The Notions of Originality & Pastiche, Synchronicity or Conceptual Appropriation...

"Nothing is Original, So Steal Everything". In today's society, it is almost impossible to say that a piece of art is original. Thousands of years of amazing art and design still lives on in today's culture, and without us even knowing so, we are affected by such things. So this poses the all important question, is there such a thing as 'originality'?. It is extremely difficult to be 100% original in your ideas and processing, artistic and creative people are naturally inspired by other's work and are always looking for inspiration. 

Gabrielle d'Estrées
This piece of art by an unknown artist was originally painted in 1594. the intention for this painting was for personal use of the king, the subject being his two mistresses and both said to be sisters. 
The actual form and composition of this painting is obviously quite striking, and for that reason has been mimicked throughout decades. 

As we see in the two images to the right, this striking pose has been 'copied' to make new creative pieces of work. Yes, these artworks aren't original, but they have something different to what the original painting had, a different message. The artists have used the original as a base for their creativity, and simply added their own ideas and skills to creative, what some would say, a whole, different, original piece of work. What sets these apart from the original is the intention behind it and the message it is portraying. 
The bottom image is a 1998 YSL campaign. The obvious intention is to sell, and this pose was chosen because of the striking, bold sense it gives. The actual photograph itself is very high fashion, vintage and appealing to buyers. The actual meaning of the use of this pose could be varied. One opinion could be that the woman is the more dominant and importantly, clothed character in the shot rather than the naked male; which could be portraying the idea of female independence.
Every artist wants to be original and unique in order to succeed. What some people aren't aware of is it is the inspiration of other art, designs, photographs that we study and come across in our day to day life's that actually give us that inspiration and creativity we need to produce work. An artist may use someone's technique, context, form, composition, subject etc.  It is ok to 'copy' and 'steal', as long as you use other's work as a basis for your own. We should take risks, challenge, and play with other's ideas to improve and do something original in today's society.


Pastiche can be said to be another form of 'copying' in the creative world. Yet what differs in this term is that the work is purposely imitated in order to create a new take on the work. Sometimes a piece of art is described as a 'pastiche' because of the combination of several pieces of art to creative a new one, also known as a 'hodge-podge'. 

A very obvious form of pastiche art is collage work in which artists can combine different pieces of art forms to their very own original peice. 
















http://blog.basekit.com/2010/09/15/nothing-is-original-so-steal-everything/
http://www.louvre.fr/llv/commun/home.jsp?bmLocale=en