Connectivity - 28th September

Notions of Originality

 

Diego Valezquez - The Rockeby Venus - 1640



Sam Taylor Wood - from the Soliloquy series - 1998-99

Some people view that the visual communicator who inserts other's work into their own is contributing to the near extinction of the understanding of the differences between creation and copy; in the modern world that we delve into today, there is a thin line, maybe even more of a blur, between these two factors. This leads us to...

Originality in art; impossible? Perhaps not all together impossible but becoming more scarce? The reasoning for this, one could suggest, is that because of the millions of pieces of art and visual communication that we see around us, it is hard not to be inspired by some of this work. One of the most valuable things to any kind of visual communicator is the ability to be inspired, hence why the majority of artist’s work stems from another artist, either by being visually noticeable or by its meaning.

In this example of originality, or rather unoriginality (being the comparison of Diego Valezquez and Sam Taylor Wood), the similarity would appear to be visually, even though there is such a huge difference in time from when Valezquez painted The Rockeby Venus until Sam Taylor Wood created her series of photographs, which includes the photograph above. Wood's inspiration, not only for the image shown above, but for her whole Soliloquy series, is derived from the tradition of religious paintings from the Renaissance and the Middle Ages, which explains why Wood has chosen the Rockeby Venus as one source of inspiration.

Nobody but the artist/visual communicator can say for sure what the meaning of their own work is, everything else is merely speculation; which is, the majority of the time, the visual communicator's desire. Perhaps in this sense, there is more originality in the visual communicator's world than some may think....

Can recontextualized ideas be contemporary?

John Constable - The Hay Wain - 1821

Peter Kennard - The Hay Wain with Cruise Missiles - 1983

Recontextualization introduces the process of extracting meaning from its original context and then reapplying it into another context, the outcome of this brings us an entirely new meaning. Can this be produced contemporarily? Would the difference in time from 1821 up until 1983 be classed as making something contemporary?

John Constable's work in general, let alone 'the Hay Wain' is noted for it's romanticism and sentimentality between the relationship of man and nature. His work depicts a stillness, that in the modern day, not many people are familiar with. So, for Peter Kennard to go ahead and bang a couple of cruise missiles in the middle of the painting, makes quite a bold statement. Kennard is known for his expression of political irony, juxtopositions and turning images on themselves, which recontextualizes an image and creates a whole new meaning.

Cruise missiles are, obviously, related to war, violence and politics, in 1821 cruise missiles were definitely not around, so for Kennard to mereley suggest placing a cruise missile in Constable's painting is to make it more contemporary as it is bringing an element that wasn't then created into the painting.