What A Croc

I originally came up with this combination of elements (mainly from a visit to Paris in October last year) as one part of a crocodilian triptych. But, whenever I looked at the whole three-parter, this left-hand panel seemed stronger than the other two elements and, with a bit of further work, to have enough integrity to stand on its own.

I think it's got "it". I'm not sure what "it" is, but whatever it is, this picture has a healthy dose of it, I'm pretty sure. This probably means no more than that this picture has something about it that happens to excite me, just now. The fact that I made it myself is simply part of the bizarre self-reflexive nature of creativity: Ovid knew what he was talking about, when describing Pygmalion's erotic obsession with his own sculpture in Metamorphoses. One of the peculiar things about being a compulsively creative person is the way it ties you into a shifting sensual relationship with the world: you tend to have a series of intense but brief affairs with particular subjects, or even just combinations of colours and shapes, that can fade quickly into indifference. Sorry, turquoise blue: the thrill is gone. It's not you, it's me.

This is a large part of the murky mystery of "inspiration". Most artists and writers get a bit touchy on the subject, particularly when asked some variation on the questions, "Where do you get your ideas from?", or, "Who are your influences?" These are annoyingly reductive questions, not only because they offend against a creative person's grandiose self-image as a spontaneous fount of originality, but also because of the implication that art finds nourishment primarily, even solely, in other art. It's a convenient view to take, from the vantage point of art history – to link artist to artist in a chain of influence and disruption – but about as far from the truth as any wacky conspiracy theory of political history.

I recently read an interview with Japanese artist Chaco Terada on the Photo-Eye blog, which contained this exchange:

What moves you or inspires you? Specifically which photographers have been the most influential?

CT:  I pay attention when I see the similar taste in someone’s photograph. I would not be influenced by it because I already have it. My works come from own experiences of daily life. Every day, I observe how all the elements surround me and interact with my feelings. The time comes when I naturally start making artworks.

Allowing for Terada's incomplete command of English, and her slightly precious evasiveness under interrogation, I think this nails it. If my own modest experience is typical, no artist looks at the work of another artist as an oeuvre, as a body of work to be understood and appreciated in its wholeness, something which has developed and expanded across time, mediums, and genres. Neither is it seen, with certain revered exceptions, as exemplary work to be admired, emulated, and learned from, although it would be a conventional courtesy to pretend this is so. Nope: it's all just another junkyard or curiosity shop in which to fossick about, looking for missing bits of your own work, alongside all the rest of the sensory world, from passing clouds to cracks in the pavement.

So, what are you implying, says the writer, by "where do I get my ideas from"? What are you getting at, says the artist, with "who are my influences"? As soon as I read it or saw it, I realised I already had it in me, so it was obviously mine all along! It's all already mine, all always my original work... This may not ever be strictly true, but it is a necessary fiction. There are few things more annoying to an artist than being told how much their work is reminiscent of someone else's, and yet well-meaning people do it all the time. I've done it myself.

Of course, originality has been a contested term since at least the Book of Ecclesiastes, i.e. roughly 450 B.C. As it is put in the King James version: "The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun." Or, in my preferred translation, the LOLcat Bible: "Has happen? Gunna be agin. Nuthing new undur teh sunz. Kitteh can not sez 'OMFGZ sumthing new!' is jus REPOST!"