Module 3: Digital Arts,

Trends and Other

Contemporary Applications
(Week 9)

Research Reading on
Appropriation Art
 WHAT IS APPROPRIATION?

• To "appropriate" is to take possession of something or means

to properly adopt, borrow, recycle or sample aspects (or the
entire form) of human-made visual culture.

• In art it is the use of pre-existing objects or images with little

or no transformation applied to them.

• The Tate Gallery traces the practice back to Cubism and

Dadaism, but continuing into the 1940 s Surrealism and 1950 s
Pop art. It returned to prominence in the 1980 s with the Neo-
Geo artists.
• Appropriation artists deliberately
copy images to take possession of
them in their ar t; are not stealing
or plagiarizing, nor are they passing
off these images as their very own.

• The concept that the new work

recontextualizes whatever it
borrows to create the new work and
the original 'thing' remains
accessible as the original, without
change.

• This artistic approach does stir up

controversy because some people
view appropriation as unoriginal or
thef t therefore, it's important to
understand why ar tists appropriate
the ar twork of others.
 Sir Eduardo Paolozzi, Meet the People,
WHAT IS THE INTENT OF 1948, printed papers on card, 35 x 24 cm
(Tate)
APPROPRIATION ART ?

• Appropriation ar tists want the viewer

to recognize the images s /he copies that
will bring all his /her original associations
with the image to the ar tist's new
context [painting, sculpture, collage,
combine, or an entire installation].

• The deliberate "borrowing" of an image

for this new context is called
"recontextualization ” that helps the
ar tist comment on the image's original
meaning and the viewer's association
with either the original image or the real • Can be confusing because the line between
thing. borrowing, appropriating, and copying it often quite
blurry
• Aims to create a new situation, and
therefore a new meaning or set of • Appropriation art raises questions of originality,
meanings, for a familiar image. authenticity and authorship because it is a useful
tool for exploring these concepts.
 • Warhol isolated the image of these
products to stimulate product
recognition (as is done in adver tising)
and stir up associations with the idea
of Campbell's soup. He wanted you to
think of that "Mmm Mmm Good"
feeling.

• also made associations, such as

consumerism, commercialism, big
business, fast food, middle-class
values, and food representing love. As
an appropriated image, these specifi c
ANDY WARHOL’S CAMPBELL SOUP CAN soup labels could resonate with
meaning (like a stone tossed into a
• copied the original labels exactly but pond) and so much more
filled up the entire picture plane with
their iconic appearance • Warhol's use of popular imager y
became par t of the Pop Ar t movement.
• looked like portraits of a soup can
• All appropriation ar t is not Pop Ar t,
though.
• the brand is the image's identity
• is a photograph of a famous Depression-era .

• The original was taken by Walker Evans in 1936

and titled " Alabama Tenant Farmer Wife ."

• In her piece, Levine photographed a

reproduction of Evans' work and did not use the
original negative or print to create her silver
gelatin print.

• Levine is challenging the concept of ownership:

if she photographed the photograph, whose
photograph was it, really? It is a common
question that has been raised in photography for
years and he brings this debate to the forefront.
SHERRY LEVINE'S "AFTER
• The goal was to examine the eff ect of mass WALKER EVANS" (1981)
media—adver tisements, fi lms, and photography
—on the public.

• In addition, Levine is a feminist ar tist. In work

like " Af ter Walker Evans ," she also addressed
the predominance of male ar tists in the textbook
version of ar t histor y.
• 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.

• Incorporated aspects of the "real PABLO PICASSO “GUITAR,

world" into their canvases, open NEWSPAPER, GLASS AND
discussion of signifi cation and BOTTLE”
artistic representation.
 MARCHEL DUCHAMP
READY-MADES
DADAISM

• "industrially produced utilitarian objects... achieve the status of ar t merely through

the process of selection and presentation.

• Duchamp explored this notion as early as 1913 when mounted a stool with a bicycle
wheel and again in when he purchased a snow shovel and humorously inscribed it “in
advance of the broken arm, Marcel Duchamp.”

• Posed a direct challenge to traditional perceptions of fi ne ar t, ownership, originality

and plagiarism, and was subsequently rejected by the exhibition committee.

• Duchamp publicly defended Fountain , claiming "whether Mr. Mutt [a female friend
who had purchased the item in a plumbing store and signed it with ‘R. Mutt ’, the male
pseudonym she had adopted ] with his own hands made the fountain or not has no
impor tance , CHOSE it, and took an ordinar y ar ticle of life, placed it so that its useful
signifi cance disappeared under the new title point of view—and created a new thought
for that object."
 THE ART AND POLITICS OR CULTURAL
APPROPRIATION

• One of the key arguments of many such critics is that one speaks through one’s
identity; ‘as a’: ‘as a woman’, ‘as a Muslim’, ‘as an immigrant ’. And those who are not
‘as a’ must take their cue from those who are, especially if they happen to be privileged
by being white or male or straight. ‘Lived experience is on its way to becoming the
superior and most veracious form of truth.’

• What is really being appropriated , in other words, is not culture but the right to policy
cultures and experiences by those who license themselves to be arbiters of the correct
forms of cultural borrowing. It deadens creativity, and it assaults imagination.

• The impor tance of imagination is that we can take ourselves beyond where we are,
beyond our own narrow perspectives, to imagine other peoples, other worlds, other
experiences; without the ability to do that, both ar tistic creativity and progressive
politics shrivel.

