It is said that there is nothing new left for artists to create. The modern artists are simply reinventing that which has gone before. There are no new ideas only ways of looking at old concepts in a new way. This has been going on for some time.
With this in mind, has the art world reached the stage where artists are now reinventing reinvention? Forgetting the origin of the original idea and simply building on the last incarnation that emerged into the ‘artistsphere’ (hey if they can have ‘blogosphere’ then I can coin a similar phrase in an article about reinventing reinvention).
At some point in history artists had the opportunity to create something new. Something unique. Something that had never been thought of before. Will any of today’s artists ever know what that experience is like or is reinventing reinvention all that’s left?
Graeme Hindmarsh, about 1 year ago
Hmmm …. art theory rather than philosophy.
Have you read any works by Pierre Bourdieu or Georg Simmel? Fascinating and provocative theorists who have explored the same questions you have posed (and a great deal more!). Bourdieu is a dense read but, immensely rewarding for those who persist.
My favourite Bourdieu quote is “Taste classifies, and classifies the classifier”. Delicious. Subversive. Makes me smile every time I read it!
To those that say “there is nothing new left for artists to create” I would say “you really should get out more!” ;-)
dove, about 1 year ago
Graeme, can i quote you on that? So succinct and personally i agree. This issue has been coming up with my students, who are doing a unit called ‘writing from the edge’. The main debate seems to be about whether or not we can actually acheive new and experimental writing styles; in fact more time seems to go into the discussion of this than goes into actually writing in new forms or reading new works. Dan Disney, the poet, said something wonderful on his website. He suggested that the need for invention was always present. He used the old myth of the 100 monkeys in a room… you know the one, give them a typewriter and they could come up with Shakespeare eventually (I still doubt this, but oh well… some part of me truly believes all beings are unique in their perspective, and so perhaps utterly alone… language and communication are shared, but imperfect forms)... anyway, the point is after the monkeys have written Hamlet, then they’ll write Virginia Woolf, and Joyce, and the Beat poets and the grunge writers, and so on, and if we don’t keep writing they’ll be right behind us. It is up to us to find new forms. I don’t think there has ever been some pristine point in the past when artists feel they have a fresh sheet in front of them, a clean page so to speak. And anyway, i think that sometimes that can be debillitating. it is good to have something to work against, to write back to (or to draw back to..whatever your medium, artists are usually inspired by someone or thing, rubbing against it). It has also been said that there is no such thing as origins, and in a sense I believe this. It’s like the rhizomatic approach, which Deleuze and Guattari posit instead of the arboreal approach. We can’t keep going down to an artistic root, can’t find the point from which art emerges. Art slides, is a line of flight, it shifts across things, twists and turns and sometimes doubles back.
Dove
etourist, about 1 year ago
Nice quote Graeme, certainly we all should get out more. I’m not very widely read really. I just pick up bits and pieces here and there in all my internet readings. I’m probably spouting nothing new and regurgitating regurgitation. (Nice image huh?).
Personally I agree with both of you. There is always a new way of looking at anything and that nothing is ever 100% new. There always must be a starting point based upon what has gone before.
If you put 100 monkeys in a room and give them all a typewriter, you’re more likely to end up with 100 broken typewriters than Shakespeare but who would’ve thought you could break a typewriter in so many different ways? Free expression certainly!
Graeme Hindmarsh, about 1 year ago
Dove – quote away! – MLA conventions preferred! ;-)
As to the 100 monkeys – I’ve always read this as an analogy. If taken literally, in my mind at least, the monkeys would be far less interested in typewriters than they would be in indulging in unseemly monkey business!
But as an analogy it works and, to a degree, can be evidenced even here in the microcosm of RedBubble.