The Problem of Being Original

As I have continued my work in research and writing post-graduation, it has become more and more apparent to me just how difficult it is to be original. All it takes to research a topic is one Google search, and one had likely yielded hundreds of thousands, if not millions of materials with which to work.

In the museum field, I find myself asking why the research I yield has to be penned by me, when I can just cite my sources. Even worse, I wonder whether it is not futile to write something when it has already been written more thoughtfully or succinctly.

This problem is certainly not isolated to writing. Artists, too, stumble upon the problem of being unique in a world that has seen endless visual repetitions. Many artists are preoccupied by this problem, and it has catered into their artistic practices (see Charline von Heyl's manipulation of visual imagery or read about such problems in Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus).

I remember in one of my high school art classes learning about the importance of using visual references to assist in building compositions. For one particular project, where we had to make a large-scale pastel drawing using extreme one-point perspective, I went searching for an image of a person reaching out their hand towards the camera. I envisioned a beautiful woman, trying to escape the attention of the camera. In my mind, one hand was reaching out and the other was covering her face. Such an image was nearly replicated in a matter of seconds with an image-search of a few descriptive words. I know that this doesn't sound surprising, but it is an intensely eerie feeling to discover that someone has already had the thought that you believed was your own. I couldn't find the reference image that I found, but I included here my final product. In an attempt to make it my own, I made her shirt blue and her hair red and curly (not an incredibly innovative interpretation). The lesson was: all it takes is an image search to find similar photographic reproductions.

This is the lesson I took with me ever since. I could find anything I wanted--about anything, anyone, anywhere--so long as it existed. And everything exists.

Occasionally, I will stumble upon research that yields little results. It is a joy, not a disappointment. Suddenly, I have an opportunity to contribute, to do some real detective work, which involves synthesizing information, travel, physical investigation, and talking to people. I long to get away from my computer and immerse myself in this kind of work.

When speaking with others in the academic sphere about this, they tend to reply that the solution is to get a doctoral degree, become an expert in something. Because that's where the digging happens. While I recognize this, I worry that a PhD's area of expertise has become so specific, that the success of the research is minimized. It is one thing to spend a life time studying Cézanne, but another to study the repetition of the color blue in Cézanne's still lives between 1866-9. As art scholars add to our history, I wonder, is there anything left to say?

Categories: Art, Education, Personal, Spontaneous