• For critics of cultural appropriation, however, the real diff erence is not aesthetic,
but identarian [per taining to the formation of identity] .
 JEFF GILLETTE
“SHADOW CITY
MINNIE”

Ta k e t h e d e b a t e a b o u t D a n a S c h u t z ’s O p e n
Casket (2016), a painting derived from
photographs of the body of Emmett Till, a
four teen-year-old African American murdered by
t w o w h i t e m e n i n M i s s i s s i p p i i n 1 9 5 5 . T i l l ’s m o t h e r
had urged the publication of photographs of her
s o n ’ s m u t i l a t e d b o d y a s i t l a y i n i t s c o ffi n . T i l l ’ s
m u r d e r, a n d t h e p h o t o g r a p h s , p l a y e d a m a j o r r o l e
in shaping the civil-rights movement and have
a c q u i r e d a n a l m o s t s a c r e d q u a l i t y.

• Many critics of cultural BANKSY “TELEPHONE

appropriation insist that they are BOOTH”
opposed not to cultural
engagement, but to racism .

• They want to protect marginalized

cultures and ensure that such
cultures speak for themselves and
are not simply to be seen through
the eyes of more privileged groups.
 • 1 0 J ul 2 0 1 6 L i ttle A r t Tal k s, “The M e ani ng o f
A p p r o p r iatio n i n A r t | A r t Te r ms |
L i ttle A r tTal k s” Re tr ieve d f r o m:
http s: //www. yo utub e . co m /watch?
v=Op jzJ d o jN S8

• Tate Gall e r y “A p p r o p r i atio n”, Re tr ieve d fr o m:

http s: //www. tate . o r g . uk /ar t /ar t- te r ms /a /ap p r o
p r iati o n
http s: //www. s lid e shar e . ne t /cawal ing LU CE/ar t-
and -ap p r o p r iatio n

REFERENCES • 8 D e ce mb e r 2 0 1 7 , M al ik Ke nan “The A r t &

Po li tics o f Cul tural A p p r o p r iati o n”, Re tr ieve d
[ Re t r i ev e d 2 0 2 2 / 1 0 / 1 0 … ]
f r o m http s : / /ke nanmali k . co m / 2 0 1 7/1 2 /0 8 /the -
ar t- p o li tics- o f- cultural -ap p r o p r iatio n /

• She r r i e Levi ne A me r ican “A f te r Walke r Evans:

4 , 1 9 8 1 ” Re tr ieve d f r o m
http s: //www. me tmus e um. o r g /ar t /co ll e cti o n /se a
r ch / 2 6 7 2 1 4

• Revo lve r Gal le r y, “Camp b e l l’s So up ” Re tr i eve d

f r o m:
http s: //r evo l ve r war ho lg alle r y. co m /p o r tf o li o /ca
mp b e l ls- s o up - ii- f ull - sui te /
Examples of Appropriation art cases and the Artist’s statement

Shepard Fairey created the "Hope"

poster during Barack Obama's 2008
election campaign Richard Prince, on the Jeff Koons has been sued several times; on this
‘Fear and embarrassment’ question of whether artist occasion, the artist was sued after he
The Los Angeles-based artist sued AP Richard Prince's appropriation appropriated a photograph taken by Art Rogers
in 2009 after it accused him of art treatment of Patrick of two people holding a bunch of puppies.
violating copyright laws by
Cariou's photographs was a Although Koons made a sculpture from the
reproducing their image of Barack
Obama on his poster without crediting copyright infringement or a fair photo, changing the colours of the puppies (to
the news agency[AP]. use. bright blue) and altering a few other elements,
Artist’s statement: “I consider the court rejected his parody defence, and it
myself an artist with an agenda to Artist’s statement: “I have no remains one of the most noteworthy cases
democratize art. I want to reach fear of changing looks.” involving modern art today.
people through as many platforms as
[Wikipedia]
possible.”
[https://www.theartstory.org/artist/fa Artist’s statement: “As an artist, I’ve always
irey-shepard/#nav] wanted to participate in the dialogue of art with
 • Asynchronous class on October 13, 2022
[Thursday]

• This is an individual task/project.

• Research examples of appropriation in artwork and mass media[local/foreign], focus on

motives and reasons for the practice.

• Choose an original artwork as inspiration and appropriate the imagery in a way that alters
the meaning to make the image your own.

• Create an artist statement [meaning a not-too-long series of sentences that describe what
you make and why you make it] reflecting on why you have shifted the work and made the
choices you did by properly citing the source.

• Use a clean sheet of paper to do this task.

• Submit/share the link with me via BB's course messages tool on October 15, 2022
[Saturday] up to your regular class schedule only.
 • Synchronous class on October 15,
2022[Saturday] but no ZOOM
meeting.

• Submission of Assignment 3 via BB’s

course messages tool up to your
regular class schedule only.

ASSIGNED READING - M3[Week 10]

• Topics: Improvisation [pp. 459-464],

Installation[pp. 127-139], and Trans-
creation[Research Reading]

• Material/Author: A Companion to Modern

Art / Pam Meecham
 CRITERIA

• Creativity/Originality = 10 points
 The student explored several choices before
selecting one; generated many ideas; tried
unusual combinations or changes; used
problem-solving skills.
Rubric:
• Eff ort /Perseverance = 10 points
Appropriation Art  The project was continued until it was complete
as the student could make it; gave it eff or t far
Project = 30 points beyond that required.

• Craf tsmanship /Skill = 5 points

 The ar twork was beautiful and patiently done;
it was as good as hard work could make it.

• Reference /s = 5 pts
 The project cited sources accurately and
consistently.
Re t r i e v e d 1 0 / 1 0 / 2 0 2 2 h t t p s : / / w w w. r c b o e . o r g /