Slides from class

1. APPROPRIATION
ORIGINALITY IN FLUX

2. Appropriation is the intentional borrowing, copying and alteration of
preexisting images and objects.

3. ISSUES AT STAKE
THEORY AND
PRACTICE
Originality and authorship as cornerstones of art and
aesthetics
Appropriation of mass-produced objects
Originality vs reproducibility of the image
(and its subsequent distribution via social media and
Web)
Appropriation of another artist’s work (fine art or
commercial)
Legal issues around copyright

4. A portrait of Prince taken by Lynn
Goldsmith (left) in 1981 and 16
silk-screened images Andy Warhol
later created using the photo as a
reference. A federal district court
judge found that Warhol's series is
"transformative" because it
conveys a different message from
the original, and thus is fair use. A
Second Circuit Court of Appeals
panel disagreed. Now at Supreme
Court.
https://www.npr.org/2022/10/12/1
127508725/prince-andy-warhol-
supreme-court-copyright

5. Andy Warhol (1928- 1987)
Brillo Box (3ȼ Off) (1963-64)
Silkscreen ink and house
paint on plywood. 13⅛ x 16
x 11½ in (33.3 x 40.6 x 29.2
cm)
Not to scale, so not a direct
copy or appropriation, but
the images and advertising
are verbatim

6. Warhol & Appropriation:
In Brillo Boxes, Andy Warhol highlights
the already thin line that separates art
from commercial merchandise in a
market society.
Any issues with this?

7. James Harvey (1929 –
1965)
The River #2, (1956),
oil on canvas, 36 x 48 in.
(91.4 x 121.9 cm.)

8. “It is galling enough for Jim Harvey, an abstract expressionist, to see that a
pop artist is running away with the ball, but when the ball happens to be a
box designed by Jim Harvey, and Andy Warhol gets the credit for it, well,
this makes Jim scream: ‘Andy is running away with my box….What’s one
man’s box, may be another man’s art.”
The Graham Gallery, 1963

9. WHY ARE WE
SUSPICIOUS OF
APPROPRIATION?

10. Appropriation is the intentional borrowing, copying and alteration of preexisting
images and objects.

11. “God is dead” - Nietzsche
“Make it new” – Ezra Pound
“Flood the museums” - Futurist Manifesto
Modernist tradition/value on originality
Avant-garde = “a break with the past” cutting edge, next thing,
different from what came before it
Realism, Impressionism, Futurism, Cubism, Orphism, German
Expressionism, Dada, Bauhaus, Surrealism, Constructivism,
Abstract Expressionism, Situationist International
Appropriation art raises questions of originality, authenticity and
authorship….artistic genius
Appropriation art questions the nature or definition of
modernism/art itself
Modernism
(1860s-1950s)
Focus on the new

12. KRAUSS
“More than a rejection or dissolution of the past,
avant-garde originality is conceived as a literal
original beginning from ground zero, a birth.”
“the avant-garde artist above all claims originality“

13. EVERYTHING IS NEW
THE PASTORAL = THE PAST
Industrial revolution/Mass production
Trains
Photography
Electricity
Telegraph
Phonograph
Motion pictures
Radio
Automobiles
Airplanes
Skyscrapers
Vaccines, X-rays, Medicine

14. THE BOULEVARD MONTMARTRE AT NIGHT
(1897) CAMILLE PISSARRO (1830-1903)

15. MANIFESTO OF
FUTURISM (1909)
• Museums, cemeteries! Truly identical in their sinister
juxtaposition of bodies that do not know each other. Public
dormitories where you sleep side by side for ever with beings you
hate or do not know. Reciprocal ferocity of the painters and
sculptors who murder each other in the same museum with blows
of line and color. To make a visit once a year, as one goes to see
the graves of our dead once a year, that we could allow! We can
even imagine placing flowers once a year at the feet of the
Gioconda! But to take our sadness, our fragile courage and our
anxiety to the museum every day, that we cannot admit! Do you
want to poison yourselves? Do you want to rot?
• What can you find in an old picture except the painful
contortions of the artist trying to break uncrossable barriers
which obstruct the full expression of his dream?
• To admire an old picture is to pour our sensibility into a
funeral urn instead of casting it forward with violent spurts
of creation and action. Do you want to waste the best part of
your strength in a useless admiration of the past, from which
you will emerge exhausted, diminished, trampled on?
• Let the good incendiaries with charred fingers come! Here they
are! Heap up the fire to the shelves of the libraries! Divert the
canals to flood the cellars of the museums! Let the glorious
canvases swim ashore! Take the picks and hammers!
Undermine the foundation of venerable towns!

