by Harry Heuser
This is the second part of an introduction to a series of lectures and seminars I created and delivered as part of my undergraduate module Adaptation: Versions, Revisions and Cultural Renewal.
This presentation follows “Adaptation: Versions, Revisions and Cultural Renewal—1A) Introduction to ‘Creativity: Genius, Inspiration and Influence.'” It has been abridged and edited for publication here. The published series consists of six talks, accompanied by select presentation slides, which may be accessed separately but were designed to be presented in the following sequence. Seminars, being unscripted and interactive, are not published here.
- Creativity: Genius, Inspiration and Influence
- Part 1: Introduction
- Part 2: Genius, Inspiration and Influence
- Seminar: Rethinking “Originality” (not published)
- Canonicity: Touchstones, Traditions and Individual Talent
- Seminar—Revisiting the “Masters” (not published)
- Adaptability: Narrative, Performance and Audio-Visualisation
- Seminar—Examining Relationships of Form and Content
- Appropriation: Relevance, Reflexivity and Post-modernity
- Seminar—Defining Dada, Kitsch and Camp
- Recycling: Trash, Transience and Ecology
- Seminar—Exploring Creative Approaches to Sustainability and Regeneration (not published)
Creativity: Genius, Inspiration and Influence
The aim of this presentation is to define the territory of our subject, the denotations (that is, the dictionary meanings) of “adaptation” as well as its connotations (that is, the thoughts and feelings the word evokes).
Let us start again by considering one of the words in the subtitle of this module: “Renewal.” What does it mean to make something new again? Is what has been renewed new, old, both new and old at once or perhaps not quite either, something in between? As we shall see, distinctions between versions, between “before” and “after,” between a so-called original and an adaptation – are not always clear-cut or easy to make.
Just what is an original? Is it anything that is not an adaptation? What do we mean when we say that something has – or lacks – originality? Is “originality” a requisite for “creativity”?
Does the work on the left look familiar to you? Can you guess who the artist is? Were you thinking of Jeff Koons, perhaps? Once we know which work was produced first, is whatever comes after, and looks like it a copy, an imitation, a knock-off?
Adaptations lay no claim to originality. Nor do they conceal the fact that they owe their existence to works that preceded them. Whereas translations take the place of originals, as I said in my introduction to this module, adaptations are versions that must co-exist with prior ones.
Adaptations cannot be understood on their own. They depend on our knowledge of the work to which they refer.
Adaptation are not just objects and processes of production. They are also relationships between versions. Paul McCarthy makes obvious what he thinks about Koons. Just look at the extra feature on the lawn.
Blowing Koons out of proportion, he invites us to reflect on inflated values and hollow grandeur. And yet we continue to hear, make or repeat statements like this one: “To create is to originate.” Is not to “re-create” – as the word implies – also to create?
One hallmark of Postmodernism is the contestation of “Originality” and origination – or authorship. For centuries, technology such as the printing press has been in the service of reproduction. It challenged the notion of a work of art as being one-of-a-kind, elevated and exclusive, the “real” thing. It democratized culture.
A famous essay reflecting on this is Walter Benjamin’s “Work of Art in the Age of Its Technical Reproducibility,” which was written some eighty-five years ago and was revised several times. Not all prints are copies or “re-productions.” And, in recent years, digital art has forced us to reconsider our attitude toward art and objecthood.
The word “technology” that has its root in techne, which is Greek for skill and art, and yet we still tend to distinguish between art and technology, between art and science.
New technologies are also used to create work, such as this twenty-first century “Rembrandt.”
This is not a copy of a work by the dead artist. It is a new composition. Is this object an original? If so, who originated it? If it is the work of genius, is the genius the creative person or team who programmed the computer that now creates old master lookalikes? Is genius in this case the proverbial “ghost in the machine”?
What is “genius”? Unlike just any good or talented person, a genius is supposedly “born that way” rather than trained. A genius is “inspired,” not “influenced.” A genius is inspirited – gifted – that is, the receiver of gifts bestowed by a higher power.
In the age or Romanticism, this notion was radical – as it rejected the academy as an institution that could produce artists. A genius is an original, and an originator.
Those concepts – genius and originality – were being contested by Postmodern theorists in the second half of the twentieth century and rejected as “myths.”
But that does not mean that those myths are not still powerful, or that everyone agrees they are myths. Let us look at a few statements about “genius.”
“[T]here is no straightforward specification or definition of genius,” Michael J. Howe writes in Genius Explained.
Well, that does not explain very much, does it? Except that “genius” is not a term that can be explained using agreed-upon objective criteria. Who determines who is or is not a “genius” – and based on what criteria?
“Unfortunately, the word ‘genius’ is too often used thoughtlessly, both in common parlance and even in some professional literature,“ another writer, Carl Hausman, declares, saying that it is a “mistake, and nearly as thoughtless as is much of the common use of these terms [creativity and originality], to reject them from the vocabulary.”
