{"id":118625,"date":"2017-12-08T11:00:49","date_gmt":"2017-12-08T16:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=118625"},"modified":"2017-12-08T12:35:52","modified_gmt":"2017-12-08T17:35:52","slug":"how-original-are-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/12\/08\/how-original-are-you\/","title":{"rendered":"How Original Are You?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Copyright \u00a9 Museo Nacional del Prado<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cThe old idea of making things\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

So there I was, sprawled across the floor of my living room in south London, happily riffling through the newspapers on my iPad (I\u2019m old-fashioned like that). The shortlist for the annual Turner Prize had just been announced, and the broadsheet commentators seemed even more mystified than usual by the list of nominees.<\/p>\n

It was evident that the judges had done something unusual\u2014unusual even in the context of the prize that had made Tracey Emin\u2019s Bed<\/em> tabloid fodder\u2014by the reaction in the\u00a0Guardian,<\/em> where the super-sober Adrian Searle declared himself baffled. After offering a rundown of the candidates (Duncan Campbell, James Richards, Tris Vonna-Michell, Ciara Phillips), he declared: \u201cIt\u2019s all a bit dour, and I take this as deliberate. This year\u2019s judges seem to be intent on delivering an exhibition that not only shakes things up\u2014none of the shortlisted artists are exactly familiar to a wider audience\u2014but also want us to struggle with meaning as much as the artists seem to do … It\u2019s going to be hard work.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hard work. Oh dear.<\/p>\n

If the progressives on the left weren\u2019t exactly licking their lips in anticipation of the prize show\u2019s unveiling, what would the guardians of tradition on the right make of it?\u00a0 I switched to the website of the conservative broadsheet the Daily Telegraph<\/em> to find out. \u201cWhen the most conventional of the Turner Prize shortlisted artists is an installation artist whose work is created in situ by other artists, designers and members of the public,\u201d the piece began, \u201cyou realize that contemporary art, or certainly the kind represented by this once controversial prize, is leaving traditional media far behind. Never mind no painting or sculpture, casting an eye down this year\u2019s list of artists you\u2019d be forgiven for thinking there\u2019ll be precious little in the exhibition actually to look at.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Telegraph<\/em> writer then complained about the list\u2019s lack of classic elements such as the usual \u201cpeople\u2019s choice\u201d\u2013style nominee (a role fulfilled in 2013 by the cartoonist David Shrigley) as well as a classic boundary-pushing scapegoat figure \u201clikely to prove exceptionally annoying to the general public\u201d (a part played to perfection by the performance artist Spartacus\u2014christened Alalia, soon to be renamed Marvin Gaye\u2014Chetwynd in 2012). \u00a0\u201cThat said,\u201d he paused, \u201call four of this year\u2019s artists are likely to prove equally annoying to those determined to be irritated by contemporary art.\u201d<\/p>\n

All fair points, I thought. But it was the next paragraph that really caught my attention. \u201cThree of the four work in so-called Moving Image Art (what a ghastly term), but the similarities don\u2019t end there,\u201d the Telegraph<\/em> man opined.\u00a0 No, it wasn\u2019t so much that their work moved that appalled him as the fact that it was in significant part made with \u201cpre-existing or found material.\u201d For instance, James Richards\u2019s Rosebud<\/em> incorporates erotic images from art books sourced from a Japanese library where genitalia have been and sandpapered out in compliance with national censorship laws. \u201cLooking at their work you get a sense that the old idea of making things that didn\u2019t exist before from scratch has been pretty much abandoned.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wow.<\/p>\n

I was so taken aback by this statement that I almost lost Internet connection (my iPad and I have a symbiotic relationship; if I\u2019m in a head spin she\u2019s likely to start buffering moodily). Is that true? I wondered after I had steadied myself. Has \u201cthe old idea of making things that didn\u2019t exist before from scratch\u201d really been \u201cpretty much abandoned\u201d?<\/p>\n

