I’m finding it amazingly difficult at the moment to create anything which has any real degree of originality and has never been done before. Art and music require imagination plus genuine creativity in subject matter, style and presentation but, as time has passed, so much has been produced throughout the history of each subject that it is now virtually impossible not to repeat at least in part something that has already been produced somewhere in the world. We have become overwhelmed and saturated with visual images and sounds. Copying of earlier works and derivative pieces in each field whether consciously or sub-consciously is rife and it is a subject that I often have conversations about with members of my family, all of whom, are very much conscious of the problems of plagiarism and copyright infringement.
In my quest for original thought and ideas, I happened to switch on the Sky Arts “Celebrity Portrait Artist of the Year” and was delighted to come across two very unusual portraits of Howard Jacobson, the author by the comedians Vic Reeves aka Jim Moir and Phil Jupitus. In this short video the winner, Vic Reeves, can be seen with his strikingly colourful portrait of Howard Jacobson.
As I have been giving a great deal of thought to what constitutes originality in art and music recently, I will try and expand some of my current thoughts on the subject in my next blog in the New Tear which could be somewhat longer than this one!