Art - the Gift that Keeps on Giving

A new term has started and here I am, furiously dogpaddling to stay above the work load! It's week 2, which means that thesis topics need to be brewing in my mind, and soon (hopefully) percolating down through my fingers, into nicely written papers.

For one class I have to choose an ancient work of art that has been reused and write a paper about it. Upon thinking hard about this, I came up blank. Of course I could think of examples of reused works: the Mona Lisa, American Gothic, Michelangelo's David, the Birth of Venus--but none of these were from the right time period!

So I panicked a little.

Since then examples have been popping into my mind at the most random times. For example:
 

Venus of Samothrace, Greek



Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, Umberto Boccioni

Or this one:
 
 

Detail from mosaic of Alexander the Great



Detail from Guernica, Pablo Picasso

 All right, maybe that's just a similarity, not a reuse. But what about this one:


 


Kouros, Greek



Kouros, Isamu Noguchi

                       
 And what about this?
 

Venus of Laussel



     

Woman I, Willem de Kooning


The point is that there are plenty of examples of reused images in art--all of mine are modern, but that's just because I know modern art best. It's easy to say that modern works are indebted to their antecedents, whether directly or indirectly, because isn't this true? By studying the art of the past, modern artists have set themselves up to think about old themes, old styles, old works of art. Imitation could very well be accidental in some of the cases above, and it shouldn't be surprising that certain themes recur through art again and again even without any relation.

At the same time, it's in our nature as human beings to compare the new to the old, to hold one image up in light of those that have come before. Because new art should be new, but at the same time must be comprehensible, meaning that it must have some connection to what we already consider art. Whether artists draw visual or thematic cues from the past, they undoubtedly do draw something. Has any art ever been created in a vacuum? I don't think it's possible, as no person lives in a vacuum. We are all a product of our influences and experiences, whether in life or art.

Or in pointing out someone else's influences, I suppose