Imitation, understood as the strategic re-enactment of existing forms and gestures, *can* achieve original creation, but only when it actively interrogates the conditions and assumptions of its source material. The danger lies in mere replication, a passive echo that contributes nothing new to our understanding. What distinguishes generative imitation from sterile mimicry is its critical distance, its ability to expose the inherent politics and aesthetic limitations embedded within the original, thereby forging a new conceptual space.
Original creation emerges not from a vacuum of pure invention, but from the always-already inscribed world. Imitation, then, is not inherently secondary. It is the very engine of knowledge transmission and transformation. The critical question is not *if* imitation can be original, but *how* its formal systems and material operations interact with and reshape existing structures of meaning. The danger is not in replication, but in the uncritical acceptance of a mimetic act that fails to expose its own constructedness, thereby perpetuating the myth of a singular, unmediated originality.
Claire Bishop's framing of "strategic re-enactment" and "critical distance" is salient. It is precisely this conscious engagement with the *conditions* of the source material, its epistemological underpinnings, and its performativity, that allows imitation to transcend mere echo. When a practice, through its very mode of inscription, interrogates the inherent biases or limitations of its precedent, it performs an act of creation. The material form of the imitation, the affordances of its chosen medium, and its relational position within existing bodies of knowledge become the sites of this origination.
It's all about the surface, isn't it? If it looks new, it *is* new. Originality is just what people haven't seen a lot of yet. When I did Campbell's Soup cans, people thought it was the soup. But it was about the *idea* of the soup, repeated. It’s like making a million dollars. You do it once, then you do it again. The repetition is the point. It’s beautiful because it's *there*.
Johanna Drucker talks about "existing structures of meaning." Yes, that's what we're working with. We take what's already there, something people recognize, and we make it *more*. We make it so famous it’s everywhere. That’s the creation. It’s like a celebrity. They’re not born a celebrity, they become one.
Claire Bishop mentions "critical distance." I guess, but sometimes you just want to see it again. The same thing, but bigger, or in a different color. It's not about showing the flaws, it's about showing how much there is. How much we can all want the same thing. That’s what makes it pop.
The very notion of "original creation" is a romantic fiction, a ghost that haunts our understanding of what it means to make something. Imitation, when approached with the correct indifference, is not a lesser act, but a revealing one. It is in the *choice* of what to lift, what to re-present, that the artistic gesture resides. The danger is not in replication, but in the illusion of an unmediated genesis.
Claire Bishop’s "strategic re-enactment" is a fair starting point, though "strategy" implies a deliberate intention to excavate. I am less concerned with revealing the "politics and aesthetic limitations" and more with the sheer fact of selection, the elevation of the mundane into the realm of discourse. When a readymade object is chosen, its prior existence is acknowledged, but it is the *act* of choosing, of divorcing it from its utilitarian context and placing it under the rubric of the "artistic," that generates the new.
Johanna Drucker touches upon this – that creation emerges not from a vacuum, but from the "always-already inscribed world." Precisely. But the "reshaping of existing structures of meaning" happens through a kind of quiet defiance, a subtle undermining of established hierarchies through simple repositioning. The "constructedness" of the mimetic act is its very power, revealing that what we call "original" is often merely a carefully curated assemblage of the familiar.
Andy Warhol’s emphasis on the "surface" and what "people haven't seen a lot of yet" misses the point, or perhaps embraces it too readily. It's not about novelty *per se*, but about the re-contextualization of the commonplace. When I presented a urinal, I wasn't asking if the factory had made it before, but if its presentation in this new arena, this "gallery," transformed its perceived value. It's a question of *which* signifiers we choose to amplify, and for what purpose, not necessarily to forge a wholly new lexicon.
The crucial distinction, which seems to elude Warhol’s focus on surface appeal and Duchamp’s embrace of indifference, is between what I termed "strategic re-enactment" and mere appropriation. It is not enough for the imitation to simply present something familiar in a new guise, as Warhol suggests with his soup cans becoming "more" through repetition. The generative act lies in the *unveiling* of the source’s inherent conditions. Consider Martha Rosler's *Semiotics of the Kitchen* (1975), a direct parody of Julia Child’s instructional cooking show. Rosler doesn't merely replicate Child's gestures; she performs them with a deadpan, almost violent energy, exposing the domestic labor and gendered expectations embedded in the original, thereby creating a powerful critique rather than a simple echo.
The critique of mere replication or appropriation, so central to Bishop’s argument, misses the fundamental mechanism of knowledge production. Warhol’s relentless repetition of the soup can does not simply make it "more"; it saturates the visual field, creating a new condition of recognition and de-familiarization simultaneously. This is not about unveiling inherent flaws, but about the *performative excess* of the signifier itself, which alters its reception and meaning through sheer density. The danger, as I posited, is not in the mimicry, but in the failure to acknowledge the constructedness of *any* act, original or imitative.
It’s not about critique, it’s about *impact*. Martha Rosler showing the kitchen stuff, that’s showing the dirt. I don’t want to show the dirt. I want to make the can, the soup can, so big, so perfect, so *everywhere*, that people can’t *not* see it. That’s the newness. It’s like making someone a movie star. You just keep showing their face. Then they’re famous. That’s the real. Not the kitchen. It’s the glamour. The repetition makes it glamorous. Johanna Drucker understands the "performative excess." It's exactly that. The excess is the beauty.
The performance of "critical distance," as Bishop terms it, or the "performative excess," as Drucker emphasizes, are but symptoms of a deeper mechanism. My concern is not with the unveiled "dirt" of the domestic sphere, nor the saturated visual field, but with the radical assertion of *choice*. To present a urinal as art is not to critique its manufacturing or to flood the senses, but to elevate a functional object through the sheer audacity of selection. It is the *decision* to remove it from its context, not the subsequent analysis of that context, that constitutes the artistic act. The urinal itself, as a manufactured item, is a product of imitation, of function. Its re-presentation, however, becomes a singular act, born not of its intrinsic properties, but of the artist’s will.