For at least as long as Modernism (whatever that is) has been around, the idea of a creative individual has held an important role in culture (and in effect, society.)
There are numerous writings on the importance of the creative individual and 'genius'- Kant's Critique of Pure Judgment and the various writings of Clement Greenberg. In the latter half of the Twentieth Century people began to downplay or outright deny individuality (individual subjectivity), genius, and the creative act - Barthes, Foucault, Derrida, etc. I have addressed this at length in my essay Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V. I will not go into it too far, but to briefly recap, either everything is unoriginal because it is only a combination of other preexisting things, or everything is original because each unit/section of space-time is singular. In either case originality is meaningless (in terms of value.) Also, that creativity is reduced to the combination of preexisting ideas or things, so it,too is devalued. In reference to the common Kantian definition of genius, a lack of originality and creativity means the unavailability of genius.
So, if these three things are inconsequential, to what can we attribute the value of the Art Act? Only exactly what it is; synthesis.
One of the most important philosophical acts (esp in Continental Philosophy) is dialectical movement - the synthesizing of a thesis with its antithesis to come to a more clear (truthful) understanding of the situation (dilemma) at hand. As I allude to in Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V, what we think of as a creative act is a dialectical act, which is ever so similar to the evolutionary act - the very basis of 'Nature'.
This leads me to believe that a very basic and common definition of Art holds true: Art is an act of replicating Nature. {I can't figure out if that is Modern, Postmodern, or something else - but it does seem a bit conservative in may ways.}
Well what does all this mean? That is the most important question.
Meaning is a funny thing to define, but here is a short sweet one: meaning is the purpose {circular, I know} given to a pattern such that its future is determined by its past. For example, the meaning of life is to create life...
Synthesis is a way to create meaning out of (usually) incongruous things/ideas. It literally combines two things that each could be true (have reliable meaning) into another thing that seems more true - like laying two patterns over each other to create a third, more intricate or more simple pattern. This third pattern is thought of as 'new' or 'valuable' due to the uncanniness, inevitability, or seemingly unlikeliness of its existence - all of which is relative to the subject observing such patterns and synthesis.
So if newness and originality are only relative and inconsequential, what do we do about "creativity"? It is just a word, so we could change its definition, but that is unlikely, so I propose we begin using a different word to describe the Art Act: synthesis (instead of creation). And to avoid the confusion that would arise from calling and artist synthetic, we should call him/her Synthative.
With the new word "Synthative" there will still be a spectrum of the artists who do it best, and the ones that are just following the wake. In calling someone creative, I feel like we're saying that an artist has the ability to distill the best Ideas to their essence and remixing them with tons of other sources. Look at Ovid from antiquity. He wasn't exactly making up new myths, but the way he organized the old for a changing culture was masterful. From Wikipedia: "Ovid engages creatively with his predecessors, alluding creatively to the full spectrum of classical poetry". So while we all may just be picking and choosing inspiration from preexistent sources, he does it better. Matthew Barney could be a contemporary version of this. He's remixing our ideas of Houdini, Serra, the hero journey etc. to make a new cohesive body where before there wasn't one.
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