Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V - Inspiration V Imitation

When are you building on an idea, and when are you just repackaging it for sale, when is it inspiration that motivates creation, and when is it commodification that motivates imitation.

It is a subject never far from striking a nerve, ask 3 artists what they think of it and you'll usually get 6 different opinions.

Which honestly makes sense, there is no cut and dry answer, the subject is littered with nuance. The point of transition from imitated to inspired is as nebulous and ethereal as our sense of individuality weighed against what a lifetime of influence has nurtured.

This sense of when imitation goes too far is often difficult for many to put in to words, It's a furrowed brow, a half sigh and head tilt, a prolonged "eerhh" and a "that's a bit on the nose". On some levels it almost seems as if it is akin to the "uncanny Valley" but an individualised one, an "imitation valley" as it were, im sure someone more scholarly than myself could puzzle through that.

So there's certainly no chance of this thread giving out any definitive answers. But I do think there are at least a few broad swathes of common ground that most artists and art appreciators can align on. The direct copy and pasting of artworks, the literal embodiment of this discussion, is one such area of relatively common ground. The way in which this copying and pasting is done can also further illuminate other areas of common ground in addressing this issue.

Say you copy across a Banksy artwork, you change the colour of the background, maybe you copy and paste a different head on to the body of the main subject. You don't chose the new head to add new context, there's no thought of reframing the pieces argument, using it as comment on itself, or even improving the composition and aesthetics. You replace the head because you know literally just copy and pasting the artwork of one of the 21st centuries best known artists will invite too direct a confrontation and dismissal. However you're betting that people aren't familiar enough with the intimacies of Banksys ouvre to recognise the body youve hurriedly masked, and that the vivid new background will further obfuscate peoples pattern recognition like glamourflage. To cap it all off you do this all digitally, you don't make a stencil, you dont paint the work, your skin deep imitation further still betraying your lack of understanding of the original art.

In this hypothetical I feel comfortable in saying that most artists would call this a step too far. The changes made aren't made to enhance or expand on an idea, rather they're made to obscure source material. The artists hand isnt really present, and this form of imitation isnt even a learning aid to that artist, as it shirks the true medium of the work in favour of ease of copying. Its a cover song badly performed, and whatever merit is to be found in it doesn't belong to the drunk crooner currently espousing it.

Now its important to note that this shouldn't stop anyone making these works, you can make whatever you want. We all had to learn how to mask in Photoshop once upon a time, bringing disparate elements together in collage is a useful skill, and generally there is learning to be found in study and replication. But those are base skills, they shouldn't take long to build, you should soon be growing beyond them, and on to more complex forms of study through imitation. What's more I certainly wouldn't be trying to sell those early creations, Christ 15 years ago I can only imagine what a copyright nightmare my early photomanipualtions on Deviant Art would have been if id tried to sell them.

No one is expecting an endless stream of novel ideas or aesthetics, no one is expecting you not to "steal like an artist" but the point of that quote (and a good theft) is that you aren't meant to be caught, that people think what you have taken is truly yours, or was gained legitimately, or maybe just maybe the theft is so damn satisfying, or brings one item so far from its origin, that everyone just goes with it. This is the difference between Warhol taking the Campbells soup design and making it art, and Mr. Brainwash taking that same artwork and just repeating it in different colours. One stole with purpose, they copied but pasted somewhere wholly new, the other just copied, like a street vendor with a Rolex for sale, there is no value in that imitation.