Channeling the spirit of Carrie Bradshaw in best \u201cI\u2019ve just had a really obvious idea\u201d mode, I began to type the following,\u00a0to be read aloud in Sarah Jessica Parker\u2019s voice:\u00a0Have our notions of originality really changed so much?\u00a0 Are we less original than our predecessors, unable to summon works ex nihilo\u2014out of nothing\u2014as \u201creal artists\u201d used to?<\/em><\/p>\n

This is an idea that deserves to be parsed, I thought.<\/p>\n

\u201cI create vertigo\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

On the day the Turner Prize shortlist was announced, the artist Elaine Sturtevant\u2014or just plain Sturtevant, as she was known professionally\u2014died. She was eighty-nine, so not exactly the new kid on the block; indeed, she had made her most resonant artistic statement half a century earlier, in 1965, when she gave her first solo exhibition at the Bianchini Gallery in New York. That show featured carefully handcrafted works that begged to be mistaken variously for the plaster sculptures of George Segal and the stripe paintings of Frank Stella, not to mention silk-screened images that were almost indistinguishable from the breakthrough \u201cFlowers\u201d series by the then-emerging art superstar Andy Warhol. As a reviewer quipped at the time, Sturtevant \u201cmust be the first artist in history to have had a one-man show\u201d\u2014today we would say \u201cone-person show\u201d\u2014\u201cthat included everybody but herself.\u201d<\/p>\n

It should be stressed that the difficulty of telling Sturtevant\u2019s vivid blooms apart from Warhol\u2019s was entirely intentional on the part of both artists: Warhol actually lent Sturtevant his original screens to execute the images for the show. Over the coming years, Sturtevant would make a habit of copying the works of Warhol, who connived at the practice and, to avoid answering cloying questions about his working methods, once quipped: \u201cI don\u2019t know. Ask Elaine.\u201d Sturtevant also copied Jasper Johns\u2019s work\u2014so well that when a Johns \u201cflag\u201d that had been incorporated into a Robert Rauschenberg combine painting was stolen, Rauschenberg turned to her to provide a replacement. Sturtevant\u2019s \u201crepetitions,\u201d as she called them, were designed to disorientate. They were intended to be precise enough to persuade viewers that they were looking at an \u201cauthentic\u201d Warhol or Johns, and at the same time sufficiently free and inexact to suggest that another hand might be at work\u2014indeed, for the work to be no less unmistakably a Sturtevant. \u201cI create vertigo,\u201d the artist-reporter liked to say.<\/p>\n

The conceptual element of Sturtevant\u2019s practice\u2014the fact that appreciation of her work relies on engagement with ideas rather than on simple visual gratification\u2014prevented her from becoming a household name. All the same, with the passage of the years, collectors have increasingly got, and bought into, the concept. Her repetition of Roy Lichtenstein\u2019s Crying Girl<\/em> sold for $710,500 in 2011, compared to the $78,400 achieved by the \u201coriginal\u201d at auction four years earlier.<\/p>\n

Of course, one of the points of Sturtevant\u2019s work was to put that very word\u2014\u201coriginal\u201d\u2014in inverted commas. Much of her practice involved repeating the works of Pop Artists who had themselves broken with art tradition by borrowing from mass-popular-culture imagery: Warhol copies Campbell\u2019s soup cans, and for Crying Girl<\/em> Lichtenstein took his inspiration from comic strips. Sturtevant was therefore copying works that were themselves to some degree copying other mechanically produced objects\u2014and that were, moreover, using mechanical means to do so. \u201cBy holding up her imprecise mirror to a gallery of twentieth-century titans,\u201d the New York Times<\/em> obituarist noted, \u201cMs. Sturtevant spent her career exploring ideas of authenticity, iconicity and the making of artistic celebrity \u2026 and, ultimately, the nature of the creative process itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