16. DADA
(1916-124)
French artist Jean (Hans) Arp argued that the goal
of Dada was:
“to destroy the hoaxes of reason and to discover
an unreasoned order”

17. APPROPRIATION
TIMELINE
(NOT NEW – COMES OUT OF
MODERNISM)

18. SYNTHETIC
CUBISM
(1912 - 1914)

19. Artists started adding textures
and patterns to their paintings
and experimented with a
collage of painted elements and
pasted elements from popular
visual culture – urban refuse
(theater tickets, newspapers,
labels, posters, etc.)
Pablo Picasso
Bottle of Vieux Marc, Glass,
Guitar and Newspaper (1913)
Printed papers and ink on paper
467 x 625 mm

20. Picasso
Guitar Sheet Music Wine
Glass (1912 )
Cut-and-pasted
wallpaper, newspaper,
sheet music, colored
paper, paper, and hand-
painted faux bois paper,
charcoal, and gouache on
paperboard

21. THE READYMADE
Duchamp (1913-1950s)

22. “In 1913, I had the happy idea to fasten a bicycle wheel to a kitchen stool
and watch it turn.”

23. Bicycle Wheel (third version,
after lost original of 1913)
(1951)
Metal wheel mounted on
painted wood stool, 51 x 25 x
16 1/2" (129.5 x 63.5 x 41.9
cm)
Bicycle Wheel is what
Duchamp called an “assisted
readymade,” made by
combining more than one
utilitarian item to form a work
of art.

24. The Fountain (1917)
Signed R. Mutt, 1917
2′ 0″ x 1′ 2″ x 1′ 7″
(a Standard Bedfordshire model
urinal from the J. L. Mott Iron
Works, company of Philadelphia,
with a signature )

25. “Whether Mr. Mutt with his own hands made the fountain or not has no importance.
He CHOSE it. He took an ordinary article of life and placed it so that its useful
significance disappeared under the new title and point of view – created a new
thought for that object.”
The Blind Man, May 1917

26. 1. The choice of object is itself a
creative act
2. By cancelling the ‘useful’ function of
an object it becomes art – separation
of life and art
3. The presentation and addition of a
title to the object have given it ‘a new
thought’, a new meaning.
4. What constitutes an artwork is
defined by the artist.
Pre-manufactured
object as material
for art/as art

27. ”The artist is not a great creator—Duchamp went shopping at a plumbing
store. The artwork is not a special object—it was mass-produced in a
factory. The experience of art is not exciting and ennobling—at best it is
puzzling and mostly leaves one with a sense of distaste. But over and
above that, Duchamp did not select just any ready-made object to display.
In selecting the urinal, his message was clear: Art is something you piss
on.”
Stephen Hicks, Explaining
Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to
Foucault, p. 196

28. MERZ + COLLAGE
Merz is a nonsense word invented by the
German dada ar tist Kur t Schwitters to describe
his collage and assemblage works based on
scavenged scrap materials
Kurt Schwitters
(Dada)

29. Opened by Customs 1937–8
Collage made of paper, printed paper, oil
paint and graphite
31 x 253 mm
frame: 523 x 421 x 29 mm
pasted-together fragments have been cut and
torn from a variety of sources, including
parcel paper, Nazi administrative labels, a
large section of printed Norwegian text from
a book or a pamphlet, a blue label for Spanish
oranges (stuck face down so that the logo is
seen in reverse) and a printed list of travel-
related words in German, including ‘airline
boarding pass’, ‘baggage insurance’ and
‘sleeper car’ 1937–8

30. The Art Critic (1919–20)
Raoul Hausmann
Photomontage
31.8 x 25.4 cm
Collage as critique

31. The Beautiful Girl (1919–20)
Hannah Hoch
Photomontage
35 x 29 cm
Collage used to explore
gender

32. SURREALISM
1920s-1966

33. SURREALIS
M
+
THE
UNCANNY
Concept in art associated with psychologist
Sigmund Freud which describes a strange and
anxious feeling sometimes created by familiar
objects in unfamiliar contexts
(separation of life and art)

34. The Gift (1921, editioned
replica 1972 )
Man Ray

35. Object to Be Destroyed
Man Ray
originally created in
1923, destroyed in 1957

36. Lobster Telephone (1936
)
Salvador Dalí
Steel, plaster, rubber,
resin and paper
178 x 330 x 178 mm

37. Object (Luncheon in Fur)
(1936)
Meret Oppenheim
fur-covered cup, saucer, and
spoon, Cup 4 3/8" (10.9 cm)
in diameter; saucer 9 3/8"
(23.7 cm) in diameter;
spoon 8" (20.2 cm) long,
overall height 2 7/8" (7.3
cm)

