The Myth of Originality in Contemporary Art Author(s): David Hare Source: Art Journal, Vol. 24, No.

2 (Winter, 1964-1965), pp. 139-142 Published by: College Art Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/774783 . Accessed: 11/09/2013 06:13
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David Hare The Myth of Originality in Contemporary Art

The moose is a most curious creature. Considerably larger than a horse. Higher in front than behind. Shaggy on one end, not the other. All head and muzzle, with antlers to some extent resembling huge lettuce leaves. The French know this North American mammal by the name of "original." In fantasy I imagine Mr. Larousse traveling through the Canadian Wilderness in a parlor car. Lifting his head from the luncheon menu his glance encounters a passing moose, "alors, il est surement original, celui-la." I like to think of this as the way by which a moose entered the French dictionary. Even, if untrue, it remains that the moose is an original. The difference between the moose and the artist is that, while all moose are original, all artists are not. The moose is intensely aware of his originality and intensely embarrassed by it. He slips his huge bulk through the forest like water through a sieve. He camouflages his disasters by keeping his distance. His outrageous originality is an attribute few observers are familiar with. Like the truly original in art, he goes for the most part unnoticed. The moose's originality lies at the very heart of this moosiness. It is a personal pleasure which he conceals as best he may, at the same time taking great pride in its possession. What is newly original in an artist's work is never noticed by the public. It frequently is not noticed by the artist himself. What is really new at the time of its first conception is too subjective to be recognized. It is recognized and takes on its full meaning only after it has been repeated a limited number of times. In this case a repetitive series is set up thereby becoming recognizable. I stress "limited number of times" because there is, especially in contemporary art, a tendency to repeat a series until it loses meaning. In its raw state the original either passes unnoticed or is considered to be a mistake. In the arts it is noticed and approved, precisely at that moment when it is on its way to becoming unoriginal. This is also precisely the moment when a work becomes art. Before this moment the work is too subjective, too introspective to have any universal interest. After this moment the work becomes a repetition of an original act. A work remains permanently original if the artist refrains from dragging it through the mud of too much repetition. The value of art to man is not in the object itself, but in its promise of victory. Continuously restated victories over the pure state of originality. Man's victories in art are based on overcoming, not on having overcome. Nothing is more disastrous to art and life than the same
139 Hare: The Myth of Originality in Contemporary Art

victory over and over again. These victories, like the gaudy dirt of braid on uniforms, are only memory. These works of art which are repeated past the point of establishing the original gesture become decor. These works may make the artist famous, because through repetition they become easily acceptable, but they are of little interest as art. They attempt to overcome no new problems, they promise no other victories. They are pretty pieces of braid attesting to, a by now dusty victory, in the artist's past. On an artist's originality depends his life as an artist. It is in the act of continuously overcoming this originality that he produces art. If he succeeds in overcoming it he had too little to begin with, and is not a talented man. If he never tries to overcome it and only exploits it, he is a talented man but not an artist. The artist to maintain his stature as an artist must be continuously interested in the thing itself. He must expend his energies for the love of doing so. If he expends them for a single victory he runs the risk of finding it. Once having found it he may embroider the sampler over and over again. People will assume that they like originality because it is new and different. This is somewhat analogous to the man who says he admires and respects the skill of the bull-fighter, but abhors the killing of the bull. It is the death of the bull and only this which makes it fascinating. Pure originality in the arts is neither different nor new, it is merely chaos. The artist by introducing originality into a work and maintaining it there in balance with other parts of the work has managed for the moment to kill chaos. Originality is an awareness of the proximity of chaos, talent in its more serious and best sense is the courage and the capacity to deal with it. The majority of mankind is involved with repeatto himself over and over "I am safe." The man who ing is a true artist continually reinstates the existence of danger, at the same time managing in some way to cope with it. He is continually within the process of victory. He does not conceive of victory as accomplished, or worse still, hide from all possibility in a shell of safety. The man who deals with originality is desperately needed but seldom wanted. For along with his promise of victory he lets loose these shadows of chaos.
Why let out the lions at all, you may ask. The artist

has no particular reasons for doing so, it is only that he did not know they were in cages. His originality consists, not in letting the lions out, but in not knowing they were in. He sees things, those small sections of things which it is possible to see; as they are rather than as they

