Everything about Appropriation Art totally explained
To appropriate something involves taking possession of it. In the
visual arts, the term
appropriation often refers to the use of borrowed elements in the
creation of new work. The borrowed elements may include images, forms or styles from
art history or from
popular culture, or materials and techniques from non-art contexts. Since the
1980s the term has also referred more specifically to
quoting the work of another artist to create a new work. The new work doesn't actually alter the original per se; the new work uses the original to create a new work. In most cases the original remains accessible as the original, without change.
History
Aspects of appropriation appear in all areas of visual art history if one considers the basic act of making art as the borrowing of
images or
concepts from the surrounding world and re-interpreting them as art. For example, some might classify
Leonardo da Vinci as an
appropriation artist, because he used recombinant methods of appropriation, borrowing from sources as diverse as biology, mathematics, engineering and art, and then synthesizing them into
inventions and artworks.
Some art historians regard
Pablo Picasso and
Georges Braque as the first modern artists to appropriate items from a non-art context into their work. In
1912, Picasso pasted a piece of oil cloth onto the canvas. Subsequent compositions, such as
Guitar, Newspaper, Glass and Bottle (
1913) in which Picasso used newspaper clippings to create forms, became categorized as
synthetic cubism. The two artists incorporated aspects of the "
real world" into their canvases, opening up discussion of signification and
artistic representation.
Five years later, in
1917,
Marcel Duchamp introduced the idea of the
readymade. That year he entered into the American Society of Independent Artists exhibition. The work consisted of a
urinal, lying on its side atop a pedestal with the signature "R. Mutt". The urinal appeared neither original nor rare, Duchamp's "creativity" as an artist lies in the
gesture of selecting the urinal as an art piece and displaying it in an artistic context. Duchamp also went so far as to use existing art in his work, appropriating an apparent copy of the
Mona Lisa into his piece,
L.H.O.O.Q. Recent speculation regarding Duchamp's appropriated urinal claimed that the urinal was "non-standard" and "non-functional," and that Duchamp "allegedly custom-designed it along with his other supposed
readymades," however, this has never been substantiated.
The
Dada movement (including Duchamp as an associate) continued with the appropriation of everyday objects, but their appropriation didn't attempt to elevate the "low" to "high" art status, rather it produced art in which chance and randomness formed the basis of creation. Dada artists included
Hugo Ball,
Emmy Hennings,
Jean Arp,
Hans Richter,
Richard Huelsenbeck,
Andre Breton,
Tristan Tzara, and
Francis Picabia. A reaction to oppressive intellectual rigidity in both art and everyday society, Dada works featured deliberate irrationality and the rejection of the prevailing standards of art.
Kurt Schwitters, who produced art at the same time as the Dadaists, shows a similar sense of the bizarre in his "
merz" works. He constructed these from found objects, and they took the form of large constructions that later generations would call
installations.
The
Surrealists, coming after the Dada movement, also incorporated the use of
"found" objects such as
Méret Oppenheim's
Object (Luncheon in Fur) (
1936). These objects took on new meaning when combined with other unlikely and unsettling objects.
In the
1950s Robert Rauschenberg used what he dubbed "combines", literally combining readymade objects such as tires or beds, painting,
silk-screens, collage, and photography. Similarly,
Jasper Johns, working at the same time as Rauschenberg, incorporated found objects into his work. Johns also appropriated symbolic images such as the
American flag or the "target" symbol into his work.
The
Fluxus art movement also utilised appropriation: its members blended different artistic disciplines including visual art,
music, and
literature. Throughout the
1960s and
1970s they staged "action" events, engaged in
politics and public speaking, and produced sculptural works featuring unconventional materials. The group even appropriated the postal system in developing
mail art. The performances sought to elevate the banal by appropriating it as "art" and dissembling the
high culture of serious music.
Along with artists such as
Roy Lichtenstein and
Claes Oldenburg,
Andy Warhol appropriated images from commercial art and popular culture as well as the techniques of these industries. Often called "
pop artists", they saw mass popular culture as the main vernacular culture, shared by all irrespective of education. These artists fully engaged with the ephemera produced from this mass-produced culture, embracing expendability and distancing themselves from the evidence of an artist's hand.
The term
appropriation art came into common use in the
1980s with artists such as
Sherrie Levine, who addressed the act of appropriating itself as a theme in art. Levine often quotes entire works in her own work, for example photographing photographs of
Walker Evans. Challenging ideas of originality, drawing attention to relations between
power,
gender and
creativity,
consumerism and commodity value, the social sources and uses of art, Levine plays with the theme of "almost same".
During the
1970s and
1980s Richard Prince re-photographed advertisements such as for
Marlboro cigarettes or
photo-journalism shots. Prince's work spoke to issues of
materialism and the idea of spectacle over lived
experience. His work takes anonymous and ubiquitous cigarette billboard advertising campaigns, elevates the status and focusses our gaze on the images. The viewer questions the concept of masculinity portrayed in these heroic billboards and their relationship to the advertising campaign.
Appropriation artists comment on all aspects of culture and society.