All the world\u2019s a copy<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sturtevant was an avowed copyist whose work looked forward to the emergence of appropriation as a critically and curatorially supported art strategy at the end of the 1970s. (The most celebrated example of appropriation art: Walker Evans\u2019s famous Great Depression\u2013era photographs rephotographed from reproductions in an exhibition catalogue by Sherrie Levine and put on show under Levine\u2019s name rather than Walker\u2019s. \u201cBy literally taking the pictures she did, and then showing them as hers,\u201d wrote one profiler in 1986, Levine \u201cwanted it understood that she was flatly questioning\u2014no, flatly undermining\u2014those most hallowed principles of art in the modern era: originality, intention, expression.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Looking back, however, who are the great artistic geniuses whose weighty, unimpeachably \u201coriginal\u201d accomplishments can be placed in the pan to prove the lightness of such postmodern nose-thumbing gestures as Sturtevant\u2019s and Levine\u2019s?\u00a0 Leonardo, Van Gogh, Goethe, Mozart. Surely there is no greater artistic \u201coriginal\u201d than William Shakespeare? The great French writer Alexandre Dumas, creator of The Three Musketeers<\/em>, declared: \u201cAfter God, Shakespeare has created<\/em> the most.\u201d Meanwhile, the great American transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson stated that Shakespeare did nothing less than \u201cinvent \u2026 the text of modern life.\u201d<\/p>\n

So William Shakespeare\u2014second only to God in his capacity to create ex nihilo.<\/em> It\u2019s reckoned that at any time of day or night a theatrical troupe somewhere on the planet will be performing Hamlet, a play that, like many of Shakespeare\u2019s other works, appears to enjoy universal resonance. And at any time of day or night thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions across the world will be quoting him. They might be reciting the Dane\u2019s \u201cTo be or not to be\u201d soliloquy or King Harry\u2019s rousing pre-Agincourt rallying cry in Henry V<\/em> (\u201cwe happy few, we band of brothers\u201d). But more likely, they\u2019ll be appropriating humbler, more anonymous-sounding phrases such as \u201cseen better days,\u201d \u201cstrange bedfellows,\u201d \u201ca sorry sight,\u201d and \u201cfull circle,\u201d all of which are Shakespearean coinages. Fully a tenth of the words in the Bard\u2019s plays appear to have been original to him. Thanks to the inclusion of so many of those words and phrases as examples of good usage in Samuel Johnson\u2019s Dictionary<\/em> and the later Oxford English Dictionary,<\/em> and to the plays\u2019 enduring popularity on the stage, innumerable examples of Shakespeare\u2019s language\u2014from \u201cwith bated breath\u201d (The Merchant of Venice<\/em>) to \u201cwild-goose chase\u201d (Romeo and Juliet<\/em>) and \u201ctoo much of a good thing\u201d (As You Like It<\/em>)\u2014have been adopted as the basic building blocks of our own day-to-day conversation.<\/p>\n

So Shakespeare invented his own language and begat the modern English tongue in the process. How much more original can you be?<\/p>\n

It is Shakespeare\u2019s plays\u2019 openness to different interpretations\u2014their inherent appropriability<\/em>\u2014that has made them so enduring as stage vehicles. Take Henry V<\/em>, which dramatizes England\u2019s victory over the French at Agincourt and is usually considered to be the playwright\u2019s most overtly patriotic play. Directors at different times have offered seemingly contradictory interpretations of the text: at the Old Vic theater in London in 1937, Laurence Olivier\u2019s King Henry conveyed a pacifist message; a few years later Olivier\u2019s film of the same play, dedicated to the men who had liberated Europe from the Nazis, offered a conflicting message; Nicholas Hytner\u2019s more recent production at the National Theatre in London drew critical and not at all gung-ho parallels with Britain\u2019s intervention in Iraq. Same text, different meanings. The Taming of the Shrew<\/em> has likewise been staged as both a misogynistic rant and a feminist tract. In the hands of different directorial appropriators then, Shakespeare\u2019s plays are both left-wing and right-wing, socially conservative and politically progressive, cozily pro-Establishment and full of radical fury.<\/p>\n

