Ecstasy of Influence

Every artist “plagiarizes” in the sense that they draw elements from the works of others, sometimes directly and intentionally, sometimes subconsciously being influenced. Most artists become artists, after all, because they were inspired by someone. Artistic style doesn’t come from a void, but is a collage of elements from other artists, pop culture, and life experience. So while no work is truly original in the sense that it contains elements of other work, art that appropriates other pieces can still be deeply original in the way in which it uses those sources and how it recontextualizes them. The very act of deciding to reference a specific piece is in itself a part of an artist’s own unique personal style.

With so much taken for granted and deeply cemented into public consciousness that we don’t question them or even see them for what they are—like how blue is associated with baby boys now, despite that only coming into existence in marketing in the 20th century—artists can take these elements of society and pop culture and place them in a new context that forces a new perspective. The object or reference itself might not be the creation of the artist, but the way they use them and frame them to change the way we view them and make them “strange” is an act of creation.

Art exists simultaneously within two economies: a gift economy and a market commodity economy. A commodity exchange is impersonal and all about acquiring a good or resource such as money, whereas a gift exchange is about the social and personal bond that it creates alongside the exchange of the item.No matter how comercialised and commodified art is, it still exists within a personal and emotional gift economy which is about the connection a viewer experiences with a work. The work is a “gift” from the artist to the viewer that creates a social and emotional bond. Whether or not you pay to have a painting you see in a gallery placed on your wall, you can still receive something from the artist if the work is meaningful to you.

The commons is a shared social space or resource that both belongs to everyone and no one. Ideas can be a commons, as well as culture and art. You can’t really lay claim to the way art becomes a part of pop culture, because even if you owned the physical object, for example, the Mona Lisa, it is still a commons in the way that it is referenced and the impact it has on people and their perception of art. The commons is influenced and changed slightly by everyone that interacts with it as it exists “between” people, like the mythology of Marilyn Monroe’s life being built by Andy Warhol, biopics, mass-produced souvenir shop t shirts, tabloids, and every person that has ever shared a falsely attributed inspirational quote on Facebook.