Joseph Kosuth appropriated images to engage with
philosophy and
epistemological theory. Other artists working with appropriation during this time with included
Jeff Koons,
Barbara Kruger, and
Malcolm Morley.
In the
1990s artists continued to produce appropriation art, using it as a medium to address theories and social issues, rather than focussing on the works themselves.
Damian Loeb used film and cinema to comment on themes of
simulacrum and reality. Other high-profile artists working at this time included
Christian Marclay,
Deborah Kass and
Damien Hirst.
Artists working
today increasingly incorporate and quote from both art and non-art elements. For example,
Cory Arcangel incorporates aspects of cultural
nostalgia through re-working vintage
video games and
computer software. Other contemporary appropriation artists include the
Chapman brothers,
Benjamin Edwards,
Joy Garnett,
Nikki S. Lee,
Paul Pfeiffer,
Pierre Huyghe and
Rico Gatson.
Appropriation art and copyrights
The nature of appropriation art, the borrowing of elements for new work, has resulted in contentious
copyright issues which reflects more restrictive copyright legislation. A debate, in more conservative quarters, addresses the extent to which appropriation art has sufficient originality. The U.S. has been particularly litigious in this respect. A number of
case-law examples have emerged that investigate the division between transformative works and derivative works. Many countries are following the U.S lead toward more restrictive copyright, which risks making this art practice difficult if not illegal. Canada is currently involved in debating copyright with extraordinary public and artist reaction.
Andy Warhol faced a series of law-suits from photographers whose work he appropriated and
silk-screened.
Patricia Caulfield, one such photographer, had taken a picture of flowers for a photography demonstration for a photography magazine. Warhol had covered the walls of
Leo Castelli's New York gallery in
1964 with the silk-screened reproductions of Caulfield's photograph. After seeing a poster of his work in a bookstore, Caulfield claimed ownership of the image and while Warhol was the author of the successful silk screens, he settled out of court, giving Caulfield a royalty for future use of the image as well as two of the paintings.
On the other hand, Warhol's famous
Campbell's Soup Cans are generally held to be non-infringing, despite being clearly appropriated, because "the public was unlikely to see the painting as sponsored by the soup company or representing a competing product. Paintings and soup cans are not in themselves competing products", according to expert trademark lawyer
Jerome Gilson.
Jeff Koons has also confronted issues of copyright due to his appropriation work (see
Rogers v. Koons). Photographer
Art Rogers brought suit against Koons for copyright infringement in
1989. Koons' work,
String of Puppies sculpturally reproduced Rogers' black and white photograph that had appeared on an airport greeting card that Koons had bought. Though he claimed
fair use and
parody in his defense, Koons lost the case, partially due to the tremendous success he'd as an artist and the manner in which he was portrayed in the media. The parody argument also failed, as the appeals court drew a distinction between creating a parody of modern society in general and a parody directed at a specific work, finding parody of a specific work, especially of a very obscure one, too weak to justify the fair use of the original.
In October 2006, Koons won one for "
fair use." For a seven-painting commission for the Deutsche
Guggenheim Berlin, Koons drew on part of a photograph taken by
Andrea Blanch titled
Silk Sandals by Gucci and published in the August 2000 issue of
Allure magazine to illustrate an article on metallic makeup. Koons took the image of the legs and diamond sandals from that photo (omitting other background details) and used it in his painting
Niagara, which also includes three other pairs of women’s legs dangling surreally over a landscape of pies and cakes.
In his court filing, Koons' lawyer,
John Koegel, said that
Niagara is "an entirely new artistic work... that comments on and celebrates society's appetites and indulgences, as reflected in and encouraged by a ubiquitous barrage of advertising and promotional images of food, entertainment, fashion and beauty."
In his decision,
Judge Louis L. Stanton of U.S. District Court found that
Niagara was indeed a "transformative use" of Blanch's photograph. "The painting's use doesn't 'supersede' or duplicate the objective of the original," the judge wrote, "but uses it as raw material in a novel way to create new information, new esthetics and new insights. Such use, whether successful or not artistically, is transformative."
The detail of Blanch's photograph used by Koons is only marginally copyrightable. Blanch has no rights to the Gucci sandals, "perhaps the most striking element of the photograph," the judge wrote. And without the sandals, only a representation of a women's legs remains -- and this was seen as "not sufficiently original to deserve much copyright protection."
In 2000,
Damien Hirst's sculpture
Hymn (which
Charles Saatchi had bought for a reported £1m) was exhibited in
Ant Noises in the Saatchi Gallery. Hirst was sued for breach of copyright over this sculpture despite the fact that he transformed the subject. The subject was a 'Young Scientist Anatomy Set' belonging to his son Connor, 10,000 of which are sold a year by Hull (Emms) Toy Manufacturer. Hirst created a 20 foot, six ton enlargement of the Science Set figure, radically changing the perception of the object. Hirst paid an undisclosed sum to two charities,
Children Nationwide and the
Toy Trust in an out-of-court settlement. The charitable donation was less than Emms had hoped for. Hirst sold three more copies of his sculpture for similar amounts to the first.
Appropriation artists
Artists who have appropriated, sampled or borrowed elements of pre-existing work for use in new work:
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