Back to originality

I actually wrote this about a month ago during my dry spell with the intention of posting it later. Well now is later.

Maybe this time with a little more sense. I will return to my earlier discussion on originality, and bring up some further problems with the debates: ‘what is art?’ and ‘what is good art?’ There is a difference between originality and the original act, in my earlier post I argued that the latter was not possible, at least not in the traditional sense of the term ‘originality.’ This had to do with the need for originality to take its bearing off the origin. I concluded that an original act could only be, at best, an attempt at producing the mirror image of the median. I neglected to address the more obvious concept of the original thing, which is loosely, any thing produced, to which there is no thing like it in existence prior to it. The trouble with such a concept is that it is at the same time very possible, even necessary, and also utterly impossible. Possible in regards to the fact that no thing can be exactly like another thing, without being the other thing – and thus all things are inherently different and original. But in also in the same breath, no two things can be completely unalike, and no thing can be understood without referent to another, and thus it cannot be completely unlike. Thus a spectrum emerges on which we set arbitrary standards of originality. This spectrum itself is arbitrary in that it can only be assigned to attributes, but in order to be useful it also has to act as an umbrella over wider concepts. I.e. Painting A is black and there are many black paintings in existence, painting B is white and it is first ever like this; they are both paintings. Thus the colour attribute may be original, but the latter referent of the painting is not – in fact it is for all intention and purpose universal. There is also an arbitrariness in the use of time as arbiter: painting B being ‘the first ever,’ and any white painting produced after it will not be original by the same standard. But let’s return to the functional role of ‘orginality.’ Though I will not accept originality as any thing in itself, it may serve some useful purpose.

Let’s suppose a concept of time is necessary to a concept of originality. Thus, attributing originality also attributes a time qualifier. To be original is to be the first. If this is all originality is, then perhaps there is no harm in it. If we treat the expansion of human capacities normatively, and many do, then originality can be very useful (Expansion also caries a time qualifier: things can only expand over time. It also implies linearity.). In order for something to be the first, it implies that it was not there before; it is something else, something new, something other – a new boundary or an expansion in capacity. I have no problem with this use as long as we accept the validity of the normative assumption. But is the acceptance of a normative aim, the expansion of capacities, antecedent to art?

What of genuineness? Should an act that is genuine but not necessarily original, not be considered useful? Arguably an act could be artificial, inauthentic, un-genuine, and still be original. Should such a thing be accepted? Art isn’t mechanical or is it?

Afterthought: I feel inclined to want to tie this call for originality in art up with a modernity, and strategic rationality. Money is mechanical, and the assigning of monetary value to art creates a need for its mechanization. Maybe more on this later.

Where was I going with this?