38. POP ART:
RADICALLY QUESTIONING
AUTHORSHIP
1950s-1970s

39. • Pop artists include Robert Rauschenberg, Claes
Oldenburg, Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselman, and
Roy Lichtenstein (in US)
• Reproduced, juxtaposed, or repeated mundane,
everyday images from popular culture
(sometimes objects)
• Their work both absorbed and acted as a mirror
for the ideas, interactions, needs, desires, and
cultural elements of the time
POP ART

40. Ad firms emerge in the 1950s and 1960s and jingles, logos, slogans become part of our shared cultural
references

41. “Pop artists did images that anyone walking
down the street would recognize in a split
second—comics, picnic tables, men’s pants,
celebrities, refrigerators, Coke bottles.”
Andy Warhol

42. Peter Weibel
Logo Culture/Consumer Culture – intice us to
buy goods/services
Logo = a sign –we all recognize and doesn’t
stand in for something else (not a symbol for
something else)

44. A Brillo Box is a Brillo box

45. POP ART
VS.
DUCHAMP
• In general: Readymade vs. mechanically reproduced
images or readymade with mechanically reproduced
object
• Blurring of art and life (1950s) vs art separated from life
• Boundaries of art expanded to include popular culture as
well as everyday items of Duchamp and Surrealists
• “Painting relates to both art and life…[and] I try to act in
that gap between the two ” - Robert Rauschenberg,
• "Not only does art become life, but life refuses to be
itself” – Allan Kaprow
• “Even the act of peeling a potato can be an artistic act if it
is consciously done” – Joseph Beuys

46. Bed
Robert Rauschenberg (1955)
Oil and pencil on pillow, quilt,
and sheet on wood 75 1/4 x
31 1/2 x 8"
“Combines” - term for his
technique of attaching found
objects to a traditional canvas
support. In this work, he took
a well-worn pillow, sheet, and
quilt, scribbled on them with
pencil, and splashed them
with paint in a style similar to
that of Abstract Expressionist
“drip” painter Jackson Pollock.

47. POP ART & THE REPRODUCIBLE
IMAGE

48. Still Life #28 (1963)
Tom Wesselmann
Acrylic and collage on board with live TV
48 x 60 x 11 inches.
(a working television inserted into the painting )

49. President Elect, 1960-61/1964
James Rosenquist
Oil on Masonite
228 x 365.8 cm

50. “The face was from Kennedy's campaign poster. I was very interested at that time in
people who advertised themselves. Why did they put up an advertisement of
themselves? So that was his face. And his promise was half a Chevrolet and a piece of
stale cake.”
James Rosenquist

51. Drowning Girl (1963)
Roy Lichtenstein
Oil and synthetic polymer
paint on canvas
67 5/8 x 66 3/4" (171.6 x
169.5 cm)

52. Tony Abruzzo panel from
“Run For Love” in Secret
Love #83, DC Comics,
1962.
In the original illustration (shown
here), the drowning girl’s boyfriend
appears in the background,
clinging to a capsized boat.
Lichtenstein cropped the image
dramatically, showing the girl
alone, encircled by a threatening
wave. He shortened the caption
from “I don’t care if I have a
cramp!” to the ambiguous “I don’t
care!” so he appropriated a
component of the work, changing
some of it.

53. artists go to museums to sketch from
works of art all the time… is what
Lichtenstein’s doing in drowning girl –
all that different?

54. ORIGINALITY AND ART
Theory

55. THE WORK OF ART IN THE AGE OF MECHANICAL
REPRODUCTION (1935)
WALTER BENJAMIN
• Benjamin proposes that the aura of a work of art is devalued by mechanical reproduction (i.e.,
photography)
• Aura for Benjamin represents the originality and authenticity of a work of art that has not been
reproduced
• A painting has an “aura” while a photograph or print does not; i.e., the photograph is an image of an
object/person/image while the painting remains utterly original
• The copy is “the death of aesthetics”
• So ..photography, film, printmaking and other art forms that can produce multiple copies of an artwork
lead to the death of authorship and destruction of aesthetics

56. “even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is
lacking in one element: Its presence in time and space,
its unique existence at the place where it happens to
be.”
Walter Benjamin

57. for Benjamin, Brillo Box would signal
the “death of aesthetics” – the silk
screening alone, plus the fact that it is
an image of an object – no longer an
original work

