape painter Ivan Shishkin, and many of his paintings look exactly like photographs. Perhaps everything has been created, but not recreated. That’s the point of art: recreated images, feelings, thoughts, et cetera.
January 28, 2010
No, look, everything has not been created already.
Fine, there are more artists in the world than you can shake a stick at. Fine, when you count all the artists that have ever lived you get quite a few trillion, and the score of art pieces created must reach the quadrillion and more. But the full spectrum of ideas that could possibly be created is INFINITE. Take out the mediocre or horrible ideas. You still have infinity. Can’t divide or subtract from that number. Compare any multitude of already created ideas to infinity, it’ll still look stupidly small.
Lack of creativity constricts our originality. A glut of ideas never does.
AND I’ll leave the building you don’t have to call security.
March 25, 2011
This is why Picasso carried a gun, because he got in lots of shows that way.
July 14, 2011
Based on panel 6, panel 5 should read “post-modern.”
October 9, 2011
So he IS a real vampire!
October 29, 2011
@James – I would disagree, though I’m no proper student of postmodernism. I’ve read that all the essential insights of postmodernism were promulgated under the banner of modernism. I think Jameson wrote about this — the fracturing of society into shards was perceived by modernists. But the curatorial postmodernists are good at composing shard-salads; often quite tasty.
June 19, 2013
Poor Grrl. It must be depressing to not enjoy creating for the sake of the act of creating.
June 29, 2013
I also used to think that it was written about everything worth writing about (there is a nice quote concerning this in Max Frisch’s book “Stiller”, maybe some of you know it) and I still think that, with centuries passing by it’s getting harder and harder to be original (in any medium).
Of course, many leitmotifs have already been invented/discovered and one can at best re-invent them. But since I started writing more or less regularly, I changed my opinion and I think there are still, and in any age will be stories to write.
September 29, 2013
Before copyright put art into a straight jacket, it was about shameless copying and retelling. The best artists had a repertoire of original and recast material. After the creation of copyright in order to maximize profit did the rather silly idea come about that all art must be original. Raven finds your pretense amusing, little humans.