Originality
Related: art - aura - authorship - authenticity - avant-garde - contemporary - copyright - creativity - difference - early - eccentric - experimental - individual - fame - fiction - genius - greatness - influence - innovation - modern - Modernism - new - outsider - personality - precursor - proto- - pure - sampling - source - technique - unique - unusual
Texts: The Anxiety of Influence (1973) - Harold Bloom
There is no great work of art which does not convey a new message to humanity; there is no great artist who fails in this respect. This is the code of honor of all the great in art, and consequently in all great works of the great we will find that newness which never perishes, whether it be of Josquin des Pres, of Bach or Haydn, or of any other great master. Because: Art means New Art -- Arnold Schoenberg
Compare: appropriation - category - derivative - copy - genre - formula - hybrid - mainstream (relation to) - plagiarism - reproduction - tradition - translation
Original
- Not derived from something else; fresh and unusual
- Showing a marked departure from previous practice; new: a truly original approach. See Synonyms at new.
- Being the source from which a copy, reproduction, or translation is made.
Originality
Originality refers to something being new or novel. It is not received from others nor copied from the creations of others. The word is often applied in an admiring fashion to the creations of artists, writers and thinkers. Originality is highly regarded in most western cultures. Conversely, some eastern cultures abhorred originality.In United States patent law, only original inventions are subject to protection - with the caveat that an invention may be original if a previous inventor had developed the same thing but not made it public, or had developed it in another country and not introduced it into the U.S. In addition to being original, inventions submitted for a patent must also be useful and nonobvious.
In United Kingdom intellectual property law, a derived work can demonstrate originality, and must do so if it is to respect copyright. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Originality [Jun 2005]
Authorship [...]
The primacy of authorship and subsequent cult of originality evolved gradually, flowering in the Romantic era and proliferating in the modern age.
In "After Beethoven: Imperatives of Originality in the Symphony," Mark Evan Bonds argues that as recently as the mid-1700s, "music was generally viewed as a commodity, and composers as craftsmen." Less than a century later, with Beethoven's enormous shadow looming over his successors, "it (originality) had become a sine qua non of artistic integrity." Mendelssohn, Brahms, Mahler and many symphonists to follow felt its force. --Steven Winn, http://www.artsjournal.com/ideas/redir/20030109-14749.html
The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths (1985) - Rosalind E. Krauss
The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths (1985) - Rosalind E. Krauss [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Incidentally, the toe you see on the cover of the book is from Jacques-Andre Boiffard, The Big Toe (1929).
As Hal Foster... writes, miss Krauss cannot be blamed of the conceptual limitations of the time... if read within a historical context, this book Is very enlightning and very compromised with structural analisis, as it is with it's by- products (of wich, we often make so much of a deal these days) ... as it is with deconstructive readings. It seems to me that her efforts have not been scaled to the dimension they have. It is (still) a formidable introduction for anyone interested in really getting involved in post- structural thinking. I would even say... fundamental, to art practitioners and related. It should be taken,i believe, as a precious, self aware, golden thread for contemporary thinking. Her, "scupture on the expanded field", is illuminating, don't miss it. I really regret having rated "the optical unconscious" 4 stars, it must also be 5. Such risks taken by an art historian must not be taken lightly. She has taken first, as few others,the steps to construct--- the difference---, as they say. - Nicolas Ceron
See also: Rosalind Krauss