Once again, where does this repertoire of forms come fromt have remarked else. where in a discussion about places and memory, the only thing that we can ever know for certain about the world is that which exists now or hasexisted in the past To make some thing new we must start with whatis ot has been and change it in some way to male it fresh in some way. To merely repeat or rebuild that which has existed is not creative and does not advance the field, eventually devaluing that which is repeated. How to make old things new, how to see something common and banal in a new and fresh way is the central prob lem in Art
Arthur Danto, in the essay"Works of Art as Mere RealThings," goes so far as to say that the central activity of art isto transform ordinary(or extraordinary) real things into things that are art, ie no longer ordinary or mere real things Examples range from rep resentations of landscapes(say in Claude or Innes) to Marcel Duchamp s declaring a urinalor bottle rack to be art works. The planting of trees in rows whether good or bad, new or old, is an act of transformation and can under particular circumstances be art of a very high order.