from magisterial individual vision preconceived by an isolated creator alone.
Women have had less than a full share of opportunities to train in and to
practice high art, and many valuable works by women have been dismissed
as matters of mere domestic craft or decoration. Perhaps it is true that in the
contemporary world we are so aware of varieties of social formation–both
across different cultures and within any single culture–and hence aware of
conflicting artistic traditions and directions of interest, that we find it hard
to believe that an original artistic vision might command the absorption of
everyone. Insistence that a given work of art requires and rewards the
attention of everyone may well seem a piece of cultural tyranny.
It does not, however, follow from these points that originality either fails
to exist or fails to be of central value in art. Works of art–including
conceptual art and found art–are either made or put forward for attention
as a result of human action. This action can be either original or stale,
derivative, and imitative. Or it can be fraudulent. Even a perfect forgery–
indiscernible to the eye or ear from an original or from other members of an
œuvre–lacks the meaning and value of an original work, and this is because
it does not result from the same original exploration of materials and possi-
bilities of arrangement. Nelson Goodman has suggested that once we know,
perhaps by means of chemical tests, that a given painting is a forgery, then
we can learn to recognize it visually as such, even where previously we had
failed to do so.^63 We can learn to see the action–fraudulent or original–that
produced a paintinginthe painting. How the material is worked–fraudu-
lently or originally–may become evident to the eye. Fraudulence may reveal
itself as derivativeness.
Just as we speak our native languages by contingent inheritance, but
can also speak or write them with a distinctive style, cadence, and impress
of personality, attitude, and line of interest, so too then can the making of
art take up and work through materials from a tradition in a distinctive,
original way. Pot makers and painters, poets and architects, composers
and quilters all know, if they are talented and things go well, the satisfac-
tion of trying out a new motif, theme, shape, or mode of arrangement and
having it work. Even if the result is not immediately intelligible and
valuable to everyone, the satisfaction of presenting a subject matter as a
focus for thought and emotional attitude, distinctively fused to the
(^63) Goodman,Languages of Art, pp. 99–112.
Originality and imagination 133