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are supposed to be. Originality in a sense is innocence, a quality all men long for. Once an artist begins to use originality as an attribute which is his, once the public begins to go out of their way to look for it, its meaning is lost. When a work is hailed as most personal it is often a sign that it is not so. In the young child originality is very apparent and it is a return to this which is often mistaken for the real thing. Adult originality is difficult to recognize, by no means is it always flamboyant. Like the green fields of childhood it should not be re-entered by retreating, but only on full circle and through the back door. Pure originality belongs to the child and to the insane. Adult originality is based on limits. That is in order to be comprehensible, it must be organized. During this process of organization it begins to lose its originality. As I said before it is at this time, when it already has within it the seeds of its destruction that it produces the best in art. To continue to produce the best work, it is necessary that it continue to be reborn, free and meaningless, and that it be continually killed with reason and organization. It is only at the center of this struggle where the victory exists. To my mind, Gorky became at the end of his life, far more original than most of the Abstract-Expressionists who followed him. The more he copies Cezanne and Picasso and Mir6, the more lions got out of their cages and the less his work resembled that of C6zanne and Picasso and Mir6. The resemblance in his last works to these heros is in the organization, not the work itself. Gorky's was not as original as the work of Pollock, but much more interestingly so, since Gorky became original in the face of art history, which he loved. Pollock became so at a time when he spit in the face of art history. Pollack's was an easier originality since it attempted to surpass the hero through negation, while Gorky's attempted to surpass it through understanding, a more difficult task. Once Pollock found his peace of originality he gave up further effort and continued to embroider on his original. It is tragic that he was unable to become more than an inventor, no more tragic than Gorky who took so much of a life time to develop originality. In the end which is the better artist? The man who understood painting and loved it so much that he became swamped for many years by what he loved in others, or the man who had little talent for painting but whose spirit was that of a true artist. If Gorky established in those early years what was to be the new direction in American Art, then later on, Pollock established what was to become the myth of originality for that art. What was for Pollock the only way in which he could function, became for others a goal in itself. There were two barriers to pass, invent a personal statement, then repeat it to insure its establishment as

