"The task of the artist at any time is uncompromisingly simple to discover what has not yet been done, and to do it"
About this Quote
Craig Raine frames the artist's calling as both severe and disarmingly clear: find what has not been done and do it. The phrase uncompromisingly simple is a deliberate paradox. The instruction is short and sharp, free of ornament, yet the labor it demands is immense. It rejects imitation, comfort, and trend-chasing, insisting on a frontier mindset where value lies in originality that alters how we see.
Raine earned his reputation through the Martian school of poetry, which sought to defamiliarize the everyday by describing it as if seen by an alien. That project embodies the verb discover. The point is not to manufacture novelty for its own sake but to locate unsuspected possibilities hiding in plain sight. Discovery implies attention rather than whim, patience rather than gimmickry, a willingness to let perception be remade by the world rather than merely imposing a style upon it.
At any time enlarges the claim beyond period taste. Whether under the banner of modernism, postmodernism, or whatever comes next, the criterion holds: originality as a moral and technical charge. History bears this out, from Impressionists breaking with academic realism, to jazz improvisers and hip-hop producers recombining existing materials into unheard forms. The new does not necessarily mean ex nihilo creation; it can mean a method, a structure, a subject, or a vantage point that had not yet been attempted.
The ethic is bold and austere. Such discovery requires the refusal of received templates and the courage to risk failure, obscurity, or misunderstanding. It also requires discipline, because doing the new is a craft problem as much as an inspiration problem; technique must be invented or repurposed to match the insight. There is humility here too. To discover what has not been done, one must look longer and more generously at the world until the overlooked becomes visible. Raine reduces the artist's job to a compass bearing: not a recipe, but a direction that keeps the work alive.
Raine earned his reputation through the Martian school of poetry, which sought to defamiliarize the everyday by describing it as if seen by an alien. That project embodies the verb discover. The point is not to manufacture novelty for its own sake but to locate unsuspected possibilities hiding in plain sight. Discovery implies attention rather than whim, patience rather than gimmickry, a willingness to let perception be remade by the world rather than merely imposing a style upon it.
At any time enlarges the claim beyond period taste. Whether under the banner of modernism, postmodernism, or whatever comes next, the criterion holds: originality as a moral and technical charge. History bears this out, from Impressionists breaking with academic realism, to jazz improvisers and hip-hop producers recombining existing materials into unheard forms. The new does not necessarily mean ex nihilo creation; it can mean a method, a structure, a subject, or a vantage point that had not yet been attempted.
The ethic is bold and austere. Such discovery requires the refusal of received templates and the courage to risk failure, obscurity, or misunderstanding. It also requires discipline, because doing the new is a craft problem as much as an inspiration problem; technique must be invented or repurposed to match the insight. There is humility here too. To discover what has not been done, one must look longer and more generously at the world until the overlooked becomes visible. Raine reduces the artist's job to a compass bearing: not a recipe, but a direction that keeps the work alive.
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| Topic | Art |
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