58. CASE STUDY: THE LIMITED EDITION
(BUSKIRK)
• A role in defining prints as a work of authorship
• Way to find a balance between originality, authorship and reproducibility
• Emerges in the 19th century
• Third International Congress of Artists (Vienna, 1960) defined original prints as
those “for which the artists made the original plate, cut the wood block, worked
on the stone or any other materials.
• Still maintaining the artist’s hand

59. EMIL NOLDE
PROPHET
1912
• Woodcut print
• circa 25 impressions

60. WARHOL AND THE
SILKSCREEN - 1962
• Repeated us of a single photo
silkscreen to produce a series of works
(not one work)
• Mechanical transfer of the printing
process via photo silkscreen (more like
photo than print)
• Serial repetition of an image within a
single work work
• Assistants working on silkscreens at
The Factory

61. MANY
WORKS OF
ART FROM
ONE
SCREEN

63. Campbell's Soup Cans (1962)
Andy Warhol
Synthetic polymer paint on
thirty-two canvases
Each canvas 20 x 16" (50.8 x 40.6
cm).
Overall installation with 3"
between each panel is 97" high
x 163" wide
First set of cans is hand-painted
– is there a difference between a
hand-painted appropriated
work and a silkscreen?

64. KRAUSS
“Are we not involved here in clinging to a culture of originals which has no place
among the reproductive mediums?”
“What would it look like not to repress the concept of the copy? “

65. Buskirk uses the term “original copies” to discuss mechanically reproduced art

67. POSTMODERNISM
GOOD-BYE TO “MAKE IT NEW”
1970s-early 1990s

68. • Postmodernism rejects the modern idea of
originality as the new, and substitutes it with a
combination of elements and styles from the past
• Artists participate in a critique and deconstruction
of the myth of traditional originality while
simultaneously seeking ways to take their art in
new and unexpected directions.
• Authorship was challenged as artists sought to
break from this idea in the wake of the massive
increase in social image consumption due to
technological reproduction (Benjamin)
Postmodernism

69. SHERRIE LEVINE
A SHIFT IN THE READYMADE
“long-delayed response to Duchamp”
Buskirk

70. AFTER WALKER EVANS (1981)
Probably her most famous work is
this series of photographic
reproduction of Evans – not the
original photographs but
reproductions taken from an
exhibition catalog including this
famous portrait of Allie Mae
Burroughs, the wife of an Alabama
sharecropper.
Became a landmark of
postmodernism, both praised and
attacked as a feminist hijacking of
patriarchal authority, a critique of
the commodification of art, and an
elegy on the death of modernism.

71. LEVINE REPHOTOGRAPHED WALKER EVANS' PHOTOGRAPHS
FROM THE EXHIBITION CATALOG "FIRST AND LAST."

72. • “What does Duchamp’s use of reproductions say about the larger
significance of the reproduction of the original?” (Buskirk)
• Think about this in terms of Levine.
• What does Levine’s use of reproductions say about the larger
significance of the reproduction of the original?
• Walker Evans works are reproducible as photographs
• Benjamin: A painting has an “aura” while a photograph or print does not;
i.e., the photograph is an image of an object/person/image while the
painting remains utterly original

73. https://www.aftersherrielevine.com/

74. Fountain (After Marcel
Duchamp) ( 1991)
Cast bronze and artist’s
wooden base

75. LOUISE LAWLER
re-presentation

76. Does Andy Warhol Make You
Cry? (1988)
Louise Lawler
Silver dye bleach print with
text on Plexiglass wall
label, image (shown): 27 1/4 ×
39"
Edition of five
Photo of an auction label next
to a round gold Warhol
“Marilyn” estimated the work’s
value at between three
hundred thousand and four
hundred thousand dollars.

77. Arranged by Donald Marron,
Susan Brundage, Cheryl
Bishop at Paine Webber Inc.
(adjusted to fit) (1982)
Louise Lawler
Dimensions variable
Also, part of a series of black-
and-white images of works of
art arranged by curators, art
advisors, and even her own
dealers.

78. ROBERT LONGO MEN IN
THE CITIES: 1976-1982
Robert Longo extracted the figure of a
man from a film still, a document of the
closing scene of Rainer Fassbinder's movie
The American Soldier (1970), in which a
gangster is shot dead. Longo repeated
this decontextualized figure in many
different settings, either in isolation, or
recontextualized in different settings. He
also varied the pose. In each iteration the
enigmatic pose took on different
meanings.

