Key Principals: Notions of Originality and Cultural Context

Originality is a rare thing to come across in modern creative forms, as ideas are now likely to to be pastiches or bricolages of prior ideas (whether inadvertently or not). Something that does aid the production of original ideas though, is the flux in cultural values, thus allowing various styles and condemning others. This means that in some years of cultural context a designer will be pressured into one avenue of themed design, whereas in a latter age of cultural attitude, the range of acceptability in design might have shifted thus allowing different ideas.

“I did not invent anything. I took ideas from everywhere.
The only thing I did was combine things together.”
~ Blek le rat ~

In the world of art, Banksy is a well know graffiti street artist. He is characterised by his extensive use of stencils with spray paint medium, many people believe this public satirical graffiti to be original, although there are many who compare his choice and application of media to the less mainstream known 'Blek Le Rat'. Within the culture of any art, there are critics who look negatively at style/idea imitation in work, but neglect to see many artists are either; inspired by each other and accidentally come close to imitations, or take totally different paths of inspiration and development to arrive at the same point unaware of each others work.

"I’m not interested in convincing people in the art world that what I
do is art. I’m more bothered about convincing people in the graffiti
community that what I do is really vandalism! " ~ Banksy ~

The French artist Blek Le Rat had different intentions for the stencil graffiti though. His main ideal was to create a public form of art which passers by could view without having to purchase it or visit a gallery. This was to make a statement portraying a discontent with society. 

Rats, both popular subjects in the work of Blek and Banksy, are symbolic figures of disease, pestilence; vilified by villagers in fairy tails such as the Pied piper. In corresponding to this, Blek and Banksy use this symbolic and cultural reference to state 'we are underground, we are the street, we are a subculture you can’t understand, you can’t see me because I come out late at night and by the morning I have single handily changed your world'

“Blek started out in and around 1981 cutting stencils of rats and spraying them in and around Paris, and the sudden
“outbreak” of Blek rats all over town was noticed.  He has put up thousands of these creatures around the city, and his
reason is simple: rats are the only free animals in the city and that they are feared by humankind.”
~ Alan Bernard 2007 ~

The audience for graffiti art like this can vary extensively. The graffiti element firstly attracts a urban and rebellious teen demographic, while the satirical elements are likely to intrigue and capture the attention from older more sophisticated audiences who may otherwise hold some objections to the general graffiti art. 

The styles of sophistication within each artists style is taken from a different angle; Blek uses a rough 'distressed' form of typography in correlation to his applied style to the rats. This implies that his representations relate to the rats iconography of being 'rough, ragged, dirty but survivors'. Banksy on the other hand takes the approach of stencils which create a more precise aesthetic. This stylised design makes each design extremely bold, supporting the satirical element more through the context of the images produced. This, in contrast with the freehand typography results in an extremely striking representational message he wished to portray. As far as originality goes though, while both styles are greatly similar, they both set out to achieve varying goals with varying interests. So are these still notions of originality despite their similarities?

Roy Lichtenstein -- Girl With Hair Ribbon - 1965

Above are some images, by Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Matteo Bertolio. While it is clear the final image is a pastiche of Andy Warhol's, Much controversy was sparked between Lichtenstein and Warhol's styles, over who copied who (if at all). It is widely believed Roy followed Andy, although as far as notions of originality go the key question has been overlooked (the same goes for Blek and Banksy): Did anyone coin the style before the favoured 'original'?

Cultural context is an important aspect to bare in mind when choosing the medium of your work as it canned drastically influence the message you're attempting to portray. Going back to the work of Blek and Banksy, the spray paint method is carefully chosen in aiding the representation of satire within their pieces. In cultural contexts, spray paint is associated with graffiti, which is in turn under the semantics of vandalism and rebellious nature both against the establishment and outside the community. By fusing these contextual assumptions of their chosen media with their witty, satirical themes they raise the 'acceptability' of graffiti by removing the crude vandalism against society element. Instead, these graffiti art pieces mark a witty message which resounds with the community, especially relating to the current trends in opinion they might hold.

If these pieces were to be done in oil paint, watercolour or detailed and elaborate pencil sketches then the juxtaposition of media to message would be less effective. It is down to the seemingly uneducated, crude and underground medium contrasted with rhetorical and witty messages that makes these designs so effective. A more precise and formal method/style would completely change the cultural context to the demographic likely to encounter one of Blek's or Banksy's pieces, thus removing the suitability and  contrasting shock value of the design.