The art of creative adaptation — or was it stealing?
How much of someone else’s artwork can you use to produce your own?
In these times of digital art and cheap copies of practically everything, it is still a tricky question, I find, perched on the slippery slope between original mastership and cheap plagiarism. I bumped into it recently, as I wanted to use one of Jurgen’s photographs to start writing a Sapling draft.
This was it:
I am attracted by the zen-like calm in these broken faces. I love the brittleness of their facades, and the way they seem to belong together, even though they are in reality separated by quite some distance. I am touched by the way the one who is facing us seems to be leaning into the other one, a closeness nothing more than an optical illusion.
All of this is enhanced by the angle of the photograph, and the way the spectator is drawn into this intimacy. There is nowhere else for us to look but at this ensemble of human fragility. The little reprieve from it the image offers is in the décor — which only seems to strengthen the feeling of desolation.
I immediately knew this was an image I wanted to write to.
So I did.
The text came out quite nice. I liked it a lot, and Jurgen immediately agreed this was Sapling material.
Great! Only… what about the fact that this was in fact a photograph he took of another’s artist’s work? Mark Manders is a Dutch artist who has produced intriguing work over the years. This installation was on display in Wiels, the Brussels so-called ‘absent museum’ over the summer, and that’s where Jurgen shot the picure.
How much of the strength of this image does in fact originate from Manders’ artwork? How much, on the other hand, is the result of Jurgen’s craft, his photographic eye, the unexpected angle from which the picture was taken?
(For comparison’s sake: below two other pictures of the same statues, made by photographer Steve Vanhoyweghen.)
For good measure: I still like Manders’ installations when I see these. I just don’t feel like writing to these images very much.
In fact, this is not the first Sapling draft we have produced that features artwork made by someone else. But things are somehow more straightforward in a sketch or a painting. It’s obvious that what you’re looking at is an original drawing, paying homage to Michaelangelo, for instance.
But photographs present us with a problem we hadn’t encountered before now.
When we first started producing Saplings, back in February, we didn’t have a real system or working method. It basically came down to Jurgen sending me a digital version of a drawing or painting he had made, and me diving into whatever he offered, and writing to it.
To a certain extent this was an act of rebellion: the images were no longer meant to serve the text. We were aiming for a genuine, two-way collaboration, in which neither craft would be subordinate to the other.
From the very first attempt we both felt this was working. And as we grew more accustomed to each other, some of my texts became more intricate or elaborate, which in turn inspired Jurgen to rework the original image in order to have a perfect fit.
Some Saplings were an equasion as simple as 1 + 1 = 3 (always 3, never 2).
Others were slowly unfolding, multi-layered projects travelling back and forth for weeks until we both felt we had reached the point of completion.
After a while it didn’t matter much anymore who sent the first incentive: text or image, we would work our way into the other’s resonance and add our own.
There was one leap I didn’t want to make, however, and that was choosing the images myself. Jurgen has been on Instagram for several years, and some of the pictures he shares there leave me shaking my head in admiration and disbelief.
Back in the spring I felt very tempted to copy a few of those and start writing to them. I had so much creative gusto to share all of a sudden that I didn’t always know how to vent it. But I held back. Somehow it was important that the visuals we worked with were images he had consciously selected, with the intention of collaborating around them.
I didn’t exactly understand why, but I knew this was no mere detail. It had something to do with my enthusiasm, and the danger of getting ahead of things and burning up in the process. Also if I was the one who started selecting visuals I risked not tuning into our mutual resonance, but merely into my own.
So I steered clear of his tempting Instagram account, and instead wrote texts for him to use as creative diving boards and asked him for more artwork. No lack of either. My suggestion to sow a Sapling every new moon and full moon was at first met with hesitation as a tall and ambitious order, but it turns out we underestimated ourselves, or the flow that carries us. Over the last seven months we have not only sown fourteen Saplings without fail (#15 is due next week), we also have about as many back-ups. Talk about a stream that doesn’t want to be dammed anymore.
If there’s anything I have learned in the course of this creative process, it’s that we change along with it. It fits us like a glove, and as we surrender ourselves to it, flowing along to wherever it is taking us, we evolve in a spontaneous, organic way. And so does our working routine.
Sapling #12 (Guardian) was a turning point, because we connected to the very same element for inspiration (the old French pine tree we both loved) but also because Jurgen decided to not merely work with the sketch he made, but to include a collage of all the photographs he had taken of it over the years. I liked the result very much, and on top of that all of a sudden we had a Sapling that actively featured photographs.
In August, as I went back to work, Jurgen and his family left for the Swiss Alps and I knew we would fall into a lull. But by now we were so attuned to each other that this didn’t worry me in the slightest. I also felt I could now take the step I had kept myself away from in the beginning: selecting some of his photographs myself, and writing to them. I was confident our creative resonance was now resilient enough that I no longer risked imposing myself too much. Also it would give me something to do in a periode when there would be no new artwork coming. I asked him whether he was okay with my venture, just to be sure, and he was.
Some images were surprisingly easy to write to. Others were so incredibly strong I feared I would never find the words to do them justice.
This one has given me quite the proverbial headache already. I wrote a first draft that a week later I ended up throwing away almost entirely. The second draft is getting nearer to what it needs to be, but it’s probably still not completed.
No problem. We have all the time in the world. Sapling #15 is ready to be released next week, and there’s plenty more that are eager to fly.
And the Manders’ installation photograph?
You wait and see.