To sum up: Shakespeare is the most original of artists who, despite the inimitability of what one might term his \u201cvoice,\u201d has proved eminently appropriable, blending into and becoming part of the distinctive voices of others. It\u2019s an odd phenomenon, and also a common one.<\/p>\n

But how \u201coriginal\u201d was Shakespeare actually? It\u2019s well known that he stole a lot of his plots from published sources. The main narrative of Romeo and Juliet<\/em>? Filched.\u00a0Hamlet<\/em>? A rip-off.\u00a0King Lear?<\/em> Also half inched. And it wasn\u2019t just plots that he stole from his sources; it was often enough their language, too\u2014and what is Shakespeare if not his language? For instance, when he sat down to write Antony and Cleopatra<\/em>, old Will didn\u2019t start with a blank page. No, he had a copy of Plutarch\u2019s Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans<\/em>, translated by Sir Thomas North (1579), open at his elbow. And what he found in North\u2019s Plutarch (as literary scholars are wont to call it), he in significant part copied, the most famous bit of cribbing being the speech in which Enobarbus describes the Egyptian queen floating in gilded splendor down the Nile (\u201cThe barge she sat in\u201d).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Borrowing was a core part of the Bard\u2019s creative process, then. The fact that he was in possession of an imagination of seemingly limitless inventive capacity doesn\u2019t appear to have stopped him from looking over the shoulder of the boy sitting at the desk next to him as he wrote. If Shakespeare had written Antony and Cleopatra<\/em> in New York in the late 1970s, academics might have hailed him as a lion among literary appropriationists and theorized his overt use of sources as a deft postmodern commentary on the idea of originality. (Plenty of audience members in Shakespeare\u2019s own day would have recognized the borrowings form North\u2019s Plutarch\u2014it was a popular text.)<\/p>\n

Separated by four centuries, Shakespeare and the so-called Pictures Generation of appropriationists in the United States have more in common than you might imagine in terms of their working methods. But the ways in which their respective achievements have been interpreted and theorized are diametrically opposed. \u201cAfter God, Shakespeare created the most\u201d and \u201cwrote the text of modern life,\u201d literary commentators have consistently cried, whereas Sturtevant, Levine and co. have been eulogized for \u201cdismantl[ing] the core values identified with the artwork: authorship, originality and expressivity\u201d\u2014that is, they deconstructed the text of modern life and, with it, the idea of godlike creation.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This essay is excerpted\u00a0from\u00a0<\/em>Beg, Steal & Borrow: Artists Against Originality\u00a0by Robert\u00a0Shore. Reprinted with permission of<\/em>\u00a0Laurence King Publishing. All rights reserved.<\/em><\/p>\n

