Unoriginality in Art

Amirasolo and Other Essays                        

Part 3. In my Book                                                   

Essay 30. UNORIGINALITY IN ART

Picasso's painting "Two Women Running on the Beach" inspired me to do the first painting in the photo album below, to which I originally gave the title, "A & E After Discovering the Joy of Sex". A and E are Adam and Eve. I asked a friend, a collector of my works, May Reyes, if the title is risque, and she answered that it is. 

So, I re-titled this work "Candy Serpents", a title I thought innocuous enough, that now, I no longer fear being branded blasphemous by the Fundamentalists out there. The colorful line drawings of serpents on the other hand, were copies of the doodles done by my younger son, Karel Andrei, when he was eight years old.

The "Candy Serpents" is a prime example of appropriation. It is not plagiarism, in my opinion, nor a reproduction, nor a forgery. That's because I acknowledged and gave credit to my sources of inspiration, did revisions of the originals, situated the images in a context, concept, and composition entirely my own, and signed the finished work with my name.

Being influenced or inspired by, and borrowing or even 'stealing' from the art of other artists is nothing new. Painters have been doing that for centuries either for practice or because they feel that they have something new to add to the original artwork. I see nothing wrong with that provided the appropriating artists give credit to the artists who have inspired or influenced them. What is also important is that a new twist or look be given to the new version of a painting by another artist.

Pablo Picasso, who was touted as the most inventive artist of the 20th century was not immune to appropriation. The neck and head of the left-hand figure in "Two Women Running on the Beach", which inspired my version, was borrowed from Ingres's painting of Thetis in the painting "Jupiter and Thetis". Another Picasso work, "Three Women Bathing" was also inspired by the naked figures in another Ingres painting, "The Turkish Bath" - although those figures of course were all subjected to Picasso's trademark distortion. Picasso also did several variations of Delacroix's Women of Algiers series, and his own interpretations of El Greco's painting "Portrait of Jorge Manuel", Velasquez's "Las Meninas", and David's "Rape of the Sabine Women". 

Picasso's revolutionary work, the proto-cubist "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" (1907) was markedly influenced by African art. This painting depicts five whores inside a brothel, three of which look or are trying to look like primitive Africans. The face of the woman at left has a distinct Negroid complexion, while the two women at right wore African tribal masks - to hide their faces presumably. Picasso, the co-inventor of Cubism, also revealed that it was the French painter Paul Cezanne who gave him and George Braque the idea of seeing and portraying all natural objects as mere  cylinders, spheres, cones, and cubes.

We can also trace the lineage of Edouard Manet's famous "Olympia". The immediate predecessor of that painting is Titian's "Venus of Urbino", which was inspired in turn by an earlier painting, the "Sleeping Venus", by Titian's illustrious colleague who died young, Giorgione. Even Paul Gauguin's "Nevermore", and my own painting "My Serenade" were variations also of that Titian masterwork. .

Another Manet painting, the "Le Dejeuner sur l'Herbe (Breakfast on the Grass)" was inspired by another Giorgione painting, the "Concert Champetre". 

Salvador Dali, joined the fray too, so to speak, when he painted a not so exact copy of Vermeer's "The Lacemaker". But prior to becoming a surrealist and painting his version of the Lacemaker, Dali first went through his impressionist and cubist phases, obviously because of his admiration for Camille Pissarro and Picasso. Even Dali's surrealist works decidedly show the influence of another painter who came before him - Giorgio de Chirico - the founder of Scuola Metafisica or Metaphysical School. De Chirico's mysterious landscapes littered with objects with no logical connection to each other and to reality and stretching to infinity were perhaps the models Dali based his surrealist landscapes on.

There are also Filipino painters who copied and signed with their own names paintings by other artist, like a painter I met in 1978 in SSS Village who did exact and high-quality reproductions of Amorsolo's paintings. There was also a schoolmate who did skillful copies of Juan Luna's "Spoliarium" and a serenade scene by Botong Francisco. 

Copying the painting of an old master isn't illicit if you follow these three conditions: first, the painting you'll do is not the same size as the original work you'll copy; second, the signature you'll put on your work is your own and not the original master's signature; and third, you'll mention also that your painting is after the work of the original master. 

An artist friend told me that their instructor in  painting required his students to submit as their plates copies of paintings of the masters they admired. Meanwhile, another instructor from the same university even encouraged his students to do paintings similar to those churned out by him which he would sign if they are up to his standards. My artist friend followed his suggestion. He did a painting after that instructor's style, which must have been competently done, because it was signed by the instructor and later on was bought by an art collector.

As to sculptors, incidents of appropriation by them have occurred here in the Philippines. There was a case where a fine arts professor submitted as his competition entry two human sculptural figures made by his student, which he jazzed up with appendages and other adornments original to him. That work won first prize in the art competition. The professor claimed he had the permission of his student to use her discarded sculptural pieces, which the student denied, if I remember correctly.

Another more well-known controversy involved an artist who did a sculpture of a seemingly levitating supine woman with outstretched arms, with only her long hair connecting her to the ground or pedestal. The husband of the Dutch sculptor who created a similar work claimed that the Filipino sculptor just copied part of his wife Elizabeth Stientra's public installation in the Netherlands titled "The Virgins of Appeldoorn". 

The Filipino sculptor denied that, asserting that he arrived at his concept using his own imagination. Which is probably true, because as I have mentioned in an earlier essay, two artists from different places and different times may come up with the same art idea inadvertently without them knowing of the work of the other. Besides, there are lots of levitating women sculptures created already, all or some of which must have been inspired by the levitating Linda Blair photo from the 1973 film "The Exorcist".

Those two cases could be just matters of simple appropriation. What's wrong, or even downright criminal, is forgery, where an artist made an exact copy of an artwork by another artist and then signed it with the forged signature of the original artist. Plagiarism is also wrong. It is when an artist claims as his original a work he just copied.

Reproductions or copies of famous works signed with the copying artists names, on the other hand, is a tricky case. If the copy is after a work by a master long dead, the copying artist is forgiven. He is just trying to make a living after all. But copyright infringement and plagiarism issues arise when the copied works were done by contemporaries or by artists who have died relatively recently.

There are many gray areas on this issue. But to artists who still crave to appropriate, borrow or copy the work of another, my advice is do so, by all means. That is the only way you'll get it out of your system and rid yourself of your fixation. But please, do not claim what painting you'll come up with as one hundred percent your own. Give credit where credit is due. Do not forget to mention the artwork and the artist who have inspired or influenced you. And do it promptly, please. Do not wait until someone pointed out that you only copied someone else's work before admitting that you did. That would be very embarrassing.

(Top painting in the photo collage above: CANDY SERPENTS; 2008; acrylic on paper; 22 X 22 inches; my collection. After Picasso's painting "Two Women Running on the Beach and my son Karel Andrei's childhood doodles of serpents. Bottom painting: MY SERENADE; 2009; oil on canvas: 35 X 35 inches; Julian Felix collection)