New From Old

I'm a writer. I write and edit fiction. I even have a few short stories published.

At any rate, one thing writers learn is that no story idea is new. Not one.

Think about it.

We, as a human species, have been making up stories for millenia. We know some of the more recent ones--Gilgamesh, for example. The Odyssey, The Aeneid. Really, they are more recent. Just because we have them in writing doesn't mean they were the first stories human beings told. We've probably been telling stories to each other for thousands of years before we started recording those stories.

But the stories are still the same.

You'll find, basically, the story of Gilgamesh in numerous books at Barnes & Noble. His was a journey story--going on an adventure to accomplish some great purpose. Sound familiar? Anyone read The Lord of the Rings lately?

Frederic Chopin, one of my favorite musical composers, borrowed heavily from the folk music of his mother's native Poland.

Check out this version of the Mona Lisa:



So what does this have to do with art in general?

Take a look to the right of this post. See that piece of art (if it's still there--I might have changed my art by now)? If it's NOT still there, you can find the artist's website here: AIRIGAMI It's a picture of Grant Wood's American Gothic (an iconic example of great American art) done in balloons. Something new from something old. Most art is that way. Artists borrow styles and ideas from other artists and from what they see around them. Nothing is new.

Why do we enjoy art, then, if nothing is new?

Because, in part, we humans LOVE sameness. It's attractive to us. It's comfortable, like old shoes or a warm blanket. The job of the artist is to make it familiar enough to be attractive, but different enough to be interesting.

If every story authors wrote was just a straight retelling of Gilgamesh, we'd get tired of Gilgamesh. But we give Gilgamesh new names, we send him to other places, he meets slightly different challenges, but it's still, basically, Gilgamesh.

For a fascinating scholarly analysis of this phenomenon, read Joseph Adams' The Hero With 1000 Faces.

What does this have to do with JSWA?

Some time should be spent copying the works of other artists, changing it by doing it in different colors, using a different media, or using it to inspire an original artwork of the child's own imagining.

In the same sense that no artwork or story or musical composition is entirely new, the same is true of all ideas. Ideas are not new, they're adaptations of older ideas, often borrowing from numerous other previous ideas and blending those ideas in a new way.

So borrowing from other artists is a good exercise in creative thinking.