ITAP Lecture 1: Conectivity; Notions of origionality and Can recontextualised ideas be contemporary

In the world of the creative arts, artists and designers are constantly creating new pieces of work all the time, however to what extent are they truly original? A dictionary definition of ‘original’ reads: something ‘preceding all others in time or being as first made or performed… that serves as a model or a basis for making copies’. To create something truly original it has to be the very first time it has been seen in any form, and something that I believe to be inherently impossible to do in this day and age. The idea alone that someone can create something that is a completely original idea is ridiculous, as everyone has to have been inspired by something whether knowingly or not. We are effected by everything we see around us and everything that happens to us, meaning that anything we produce is in some way a result of something else, thus preventing it from being completely original or unique.

Furthermore more specifically when you look at any piece of artwork, going back hundreds and thousands of years, there can always be comparison founds with other pieces of art somewhere else in the world and in history.  This could be because the artist has purposefully recreated another artist’s work or done so without knowing. It could be a pose used, or the composition if a piece, the colour pallet or even text used, it would be impossible to find any artwork that dose not have a connection or similarity to another.

Recontextualised ideas in art and design are pieces created by artist, which directly mimic other pieces that already exist using existing ideas in a different way creating a different meaning or aesthetic. By looking at a often classic or well known piece of art the artist takes the key aspects of the piece and recreates them in a contemporary way this can be done with perhaps playing with the composition or construction or recreating the piece to look the same but in a different medium, for example the cover of the 20^th anniversary of Focus catalogue recreating Lucus Cranach’s Adam and eve painting created 500 years before.  Recontextualising ideas can definitely be contemporary, as all artwork is just a progression of what has gone before it and any piece you look at will have direct comparisons to another piece, so working in this way is just a more direct version of the same process of being inspired and creating. The use of different materials and mediums also keeps the work contemporary as it is looking at the idea in a way that has not been done before. Furthermore if by contemporary you mean relevant to the current time, that would depend on a number of things: the motive and reasoning behind the artist recontextualising an idea, what they are aiming to achieve, and the audience’s opinion of it and thus how successful they are.