Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don't bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: 'It's not where you take things from - it's where you take them to. — Jim Jarmusch

Well, ironically (in the Alanis Morisette way), because nothing is original and because I feel like Jim Jarmusch says it better than I ever can, I essentially copied and pasted his quote in order to preface my opinion that there is nothing new under the sun. OK, OK, as a lover of art and all things creative how could I say such a thing? Simply speaking, we as humans continually find ourselves inspired and reinspiried by the same transcendental sentiments: love, religion, life, death, depression, happiness, etc. Whether it is Chuck Close pulling from his love of tapestry weaving in order to create his hyperrealist images, or Duchamp using the“new age mechanical reproduction” known as the video camera in order to produce Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 in 1912, artists have always been aware of and informed by the affects of the popular culture surrounding them.

Liz Lerman, the renowned choreographer from Maryland, says "[Lately], I'm doing work with physicists smashing particles. They talk a lot about making something out of nothing. But no one knows how to make something out of nothing like artists."

After one has taken enough surveys in Western art, seminars in Dadaism, courses in gestural abstraction, divisionism, and postmodernism, symposia on regional folk art, and workshops on Pre-Renaissance Byzantine and Gothic art, patterns start to emerge. It is not so much that the art looks the same, but certain allegories and symbols start to repeat. Recycled inspiration.

Here's some quick time travel from the annals of the New York Public Library Digital Collection to the present tense of 20x200's archives, where artists, consciously or not, have re-interpreted and recreated works with related inspiration.

From Turdus pilaris migratorius, The Fieldlfare of Carolina; Aristolochia pistolochia, The Snake-root of Virginia by Mark Catesby in 1754 to The Faceted Couroucou by Carrie Marill in 2010:

From Arents Cigarette Cards offset, photochemical lithographs from the early 20th century to Sharon Montrose’s Baby Giraffe No. 5:

From Yoshiyuki Hagino’s A color combination chart for layered clothing in 1868 to Vanity Fair MAY08:pg269 (and, incredibly, looking not a day older) by Lauren DiCioccio in the 2000’s (both inspired by periodicals of the day):

From Emile Mercier’s bookbinding in the 19th century to Mickey Smith’s conceptual bookbinding photography in 2007.

Smith writes:

Searching endless stacks, I am continually struck by physical mass of information and tenuousness of printed works as they fade from public consciousness. The irony and graphic quality of repeating titles fascinate and draw, no matter how mundane, from known to obscure, from Vogue to Blood. I photograph titles that are flirtatious, utilitarian, and personally or socially symbolic.

All things eventually fade from public consciousness; it takes an artist to make old ideas contemporary, exciting, and unique once again.