When I read novelist Haruki Murakami's line "Originality is a living, evolving thing, whose shape is devilishly hard to pin down," my mind immediately flew to the work of collage artist Mark Hearld. Hearld is a tremendously unique artist whose infectious creativity abounds in everything he does. He has this to say on inspiration:

It's a case of going into the studio and finding a beginning. That beginning might be a connection you notice between a beautiful piece of violet paper and a piece of mustardy yellow paper, and something about the way they combine gives you an idea, or you cut a shape from one of them and place it down. Then the collage might begin like that.
From Mark Hearld's Raucous Invention: The Joy of Making

"It's August Again" collage by Mark Hearld. Photograph courtesy of Raucous Invention: The Joy of Making.

I love the idea that the process of art has a thingness, the process of originality. It is as much a thing as the art itself and, truly, is tied intricately into the art itself. Critic Walter Benjamin once wrote a beautiful essay on how the locale of art was fundamental to the work itself and that no actual work of art could exist once removed from that locale.

So, as Haruki Murakami (Born January 12, 1949) writes, "Originality is a living, evolving thing, whose shape is devilishly hard to pin down," can we pin it down, how does it happen, and how do we know when we see it? In his intensely personal story as a writer, Novelist as a Vocation, Murakami tell us, clearly, how he defines originality.

In my opinion, an artist must fulfill the following three basic requirements to be deemed "original":

1. The artist must possess a clearly unique and individual style (of sound, language, or color). Moreover, that uniqueness should be immediately perceivable on first sight (or hearing).

2. That style must have the power to update itself. It should grow with time, never resting in the same place for long, since it expresses an internal and spontaneous process of self-reinvention.

3. Over time, that characteristic style should become integrated within the psyche of its audience, to become a part of their basic standard of evaluation. Subsequent generations of artists should see that style as a rich resource from which they can draw.

The components are basic: style, change over time, and infusion of that style into the space of art itself such that it becomes self-referencing and larger than the art.

Although this is perhaps an academic view of originality, any reachable originality comes from pieces and scraps — physical or mental — at the most simple level. Pieces of paper, pieces of us, things that we hem and sew to make things bigger. Collages of life and self are thrown together in some semblance that functions as a gestalt creation. The assembled parts become larger than themselves.

Haruki Murakami in 2004. Photograph by Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert.

What does this mean for Murakami himself? Is he original? Many of us think so, without any doubt. He gives this self-evaluation against the rule of originality:

I hope to be “original” in my expression, just as I imagine all artists do. As I have already explained, however, it’s not something I myself can determine. However loudly I proclaim it from the rooftops, however often I am praised for it by the critics and the media, our voices are fated to vanish in the wind. All I can do is entrust the final decision to those for whom I write—in other words, my readers—and the passage of an appropriate amount of time. My sole task is to work as hard as I can to provide as many “cases” as possible. In short, to keep adding works I can be satisfied with to the pile, buttressing and extending my total oeuvre.

Creating of any sort, be it writing, collage, or ceramics, is never-ending and continually evolving, but it retains, as Murakami notes, this core aspect of the original style. A stark departure from that style must, therefore, be considered on its own merit, which is fair.

Read more about the boundaries and definitions of indefinable things like art and originality in Grayson Perry's decisive rumination on the definition of art. Or consider David Hockney's iPad tree paintings that he did in his 80s which beg the question: are they great art or are they just great Hockneys? Does it matter?