Jennifer Funnell

Hello to your inbox!!

What I’m posting today is not an original thought, but I hope it brings some positive thoughts to your mind.

I recently learnt about the Neo-avant-garde in a class at uni, they reworked the ideas of the avant-garde artists within the contemporary capitalist context of post-war Europe. The reactions to the Neo and the Avent-Garde varied. It made me think a lot about this idea of originality, and why people often strive for it.

There’s a thought that I have often when I try to create or express myself, which is that ‘there are no new ideas.’

I feel this in my own work, I see other painters depict sinks and plugs and chairs and tables in their oil paintings. I see people on the bus or on the street who notice and photograph the same things as me, who have the same music taste. I’ve been lead for a long time to believe that this is a negative predicament, and it often demotivates me and leads me to put off working on my practice. But I think now, maybe because I’m a bit older or because I’ve experienced or learnt more, that it’s really the opposite. 

People produce their takes on images, on films or music. Perhaps these takes are similar or different, but thats not important. What is important is that these takes come together, in convseration, and are welcomed into a collective symposium of sorts.

A greater opinion, a wider idea with many smaller subparts curated by people with varying experiences and wonderings. 

And does anyone really have the right to claim an idea as their own? Maybe we should instead focus on the joy of thinking and adapting. Of learning! 

In academies, in courts and more collections of learned and taught artists, they learnt a certain style. Take the Royal Academy painters for example, artists that strayed a bit from the status quo, of Joshua Reynolds, were not as celebrated, mostly cause there was a collective idea of style that was fashionable and valued at the time, and painters were exploring this in their own ways with their own hands and brushes.

Perhaps it’s less about having different ideas and feeling ‘special’, or ‘genius’ but instead I think, about focusing on existing within our authenticity, not having to be different in what we do, but more just accept ourselves as we are, lack of originality and all. 

Of course, I feel like the art and media scenes right now are very much focused on personal branding and niches. Advice people online suggest that to be successful and sell your art you must have a niche, you must brand and be understood in simple terms as a certain type of individual, and your art must reflect this. In the first issue of the magazine I run, my friend Lena wrote about how the internet promotes this, with things like “what type of girl are you?” and creating all these quick trends and hyper-specific aesthetics that people then relate to as describing exactly who they are. But I think people are becoming bored with this, and have critiqued it. 

Love that, 

Lets keep being ourselves and learning, keep photographing the same things that the stranger next to us. Theres a dichotomy to be noticed, we all are both very original as individuals but also soooooooo similar.

Thanks for reading, 

Jenny 

Below is a drawing I did recently, as I’m trying to sketch more!