Every artist dreams of producing original work. Yet to actually accomplish this feat is a matter of understanding the meaning of ‘originality in art’. It is a complex phenomenon that can be quizzed at several levels. A hardcore definition is elusive because originality is often used interchangeably with creativity. Uniqueness also becomes questionable when important contemporary art forms like ‘appropriation’, ‘parody’ and ‘pastiche’ rely entirely on borrowing and remixing. Individuality is again challenged when we review art of previous centuries where copying was the basis of art education and working within a tradition was the norm. Even today, students copy as artistic training before they arrive at a personal style or approach.

We all build from what we have seen. Even original artworks borrow in some way from the rich visual history of our collective past. So in this sense ‘originality’ does not mean that nothing else like it exists or that it is the first of its origin. The best artists can do is to offer a unique adaptation of ideas that have already been explored at some point throughout the course of art history since people first decided to etch markings on cave walls.

Impressionist artist Manet’s ‘LeDéjeuner sur l’herbe’, one of the grandest and most copied works of Western art history, is based in large part on an Italian Renaissance print. Pablo Picasso could never have painted his breakthrough works of the 1900s without recourse to African sculpture. The classical Persian and Mughal miniatures are foundational to the reinvention and shock value that contemporary miniature enjoys today.

Is there such a thing as originality in art?

Originality in much of contemporary art now stems from the hybridising of several non-related influences, styles and media resulting in an object or experience heretofore unseen. The art of appropriation refers to the practice of artists using pre-existing objects or images in their art with little transformation of the original. The case in point is the ready-mades created by the French artist Marcel Duchamp from 1915. Most notorious of these was ‘Fountain’, a men’s urinal signed, titled and presented on a pedestal. Interdisciplinary installations constructed with all imaginable materials, media, venues, and scales to produce previously unimagined art experiences also thwart given notions of originality.

The cult of originality in art neglects the fact that much of great art has been made from working within a tradition, argues British art critic Martin Gayford. In a standard Renaissance apprenticeship copying was the basis of art education and a way of joining a tradition. Gayford discloses that the first independent work Michelangelo ever made — according to his biography by Ascanio Condivi — was a reworking of a print by the German artist Martin Schongauer of the ‘Temptation of St Anthony (1470)’. However, distinctiveness and individuality are important characteristics. Thus Michelangelo’s copy ended up different from Schongauer’s engraving because of his personal working skills and perception of the subject. Unpredictability, novelty and eccentricity as signs of artistic ingenuity and inventiveness can endow art with a singularity that classifies the work as original and innovative.

Lucien Freud, in his interview to Martin Gayford, said the only important point was the quality of the work itself; he even felt that it did not matter if a work was a forgery, as long as it was powerful.

Whether Picasso did indeed say that ‘good artists copy, great artists steal’ is open to some debate, but it does reveal that a good artist simply copies another person’s art while a great artist selectively takes (steals) elements from multiple sources and then creatively combines their influences to create something that is uniquely their own.

Our individuality — the unique way that we solve problems with the information registered within our brain — is as close to originality as we will ever get.

Published in Dawn, EOS, July 30th, 2017