Foster: Appropriation

Appropriation

1.    Started in the 1960s, grew in popularity since. The artist borrows or takes images from well-known context and creates new work or art by putting these images into other contexts. Appropriation artists want the viewer to recognize the images they copy and hope the audience will bring in their own context or views of the art. The deliberate “borrowing” of an image is called “recontextualization” which allows the artists to comment on an images original meaning to propose another.

2.    Difference between appropriation art and forgery is that the artists bears ultimate responsibility for whatever objectives they choose to pursue in their work, whereas the forger’s central objectives are determined by the nature of the activity of forgery.

3.    Not all appropriation art is Pop art. For example, Sherry Levine took a photo of a photograph. Thus, she challenged the concept of ownership in photography. If she photographed the photograph, whose photograph was it? Sherry Levine is a feminist artist, so she is addressing the predominance of male artists in the textbook version of art history. Other well-known appropriation artists are Andy Warhol, Richard Prince, Jeff Coons and Kathleen Gilje.

Ideas

1.    One idea is to take iconic photos of celebrities in the past and update them to modern trends. Elvis can have gauges, Bob Hope wears shutter shades, and Marilyn Monroe has tattoos reminiscent of Kat Von D.

2.    Another is to take renaissance style paintings and put the kool aid man in them. The painting will be done on canvas, but literally have a busted hole through the canvas and you’ll see the kool aid man coming out of it, possibly a sound bite that says “Oh Yeah”.

3.    Film or put on a theatrical production of a classic Greek play in modern times. The language would remain exactly the same, but everything else would be updated to modern times.

Discussion

1.    How do you feel in regards to authorship in appropriation art? Do you think because an artist had an original comment or innovation in the context that it is still art? Or would it be a critique?

2.    Why do you think appropriation artist borrow iconic images? Do you think it helps or hurt them as an artist?