your property. From this developed two watch-words. The "gimmick" used to describe the original find and "single statement" used to describe the method of its establishment. The two weakest links in Pollock's work became inbedded in the cornerstone of Abstract-Expressionism. That is these were the most searched for elements. The movement itself naturally came directly from the preceding one of Surrealism. There were some artists who did not follow this procedure, of those who did follow it, there were some whose talent was sufficient to overcome it. But I am speaking of the movement in general, not of its best nor of its worst adherents. When you think of it, it is curious that these two goals should be so mutually destructive. On the one hand originality at all costs, on the other repetition of the first gesture until it lost all sense of originality and became a trademark. By 1960, everyone was original. A group show had the appearance of a retrospective. The whole world was turning out Abstract-Expressionism. We became extremely nationalistic about American Art. I wonder if it is such a compliment to be copied so soon and so well. If the contemporary myth of originality had its beginning in a misunderstanding of Pollock, he was accepted as the man with a solution rather than a man with a problem, other concepts were soon added. The picture-plane. Manipulation of paint surface. Over-all painting. The paint as subject, etc. These later concepts when examined, all point to the same thing, a concern with lack of subject. Lack of subject in the sense of figure and landscape was only a minor part. Lack of subject in the sense of intellect was the real hitch. The Constructivists were as abstract as anybody, but they had subject, man's capacity to organize. When Mondrian turned his back on the sun and the field, he retired to a windowless white cubical and produced his strangely balanced shimmering squares, but he still had subject. Balance and the juxtaposition of color, in essence the same as the Constructivists. The art which in a few years was to spread over the whole world had subject only in the sense of raw material. Subject untouched as yet by the hand of man. This amorphous material was perhaps psychic prime matter, the material from which subject could come in many ways but for the most part it did not. It was short-circuited by the application of the second of the two first laws of the movement "single statement." The application of this concept stunted its growth in height and it was forced to spread out at the edges until it covered the whole world of art. The chimpanzee produces work with a striking resemblance to much of contemporary art. Of course it is silly and much too easy to criticize art by comparing it to the work of an ape. However, let us assume you have a pet chimpanzee who paints, and that you sign these paintings yourself. If you show these paintings in a New York gallery as your own, it is more than likely that some
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Museum will buy at least one example. With a little application you will be able to establish a reputation. At this point the work is accepted as art, it has attained all the attributes of art, but it is the same work which before you added your signature was not art. There are two things producing this change. One is the forgery, by it you have established the work as that of a man. Two, the work resembles a style popular today, through its repetition you will establish a signature. It is unlikely that a chimpanzee will develop much variation. The moral of this little story is-you can make a living by aping, but whose life are you living? Aside from the hoax, the only attribute which is yours is choice. You might be said to have original taste. Choice and taste are attributes of the artist but they belong more directly to the collector and art-lover. In any case you would be hardly less original than the artists who enlarge sections from the comics and advertisements with the help of a magic lantern and a stencil, then sign their name to work created by some other artist. No less original than those who print in endless rows repetitions of used newspaper cuts. It seems to me that culture is one of the few things which one can have with little or no expense. In art, the public confuses possession of the object with knowledge of the object. It would be foolish to assume that every lady with diamonds should necessarily, if presented with a clutch of them minus their price tags, be able to choose the best examples. There is little reason to assume the art public is in a more knowledgeable position. They may genuinely love art and this is rare enough and much to their credit. If pushed in this direction where would it all end, it seems to me it can only end, has already ended, in pure decoration. In these circumstances the fact that works of true value are produced, attests to the spirit of man, which even under the rubble of commercialism continues to persist. In turning its back on art history the Abstract-Expressionist movement was being contemporary in the same way that any new art movement of the last fifty years has been contemporary with its own times. However, the fact that today any artist may become quickly familiar with any art form, from any time in history through the medium of traveling exhibitions, and of course through photography, has not resulted in a more comprehensive understanding of art by the contemporary artist. The idea that it ever would have is one of those hopefully logical intellectualizations. To make knowledge easily obtainable is only an encouragement to those who do not wish to deal with it deeply. The reaction of the artist to this banquet of easy-come culture is obvious. He has a strong tendency to throw out the whole project and invent his own art history. This attitude stems largely from two feelings. A natural pride and
1 41 Hare: The Myth of Originality in Contemporary Art

wish to create something all his own and a fear of competing with those who have grown huge in time. However, the reasoning on the part of some critics that this is a new epoch in art because the artist no longer paints art history is false. These types of contradiction are a very necessary part of the creative spirit. No artist wants to paint art history, but no artist ever has or ever will paint anything except art history. It is absolutely impossible to be original in this primitive sense. Art becomes original only through the prismatic glass of art history. A Rembrandt cow has little resemblance to a Dubuffet cow and neither of them are art because of the cow, who like our friend the moose, and other living things, is hermetically original. More simply, man's originality is comparative, whereas God's may not be. These cows of paint become art because they are man's cows. Their true value is not that they may be pleasing to the eye. The value of art is not that it pleases or startles the eye, but that it belongs to man. The eye, the ear, the mind for that matter are only tools for its communication. Its value is that it belongs to man, not to nature or God, but to man. Rabbits have long ears, elephants long noses, and man has a longing to be man, who, out of modesty he calls God. The attempt in Abstract-Expressionism to negate art history, or at least not to paint it, is only the shield of originality which every artist wears in order to conceal him while he travels the same path as others. However, under this cover he, from time to time manufactures, often unknown to himself, his contribution to the truly original. The best camouflage is that which most closely resembles the game hunted. The fact that the art public often accepts this camouflage as the genuine article has encouraged the artist to do the same. This phenomenon contributes largely to the contemporary love affair which is going on between artist, critic and public. The contention on the part of critics that AbstractExpressionism is or was a complete break with traditional art is only avant-garde enthusiasm, when it is complimentary, only fear of being out-group when it is derogatory. As the movement becomes established as belonging to the recent past, there will be, has been, a critical attempt to correlate it with all past art. Belonging is of course a sign of respectability. All this is the natural process where by the original disintegrates into the unoriginal. What the artist should always understand is that the original object can only be fleetingly original. The original part of an art object, like a lump of sugar in a cup of tea, soon diffuses into all art history, sweetening to a greater or lesser extent, depending on its quality. Permanent originality consists in inventing it continuously. Some fifteen years ago, I was talking to a friend of

