Black Bucket Essays
Volume 1, Issue 4
What if there is no next new thing? Do we sit around and mourn the fact that we've seen it before? There's a way to look at creativity that doesn't necessarily have to do with creating something we've never seen before. It can be about reinterpreting or misinterpreting the world that's already around us.
- LAURA HOPTMAN
Eileen Wold
Our natural instinct is to want new things and experiences. We look for difference. On a short hike last weekend I collected bits of nature along the way. I must have passed by hundreds of beautiful purple flowers without picking one up because I was saturated with them. I wanted the rare white one that was hiding behind a bended branch that felt special, unique and different. It was something new to my line of vision.
I created a hierarchy and nominated one thing as more important because it was previously unseen to me. That moment in the woods had me thinking about conceptual newness.
Sometimes we place more value on the new experience and nominate it as more fashionable and relevant. But one could argue that the fabric of our existence and the shape of our culture is comprised more from those mundane and numerous moments than the occasional shiny new one. So why the fascination with the new?
Some claim that we have seen it all. That we can not create anything new in the arts. It has all been done. And this is a condition we must make do with. But there are still things in almost every culture that are not acceptable to talk about. Which would still leave plenty of room to explore these things visually and create something new. There is always a white flower hiding among the masses.
Do we really have to settle for misinterpretations of the past as the only new thing art can provide? This method excuses artists from having to think for ourselves and do our homework. Artists should be held accountable to understand the thing we made in relation to what came before. And to understand influences formally and conceptually.
Or perhaps we need to broaden our definition of the artist to accommodate the new? There are plenty of artists working today in ways that the definition of art did not allow for just a few decades ago.
And yet, art that strives to be nothing BUT new services none. And art that absorbs the world and past influence without acknowledging the source with honesty and integrity leaves us in that same empty place.
I personally find it quite thrilling to find someone could or has made something similar in structure or content to what I have made. It validates my line of thinking. I can find peace in knowing that I am not alone in my conclusions or inquiry. I always find it curious when an artist takes insult to being compared to another creative thinker. That this should threaten his or her newness they hold in such high regard.
But if novelty is not the end goal of an artistic pursuit and rather the artist is on a real inquisitive journey, the appointed idea will naturally reflect past paths of developed thought. So if you look hard enough behind bended branches, you may discover there are new things waiting to be discovered.
Volume 1, Issue 4
What if there is no next new thing? Do we sit around and mourn the fact that we've seen it before? There's a way to look at creativity that doesn't necessarily have to do with creating something we've never seen before. It can be about reinterpreting or misinterpreting the world that's already around us.
- LAURA HOPTMAN
Eileen Wold
Our natural instinct is to want new things and experiences. We look for difference. On a short hike last weekend I collected bits of nature along the way. I must have passed by hundreds of beautiful purple flowers without picking one up because I was saturated with them. I wanted the rare white one that was hiding behind a bended branch that felt special, unique and different. It was something new to my line of vision.
I created a hierarchy and nominated one thing as more important because it was previously unseen to me. That moment in the woods had me thinking about conceptual newness.
Sometimes we place more value on the new experience and nominate it as more fashionable and relevant. But one could argue that the fabric of our existence and the shape of our culture is comprised more from those mundane and numerous moments than the occasional shiny new one. So why the fascination with the new?
Some claim that we have seen it all. That we can not create anything new in the arts. It has all been done. And this is a condition we must make do with. But there are still things in almost every culture that are not acceptable to talk about. Which would still leave plenty of room to explore these things visually and create something new. There is always a white flower hiding among the masses.
Do we really have to settle for misinterpretations of the past as the only new thing art can provide? This method excuses artists from having to think for ourselves and do our homework. Artists should be held accountable to understand the thing we made in relation to what came before. And to understand influences formally and conceptually.
Or perhaps we need to broaden our definition of the artist to accommodate the new? There are plenty of artists working today in ways that the definition of art did not allow for just a few decades ago.
And yet, art that strives to be nothing BUT new services none. And art that absorbs the world and past influence without acknowledging the source with honesty and integrity leaves us in that same empty place.
I personally find it quite thrilling to find someone could or has made something similar in structure or content to what I have made. It validates my line of thinking. I can find peace in knowing that I am not alone in my conclusions or inquiry. I always find it curious when an artist takes insult to being compared to another creative thinker. That this should threaten his or her newness they hold in such high regard.
But if novelty is not the end goal of an artistic pursuit and rather the artist is on a real inquisitive journey, the appointed idea will naturally reflect past paths of developed thought. So if you look hard enough behind bended branches, you may discover there are new things waiting to be discovered.
