where art lives
Artists copy each other. I didn’t know this until yesterday.
I went to the Whitney and saw the exhibition “Picasso and American Art.” This exhibition juxtaposes Picasso’s work with the works of ten American artists. Each of these ten artists has incorporated Picasso’s work into their own work.
Seeing Picasso’s work reflected in these American artists’ work reminded me of the parallels between Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and Michael Cunningham’s The Hours. Cunningham took the premise from Mrs. Dalloway and rewrote it into a new novel. He doesn’t plagiarize or paraphrase Woolf’s work, but there are undeniable connections between the two novels.
The same follows for how these ten artists “copied” Picasso’s work. They did not attempt to reproduce his work and pass it for their own; rather they incorporated ideas from his work into their own work.
After learning this, I now feel more comfortable with myself as an artist. I no longer feel as if I have to create something 100% new for it to be art. It is okay if I take ideas from other artists and incorporate them into my own artwork, as long as I give credit where credit is due.
Art lives in a network, not in a vacuum.