Original Sin

I often agonise over the originality of my ideas and the work that results from them.  I suspect it plagues many artists and spending any time online can only exacerbate the feeling.  However intensely one engages with an idea, a few minutes of surfing usually reveals someone got there before you, (often years ago).

It seems we must absorb such insecurities even more in our age of digital image saturation and democratised creativity if we are to keep faith with our own work.  I’ve viewed countless websites, blogs, photostreams and the like that demonstrate there’s absolutely nothing novel in documenting signage, decaying surfaces, graffiti, torn posters and every kind of urban visual texture.  Deflating though this might be, is it not equally true of any other category of subject matter?  Indeed, the portrait, the figure, and multiple varieties of landscape are subjects that still engage new generations after millennia of exploitation.  The same now applies to different modes of abstraction and even familiar conceptualist tropes.

It only takes a short excursion around the city to reveal a welter of new visual stimuli that captivate as urgently as ever.  So, rather than discounting a familiar subject category, it seems preferable to surrender to the immediate thrill of its rediscovery out in the field.  That always feels new.  The real issue is what one does with the source material and the danger of lazy recourse to standard responses or expressive shorthand.  Chasing the chimera of originality is futile but It might emerge through revisiting a source or suspending judgement in a familiar situation.  

Increasingly, we inhabit a digital culture of thoughtlessly recycled and appropriated images.  Equally problematic is a standardisation of expression or accepted interpretations applied to a narrowing range of image types.  Graffiti as a signifier of alienation or wilful transgression is valid enough but also an obvious cliché.  Taking that as read we should question what else it might be.  Connoisseurship of public texts and investigation of each example’s unique qualities and possible implications might release less predictable emotional and intellectual responses.  To become immersed in the ambiences and physical substance of a city should be to make connections between myriad strands of human experience.

Actually, originality probably isn't the point at all.  It's probably better to simply ask 'what's my response to this?'.