Is Art Original?

            Some people say that nowadays any art that is created is referencing something in art history. The question I am posing is more saying “Is art purely original?” I think it is pretty obvious that a lot of art has original ideas and perspectives, but is everything about the artwork original. By original I mean the artist draws the information only from himself or herself. I am struggling with this idea as I write this. It seems impossible for anything to be truly original. It makes me want to go back to whatever the first creation happened. If everything that we humans create in our world is based on some past information at some point in the past we something would have to be created without any past information. I don’t want to get into my own philosophical believes and such but it is an interesting question. Is it possible that there was never an initial creation? If so then it should be possible for us now to have a truly original idea and creation. I would argue that art is not purely original work; some credit is always due to someone else or someone else’s work that inspired them. Would a piece of art that was inspired by a random computer generation be original? Is a computer random generation different than being inspired by a person? Is it different than being inspired by nature? So I guess the real question is “Does what inspires you change the work’s originality?”