notions of originality

Notions of originality
Is there such thing as originality?Without knowing the history of art how do we know what is original and what has been manipulated to become more contemporary. Unknown artist - Gabrielle d'Estrées - c.1594 this painting was recreated several times. Melanie Manchot – The Fontainebleau Series – 2001, using different style, photography. using different genres, more sexual. Looking at when this painting was first made, had a different impact to society than it would now.

A traditional painting from 1594 would have been painted for personal use. whereas the other images are much more contemporary, they would be seen in everyday magazines, aiming at a different type of audience. Visual elements such as the two ladies being naked has a very big impact, especially in the era it was painted. The nipple tweaking is supposed to represent Gabrielle’s pregnancy with the King’s baby and is symbolic of her fertility. The context of this image has completely changed as it is now being used to advertise perfume. Sorrenti has used a photograph to make this famous image become much more contemporary. Having the man topless but Kate Moss still having her top on leaves a lot to the audiences imagination, which in this case works well as a selling point. The audience it is targeting is also very different, as the piece has been commercialised. By using Kate Moss we now know this has been carefully thought out to engage its audience. Using a man and a woman also makes the image more sexual and shows how open people are about sex in our society now than in 1594, has a deeper meaning behind it. shows how shallow society is now, using sex to sell a product. Also using Kate Moss as the main selling point to pull the audience in.


Can recontexualised ideas be contemporary?
To keep artwork fresh and contemporary you have to keep up with society. To make a piece contemporary you have to be thorough in your research, this anables the audience to relate to it. You have to know what is relevant at that time to be able to communicate to the audience. The concept is very important as it had to be able to reach a certain audience and genre.

An example would be this piece by Peter Kennard - The Haywain. Here you can see he is manipulated the image to replace what was a very tradictional painting into something that is relevant to now. Here Peter Kennard combines two exsisting images to create a critical new meaning. He takes John Constables painting The Hay Wain (1821), an idyllic image of East Anglian countryside, and places three nuclear warheads on the haywagon. This completely changes the concept of this image and it becomes iconic in a different way. There is such a strong contrast in this image which enables the message, Peter Kennard is trying to put across, to stand out.