Vishal Bailoor
Mrs. Mateyka
AP Lang/Comp
26 March 2012
Insert Borrowed Title Here: What is Original?
An artist stands, painting a masterpiece beyond apparent human conception. Someone approaches them, stares curiously at the painting, and then says, “How do you think of these things?” Dali, Picasso, a quiet, solitary teen – the artist aside, this is a scenario that has happened before and will happen again, and in that seemingly commonplace question lie the roots of perhaps one of the greatest philosophical quandaries the educated man has ever faced. Where do the ideas come from? Where does the inspiration to paint such a line in such a way, to play that note in this way, come from? Where, in fact, does any idea, any concept made real come from?
Originality is a true quandary, one that doesn’t quite fit with our normal conceptions of the universe. After all, everything arises from something else; the idea of a “deterministic universe” is a term popularly bandied about, as people say that you can trace anything, any action, thought, or emotion, from past experiences, actions, or thoughts. In a world where jaded hacks await eagerly a new fresh delight, perhaps the most valuable ideal is originality, and the truest originality lies in art, whatever “art” may be. Art is essentially creative; its entire value lies in innovation, in the pursuit and realization of essential newness, and if anything should be original, it would be art. But is even art original? After all, how is it even possible that a new idea randomly springs from nothingness, a true “something from nothing”? In short: it isn’t. As much as we’d like to believe that there is an unlimited panoply of forms and shapes and colors in the universe, the fact remains that what we call originality is nothing more than the complex interplay of a thousand thousand other things, a conglomeration of everything you’ve seen or heard before, consciously or subconsciously (Ways of Seeing). It is a depressing thought, but one that rings with truth upon closer inspection; for everything is composed of other things, and each and every majestic creation in the universe can be compartmentalized and sectionalized into a hyperimaginative portmanteau of the past recreated in a thousand ways in the present.
Originality is subjective not because of any inherent flaw in people, not because we are a society of plagiarists and thieves (contrary to the best efforts of my peers) but because we naturally build things on what we’ve seen before. Role modeling, imitation, repurposing – semantics aside, the end result is the same; we automatically build “new” towers out of building blocks that others have left behind. In essence, “all images are man-made” (Ways of Seeing 9). You can call the web of influences of The Picture of Dorian Gray art; certainly Lord Henry paints his views upon the blank canvas of Dorian’s naïveté, just as Dorian (through Basil) paints himself upon the literal canvas of the titular portrait. Yet the portrait is certainly not original, unless Dorian’s image is in some way original; and the new personality Dorian assumes is even more so not original. One might even say Dorian’s personality is hopelessly derivative, assumed as an inseparable amalgamation of Henry’s professed persona and the dreaded yellow book. That is not to say the art is valueless; as Lord Henry himself says, Basil’s art was at its peak not when he was painting new pieces (although the originality of those is absent as well, though in that case we know not the component pieces) but when he was painting Dorian, a technique not innovative but beautiful nonetheless. Perhaps the best example of this in the novel is the long, seemingly extraneous passage about Dorian’s various hedonistic pursuits, from music to jewelry to fabrics. The true meaning lies not in the literal relation to Dorian, but in the way it is presented. Dorian never once even attempts to create things on his own at the start; he first learns from the masters, studies extensively, pursues an art through its history, and only then, f he chooses, does he make something “original” – although, at that stage, the point is moot. Debord says it quite well when he states that “The images detached from every aspect of life merge into a common stream[…].”
Upon first contemplating the essential falsehood of originality, you might be led to consider that people must be static androids, reworking previous images and thoughts into endlessly new combinations. The truth is, however, that such influences are never conscious, and so the veneer of originality is preserved, if not the fact. After all, who are we to say that if someone creates something without ever once thinking he is reusing, say, the style of Matisse on a canvas favored by Monet with a color palate used by Goya that he saw when he was but a child, and that he could not remember now if he was asked, that that creation is valueless, and not “art?” No, influences are not conscious, and that is why the idea of originality persists until this day. Though Dorian reads the yellow book through endless repetitions, he never once explicitly states that he will live the book’s life, just as he never explicitly states that he wants to do what Henry does (indeed, if he did, he would not be nearly as bad as he ends up being) but, rather, he encloses it all under “his” idea that, admittedly paralleling one of Henry’s epigrams, he should live life to the fullest and do what his youth allows him to do, and that consequences do not affect him.
This chain of thought links back far into man’s inception. It may seem that at one point or another, things must be original. After all, the author of the yellow book was the one who influenced Dorian, but who influenced that man? The fact is, even that was derived from, perhaps, the author’s own perspective; but whatever the fact may be, the building blocks of creations are in themselves not original. They are merely, as Debord says, “embellishments of currently produced objects.” (7) As we grow up, we see various things, and those are the things we repurpose and use to make other, “new” creations; yet those original things are not original, either. The Hals paintings mentioned in the Ways of Seeing may have inspired future painters, but they are based off an artist’s conception of conditionally charitable charity workers. It is a path leading back through history itself, as simple things are combined to make more and more refined things until we reach today, when the components are so absolutely miniscule and indistinguishable and great in number that we are unable to see their origins, and so in our ignorance call such creations “original.”
Writing can be construed, quite plausibly, as art. And so, it might come to you or I that writing is original, as the odds are almost certain that no one has written this exact essay on originality, with the exact words and phrases I used. Yet, even this is more than likely not original. Infused unnoticeably (or noticeably) with my experiences, my readings, and my past pieces, it is definitely a composition of phrases and words I have (unconsciously, I promise) borrowed and reworked. Each phrase, if not the entire thing, is likely taken from somewhere, and if not, then the word is not made up, and at least based partially off an existing structure. That piecemeal effort combines to make one essay, a tapestry of innumerable threads; the works of Dostoyevsky, Asimov, Coleridge, none of them are original; merely, as Douglas Adams himself once said, “[works] made by putting old words into a new, cunning order.” Saying so, art is never original, though never consciously, because influence is always present, and because each component is also not original; and how can a new structure be crafted from old material? We may not know its origins, but that doesn’t give it originality, it only heightens our appreciation of it.
- You always infuse other things naturally into your creations
- Influences aren’t always conscious, and so the veneer of originality is preserved if not the fact
- Even the base things are not original
- thousand words ina cunning order
girl who wrote book that turned out to be a copy
- conglomerate of a thousand thousand other things
- A better image of what came before
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