Can you explain how this is a whole different ballgame?
It seems to me that making art that people like is a combination of pattern matching, luck, the zeitgeist, and other factors. However it doesn't seem like there's some kind of unknowable gap between "making similar art" and "making innovations in art that people like". I'm of the opinion that all art is in some sense derivative in that the human mind integrates everything it has seen and produces something based on those inputs.
Luck and the zeitgeist are pretty important. Without those, you have a lot of noise and are basically throwing things at the wall until it sticks.
A urinal, and some supermarket soup cans, represent pretty pivotal art movements. It’s not clear what makes those two things more art than others, and even to people at the time it wasn’t super clear.
It seems to me that making art that people like is a combination of pattern matching, luck, the zeitgeist, and other factors. However it doesn't seem like there's some kind of unknowable gap between "making similar art" and "making innovations in art that people like". I'm of the opinion that all art is in some sense derivative in that the human mind integrates everything it has seen and produces something based on those inputs.