Robert Shore is the author of\u00a0<\/em>10 Principles of Advertising,<\/em> Post-Photography,<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0<\/em>Bang in the Middle,\u00a0a study of Midland history, ritual, and folklore. He is the editor of<\/em>\u00a0Elephant\u00a0magazine.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe old idea of making things\u201d So there I was, sprawled across the floor of my living room in south London, happily riffling through the newspapers on my iPad (I\u2019m old-fashioned like that). The shortlist for the annual Turner Prize had just been announced, and the broadsheet commentators seemed even more mystified than usual by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1322,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[419],"tags":[17827,922,13863,19174,31880,17614,31873,31881,31874,31875,31871,31878,10361,31879,892,1320,8493,31872,31884,1720,6590,25700,12569,31885,3697,26831,25780,31877,17080,4542,948,31882,31887,31876,31886,4271,31883,19422,31870,31869,16911,984],"class_list":["post-118625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-culture","tag-alexandre-dumas","tag-andy-warhol","tag-as-you-like-it","tag-bed","tag-bianchini-gallery","tag-carrie-bradshaw","tag-ciara-phillipps","tag-crying-girl","tag-daily-telegraph","tag-david-shirley","tag-duncan-campbell","tag-elaine-sturtevant","tag-emerson","tag-george-segal","tag-goethe","tag-hamlet","tag-henry-v","tag-james-richards","tag-king-harry","tag-king-lear","tag-laurence-olivier","tag-leonardo-da-vinci","tag-marvin-gaye","tag-merchant-of-venice","tag-mozart","tag-plutarch","tag-romeo-and-juliet","tag-rosebud","tag-roy-lichtenstein","tag-samuel-johnson","tag-shakespeare","tag-sherrie-levine","tag-sir-thomas-north","tag-spartacus","tag-taming-of-the-shrew","tag-the-guardian","tag-the-three-musketeers","tag-tracey-emin","tag-tris-vonna-michell","tag-turner-prize","tag-van-gogh","tag-walker-evans"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHow Original Are You? by Robert Shore<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Are we less original than our predecessors, unable to summon works ex nihilo\u2014out of nothing\u2014as \u201creal artists\u201d used to?\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/12\/08\/how-original-are-you\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How Original Are You? by Robert Shore\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"December 8, 2017 \u2013 \u201cThe old idea of making things\u201d So there I was, sprawled across the floor of my living room in south London, happily riffling through the newspapers on my\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/12\/08\/how-original-are-you\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2017-12-08T16:00:49+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2017-12-08T17:35:52+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/enobarbus.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Robert Shore\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Robert Shore\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"12 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/12\/08\/how-original-are-you\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/12\/08\/how-original-are-you\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Robert Shore\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/8fc5af5dbaa54a68ee8c0a33982d7757\"},\"headline\":\"How Original Are You?\",\"datePublished\":\"2017-12-08T16:00:49+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2017-12-08T17:35:52+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/12\/08\/how-original-are-you\/\"},\"wordCount\":2338,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/12\/08\/how-original-are-you\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/enobarbus.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Alexandre Dumas\",\"Andy Warhol\",\"As You Like It\",\"Bed\",\"Bianchini Gallery\",\"Carrie Bradshaw\",\"Ciara Phillipps\",\"Crying Girl\",\"Daily Telegraph\",\"David Shirley\",\"Duncan Campbell\",\"Elaine Sturtevant\",\"Emerson\",\"George Segal\",\"Goethe\",\"Hamlet\",\"Henry V\",\"James Richards\",\"King Harry\",\"King Lear\",\"Laurence Olivier\",\"Leonardo da Vinci\",\"Marvin Gaye\",\"Merchant of Venice\",\"Mozart\",\"Plutarch\",\"Romeo and Juliet\",\"Rosebud\",\"Roy Lichtenstein\",\"Samuel Johnson\",\"Shakespeare\",\"Sherrie Levine\",\"Sir Thomas North\",\"Spartacus\",\"Taming of the Shrew\",\"The Guardian\",\"The Three Musketeers\",\"Tracey Emin\",\"Tris Vonna-Michell\",\"Turner Prize\",\"Van Gogh\",\"Walker Evans\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Arts & Culture\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/12\/08\/how-original-are-you\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/12\/08\/how-original-are-you\/\",\"name\":\"How Original Are You? by Robert Shore\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/12\/08\/how-original-are-you\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/12\/08\/how-original-are-you\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/enobarbus.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2017-12-08T16:00:49+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2017-12-08T17:35:52+00:00\",\"description\":\"Are we less original than our predecessors, unable to summon works ex nihilo\u2014out of nothing\u2014as \u201creal artists\u201d used to?\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/12\/08\/how-original-are-you\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/12\/08\/how-original-are-you\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/12\/08\/how-original-are-you\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/enobarbus.