Written by Haylee Gemeiner
It’s an adage echoed throughout history by the masters — T.S. Elliot, Igor Stravinsky, Pablo Picasso and Steve Jobs — all their unique variations of the phrase proving its very own wisdom.
There is no such thing as an original idea. Even that sentence recycles the words of Mark Twain and countless others. And still, the inability to create something original is a notion young artists resent. It’s understandable in an era where trends are endlessly revolving doors, that the recipe for success would seem to involve finding something that’s never been done before, but the practiced artist will not mistake success for originality.
Technical skill can only go so far when we turn to art, not just in admiration, but for emotional satisfaction. That’s why the same music beats, fashion trends and fictional tropes have ebbed and flowed over the last few decades, and why so many eras of art have been rebirthed throughout history. Humanity likes to stick to what it knows — even on a grand, historical scale.
Art is, when abstracting it to its most essential parts, the way we visualize our reaction to the world around us. No art is made in a vacuum. It requires context, experience and intention to make it worth expressing. Our individuality is the closest we can get to achieving originality, so we put that into our art and hope that it resonates. To be an artist you must also be a consumer of art. Inspiration feeds—It needs to be fueled to produce anything worthwhile, and you fuel it by consuming what resonates with you. If art is made to be consumed, who is interested in consuming something that is unrecognizable?
None of this is to say that plagiarism can be substituted for genuine artistic expression. The ‘stealing’ referenced in the phrase, ‘Good artists borrow, great artists steal’ is something more sophisticated than theft. There is, of course, ethics involved in the conversation around taking inspiration from something, and it all comes back to what your intent is as the inspired artist. Depending on the degree of which something has inspired you, giving proper credit may be necessary, the same way a songwriter samples music or a writer uses footnotes for their research.
The larger lesson here is not complicated. Don’t blatantly steal the experiences of others expressed in art and pass it off as your own. More importantly, don’t waste your precious time trying to achieve an inflated aspiration with no real meaning, such as originality. Embrace what inspires you, and understand that art evolves from practice and tradition, just as language and culture do. Imitating other art is how you learn, and when you’re able to do it successfully, you take all the best parts and put it into your own art. The biggest honor to any work of art is allowing it to live on in you and your own art.