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mine who, speaking of what was becoming the AbstractExpressionist movement, said "do you realize that what we are doing now may establish the look of art for the next thousand years." I felt like Goebbels in the backroom with Adolf. The point in the development of art is not to establish a hierarchy which will continue on the assumption that it is a permanent discovery better than what went before. This is like sterilizing the goose who lays the golden eggs. It is a point of view close to the heart of General Mills or United Steel, it should not be that of an artist. In the realm of manufacture there is each year an original model, that these models are only slightly different in appearance and hardly different at all in function does not matter, since the term original is only meant to indicate it is time to throw out last year's model and buy this year's. You are being conned into keeping up with the manufacturer who appears disguised as Mr. Jones. Unfortunately this attitude has appeared in art. From the artist who repeats his own signature over and over, to the artist who repeats other people's signatures. Neither of these attitudes constitutes the artist's prerogative to comment on his society. Done in this manner they are not comments on society, they are avid acceptance of the principals of manufacture and distribution. The fact is that American Art has come of age in the American manner. Today there is being printed a Wall Street report on art. This publication gives the names of artists whose work has doubled or tripled in monetary value during the last few years. It also gives the names of those artists who are rumoured to be on the way up, as well as those whom you should unload before it is too late. Art is organizing its cartels and combines. It has received its finalspapers, the gangsters have arrived with their violin cases containing pop-guns. Individuality is being ironed out by the tremendous pressure exerted upon the artist through the development of a Global style. When the artist was being influenced by his immediate environment, as in pre-war Paris, or early post-war New York, he could see himself belonging to an avant-garde by comparison with other work being produced at the same time. This is no longer the case. There are two forces largely contributing to this condition. One is somewhat practical-it is the fact that when the artist looks at other artists' work, what he sees is a more or less distorted reflection of what he is doing. There is no longer any avant-garde, or put differently, the development of a global style has made all contemporary art avant-garde. The other is moral-it is that this international style has developed out of the sudden popularity which contemporary art is enjoying,

and this can be traced directly to what might be called a subconscious desire on the part of the artist to make art into a successful business. The very ease of communication, the availability of reproductions and the too-prevalent tendency to repetition have all contributed to the destruction of the artist's originality. He becomes afraid that by attempting the personally original, he may not be seen as contemporary. It is a classical complaint that the artist is forced into certain actions by society. The artist need not be so forced unless it is his desire to be so for motives outside art. The greatest advancement in the modern conception of the freedom of the arts and of the individual was made from the late 1800's to the early 1920's. We are, and have been for the last few years, entering a phase much more closely resembling that of the Renaissance. That is to say, art is being judged as it was at that time, judged on its popularity with the art public and by its application to decorative needs of the time. Today as in the Renaissance, the best of art is considered to be that which deals most successfully with the popular idiom. The Renaissance had not been through the emancipation of art which took place around the turn of the century, but we have. I see no reason for giving up the ground gained during the period from Impressionism to Surrealism and returning to a more restricted attitude. It seems to me that a period like the present, when the whole of contemporary art on an international level is engaged in stepping on one another's toes, is an ideal moment to investigate other possibilities. All of this makes the whole situation an extremely interesting one, if not always from the point of view of art, at least from the point of view of social phenomena, and it is this side which has brought out the new batch of critics. It is beautiful cricket weather and good beaver weather also. Eager or just busy, they are cutting up their logs and stashing them away for those long, cold dark nights. All wise men and most children know, that it is next year's logs and not last year's logs which must be used to warm this year's lovely cool night, and as to the dark, haven't you stars in your eyes?

The author who is well known to the art world as a distinguished sculptor gave this paper as a lecture at the U College of Art, Maryland Institute, Baltimore.

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