Is Anything Original?

My unit on appropriation has got me thinking about what it means to be original, and how much of our own art is influenced by other artists and the world around us.  Can you appropriate your own art?  This question was raised in class one day, and I have since been wondering about its implications.  I have just finished a whole unit on appropriation, and because of it I feel that I have more of an open mind about using other people's work to influence your own.  As an artist, it has always been easier for me to work from reference photographs when painting or drawing, which is my concentration.  That being said, it has always been important to me for those photographs to be my own.  I take a lot of pictures whenever I am outdoors, especially if I am in a new environment.  If I had to answer the question, I would say yes you can appropriate your own art if by using a source photograph you change it in some way, whether it be visually or conceptually.  Much of my photo collection has influenced my studio art, and I have always tried to avoid using Internet images as my source material unless absolutely necessary.  After completing my unit, I am wondering how many other artists really did influence my work, even if I did not necessarily use their images to reference while working.  A running underlying theme throughout my unit is the question of originality.  When I went to London for the London Art Seminar course, I wrote my final paper on this very subject.  I remember being very impressed by the Cast Courts at the Victoria and Albert Museum even though all of the work was the replicas, not the originals.  An excerpt from my introduction reads:

The aura can be described as the uniqueness or the experience of a piece in relation to “its presence in time and space” (Benjamin, 4).  The uniqueness of a piece can also be considered its authenticity, which stems from the ideas of the Renaissance and the debate about imitations of great artists.  It is interesting to question what happens to the aura of a piece if the piece itself is reproduced; does the copy have the same aura as the original?  Or does this replica destroy the intended aura of the original?  The two ideas of authenticity and aura can be tied together through imitation.  While suggesting that a replica has an aura, perhaps its own aura, one challenges what difference really exists between the original and the replica or imitation and the intent of the artist.

It is interesting that this question is still relevant to me and my artwork as well as my exploration of appropriation in my lessons.  I often feel that my work can be called original if I use my photographs, but I am influenced by what I take pictures of from other artists and what I directly observe in my environment.  I therefore feel that this is a question that can not easily be answered, if it even has an answer.