“In any case, Hausman argues, “more circumspect use of these terms indicates that they are indispensable for understanding artistic creativity” (“The Paradox of Creative Interpretation in Art” 460).
So, the questioning the uses of the term “genius” is not always motivated by a rejection of them.
In the 1970s, the contestation of the term “genius” was at the heart of the feminist critique of patriarchal culture. It is a long-established, firmly entrenched and naturalised patriarchy rooted in the Christian creation myth, according to which the body of the first woman, Eve, was adapted from the rib of Adam, the male original.
In her famous article “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” Linda Nochlin argued that the question in her title, which she rejects as a premise, was “simply the top tenth of an iceberg of misinterpretation and misconception….”
Basic to the question are many naïve, distorted, uncritical assumptions about the making of art in general, as well as the making of great art. These assumptions, conscious or unconscious, link together such unlikely superstars as Michelangelo and van Gogh, Raphael and Jackson Pollock under the rubric of “Great”—an honorific attested to by the number of scholarly monographs devoted to the artist in question—and the Great Artist is, of course, conceived of as one who has “Genius”; Genius, in turn, is thought of as an atemporal and mysterious power somehow embedded in the person of the Great Artist. In other words, the word “genius” was employed to avoid discussions about privilege and power by making the argument that some artists – almost exclusively male—simply had it.
Revision can be an alternative to political writings such as Nochlin’s. It can be deployed as a feminist strategy, as is clear in this work by Kathleen Gilje, which is an homage to Linda Nochlin, whose likeness this woman bears. That woman, that place, of course, is familiar to many of us from another work of art.
Here is the work Gilje references – or adapts. Her adaptation suggests that art is not a matter of genius but of training – training that was denied women in the past. It reminds us that it was Linda Nochlin who famously made that argument.
Kathleen Gilje started out as a picture restorer. She then used her knowledge of painting and art history to draw attention to a male bias, to a patriarchal viewpoint, the male gaze, and the objectification of women.
But, back to “genius.” In Genius Explained, Michael Howe states:
It is doubtful whether there are any geniuses who have not greatly profited from the efforts of their predecessors. There have been remarkably few cases of innovators whose contributions were unanticipated and original to the extent that it has proved impossible to detect contributing influences […]. Even the most original discoveries and inventions have had crucial antecedents. (13)
So, geniuses are not untrained. Their gifts do not come miraculously from above but are passed on. The process of acquiring the gift is neither natural nor supernatural. It is cultural.
“The creative undertakings of a genius involve two broad (and overlapping) stages,” Howe argues. First, there is the matter of acquiring those capabilities […]. Second, there are the inventive activities that directly contribute to a masterpiece.”
In other words, according to this view, you still have to work – be creative – even if you are inspired. “Geniuses,” seen in this way, are not passive receivers. They must actively produce something of value. They must originate.
But is “creativity” the same as “originality”? Tracing the word back to its origins –“to create (from the Latin creare) – “creativity” means the capacity “to make, to produce in a physical sense.” According to this definition of “creativity,” it does not follow that what is being made is necessarily new.
Creativity must be seen as a making, and as such must be distinguished from (a) thinking […] and from (b) products, in the same way as a cause must be distinguished from its effects. Similarly, creativity must be distinguished from (c) originality […].
The “term creative is often used when the term original would be adequate. Yet originality as a quality cannot be assumed to be […] present in […] every productive process […]. Some processes may have it, others not. Clearly the process of making something new and original does not differ from the process of making something ordinary” (Ignacio L. Götz, “On Defining Creativity” 298).
So, here we have a rejection of the notion that being creative must mean being original.
But the writer’s choice of “ordinary” as the opposite to “original” still suggests a bias toward the “original.” Cannot something that is not original – something that is adapted – be nonetheless extraordinary?
Originality is a still quality we tend to rate highly. And we still tend to equate the terms creativity and originality.
Art historians create their histories, at least histories since the second half of the nineteenth century, in terms of the avant-garde, the forefront, those who innovated, originated, started movements.
Yet those on the forefront are were also looking back. They defined themselves in relation to the past.
And it is that relationship – that tension – between past and present, between old and new, between tradition and innovation, between admiration and loathing that is expressed in the processes and products of “adaptation.”
Clearly, we are not anywhere near done defining “adaptation,” which brings me to our first seminar project:
Using as a starting point this object shown here – a mass-produced porcelain sculpture from the School of Art collection – explore “adaptation” in relation to “Castor and Pollux,” which is a caption or title attached the object shown above.
Select examples of three related works – that is, three works related either to “Castor and Pollux” – or to this specific object.
Choose examples in at least two different media; not all examples need to be visual.
Which of these works would you call an “adaptation”?
What has been adapted? In other words, what is the source?
And what term(s)s other than “adaptation” might you use to describe the products you selected or the processes involved in creating them?
Choose a format for sharing your project work with others.
The next presentation in this series is “Canonicity: Touchstones, Traditions and Individual Talent.”
Harry Heuser 