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/enobarbus.jpg\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/12\/08\/how-original-are-you\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"How Original Are You?\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"description\":\"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"width\":696,\"height\":696,\"caption\":\"The Paris Review\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview\",\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview\"]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/8fc5af5dbaa54a68ee8c0a33982d7757\",\"name\":\"Robert Shore\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/cd3a89e18ddde397b53081116db962c4b043f51da21d19b50dd190c988aa82d3?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/cd3a89e18ddde397b53081116db962c4b043f51da21d19b50dd190c988aa82d3?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Robert Shore\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/rshore\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"How Original Are You? by Robert Shore","description":"Are we less original than our predecessors, unable to summon works ex nihilo\u2014out of nothing\u2014as \u201creal artists\u201d used to?","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/12\/08\/how-original-are-you\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"How Original Are You? by Robert Shore","og_description":"December 8, 2017 \u2013 \u201cThe old idea of making things\u201d So there I was, sprawled across the floor of my living room in south London, happily riffling through the newspapers on my","og_url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/12\/08\/how-original-are-you\/","og_site_name":"The Paris Review","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","article_published_time":"2017-12-08T16:00:49+00:00","article_modified_time":"2017-12-08T17:35:52+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/enobarbus.jpg","type":"","width":"","height":""}],"author":"Robert Shore","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@parisreview","twitter_site":"@parisreview","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Robert Shore","Est. reading time":"12 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/12\/08\/how-original-are-you\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/12\/08\/how-original-are-you\/"},"author":{"name":"Robert Shore","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/8fc5af5dbaa54a68ee8c0a33982d7757"},"headline":"How Original Are You?","datePublished":"2017-12-08T16:00:49+00:00","dateModified":"2017-12-08T17:35:52+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/12\/08\/how-original-are-you\/"},"wordCount":2338,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/12\/08\/how-original-are-you\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/enobarbus.jpg","keywords":["Alexandre Dumas","Andy Warhol","As You Like It","Bed","Bianchini Gallery","Carrie Bradshaw","Ciara Phillipps","Crying Girl","Daily Telegraph","David Shirley","Duncan Campbell","Elaine Sturtevant","Emerson","George Segal","Goethe","Hamlet","Henry V","James Richards","King Harry","King Lear","Laurence Olivier","Leonardo da Vinci","Marvin Gaye","Merchant of Venice","Mozart","Plutarch","Romeo and Juliet","Rosebud","Roy Lichtenstein","Samuel Johnson","Shakespeare","Sherrie Levine","Sir Thomas North","Spartacus","Taming of the Shrew","The Guardian","The Three Musketeers","Tracey Emin","Tris Vonna-Michell","Turner Prize","Van Gogh","Walker Evans"],"articleSection":["Arts & Culture"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/12\/08\/how-original-are-you\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/12\/08\/how-original-are-you\/","name":"How Original Are You? by Robert Shore","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/12\/08\/how-original-are-you\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/12\/08\/how-original-are-you\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/enobarbus.jpg","datePublished":"2017-12-08T16:00:49+00:00","dateModified":"2017-12-08T17:35:52+00:00","description":"Are we less original than our predecessors, unable to summon works ex nihilo\u2014out of nothing\u2014as \u201creal artists\u201d used to?","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/12\/08\/how-original-are-you\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/12\/08\/how-original-are-you\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/12\/08\/how-original-are-you\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/enobarbus.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/enobarbus.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/12\/08\/how-original-are-you\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"How Original Are You?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","name":"The Paris Review","description":"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization","name":"The Paris Review","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","width":696,"height":696,"caption":"The Paris Review"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/8fc5af5dbaa54a68ee8c0a33982d7757","name":"Robert Shore","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/cd3a89e18ddde397b53081116db962c4b043f51da21d19b50dd190c988aa82d3?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/cd3a89e18ddde397b53081116db962c4b043f51da21d19b50dd190c988aa82d3?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Robert Shore"},"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/rshore\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1322"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118625"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118625\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":119091,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118625\/revisions\/119091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}