79. ROBERT LONGO
graphite series Men in Cities
Interpreted as yuppies in
ecstasy or as “businessmen
writhing in contorted emotion”
“this is how you dressed if you
were in a band” Robert Longo

80. Men in the Cities, 2 pieces
(1990)
Three Color Lithograph on
Arches paper
40 × 26 in

81. MARK (1982-83)

82. JEFF KOONS
BACK TO DUCHAMP

83. Inflatable Flower and Bunny
(Tall White and Pink Bunny)
(1979)
vinyl, mirrors
32 x 25 x 19 in. (81.28 x 63.5
x 48.26 cm)

84. New Hoover
Convertibles, Green, Blue;
New Hoover
Convertibles, Green, Blue;
Double-Decker ( 1981–
87)

85. One Ball Total
Equilibrium Tank
(Spalding Dr. J 241 Series
( 1985)

86. Rabbit (1986)
stainless steel
41 x 19 x 12 in. (104.14 x
48.26 x 30.48 cm)

87. YBAS + THE 1990S
Young British Artists

88. RACHEL WHITEREAD

89. Untitled (Air Bed II)
1992
Polyurethane rubber
1220 x 1970 x 230 mm

90. Untitled (Nine Tables)
(1998)
Concrete and polystyrene
681 x 3750 x 5190 mm

91. Untitled (Stairs) (2001)
Plaster, fiberglass and
wood
3750 x 2200 x 5800 mm

92. Model III (2006)
plaster, wood and
aluminum, comprising
one shelf and seven
plaster units
8 x 15 3/4 x 7 3/4 inches

93. DAMIEN HIRST

94. Mother and Child
(Divided)
exhibition copy 2007
(original 1993)

95. Glass, stainless steel, Perspex,
acrylic paint, cow, calf and
formaldehyde solution
Dimensions2 parts: 2086 x
3225 x 1092 mm, 2086 x 3225
x 1092 mm
Weight installed: approx.
15,750 kg
Weight of each cow half in
transit tank 2940 kg

96. REMIX OR POST-
PRODUCTION ART
1990s - present

97. POST-PRODUCTION ART
• PPA a term by Nicolas Bourriaud
• Today, appropriating, remixing, and sampling images and media is common practice, yet such
strategies continue to challenge traditional notions of originality and test the boundaries of
what it means to be an artist
• PP artists reedit commercial, or fine art works, inserting the elements that compose them into
alternative scenarios, or isolate individual components of a media work for contemplation
• The democratization of computers and the appearance of sampling allowed for the
emergence of a new cultural configuration, whose emblematic figures are the programmer ,
DJ and techno music artist

98. "24 Hour Psycho, as I see it, is not simply a
work of appropriation. It is more like an act
of affiliation... it wasn't a straightforward
case of abduction. The original work is a
masterpiece in its own right, and I've
always loved to watch it. ... I wanted to
maintain the authorship of Hitchcock so
that when an audience would see my 24
Hour Psycho they would think much more
about Hitchcock and much less, or not at
all, about me...”
24-Hour Psycho (1993)
Douglas Gordon
Film/Installation
https://www.youtube.com
/watch?v=a31q2ZQcETw

99. 448 IS ENOUGH (2002) (AN EPISODE OF EIGHT IS ENOUGH)
KEVIN & JENNIFER MCCOY
INSTALL ATION WITH SMALL LCD SCREENS

100. EVERY SHOT, EVERY EPISODE (2001) (STARSKY AND HUTCH)
KEVIN & JENNIFER MCCOY
CUSTOM DIGITAL VIDEO PL AYBACK INSTALL ATION WITH 277 VIDEO
COMPACT DISCS

101. Drei Klavierstuke is a recreation of Arnold
Schoenberg’s 1909 op. 11 Drei Klavierstücke (aka
Three Piano Pieces) made by editing together
videos of cats playing pianos downloaded from
Youtube.
Schoenberg’s Op11 is often considered the first
piece of “atonal” music, or music to completely
break from traditional western harmony which
means it’s not written in a “key”) by Schoneberg
11 Drei Klavierstücke (aka
Three Piano Pieces (2009)
Corey Arcangel
3 YouTube videos
Code: Gould Pro, Perl, C++,
Max/Msp, 2007
http://www.coryarcangel.co
m/things-i-made/2009-
003-dreiklavierstucke-op-
11
https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=VeTFxbsVGrI

102. Composer and DJ, Candice Breitz
individually filmed thirty hardcore Italian
Madonna fans (gathered via
advertisements in newspapers and fan
websites) singing their way through the
greatest hits album Immaculate Collection.
Her intention is to strike out at stereotypes
and visual conventions in popular culture
Queen (2005)
Candice Breitz
30-Channel Installation: 30
CRT TVs, 30 Hard Drives
Duration: 73 minutes, 30
seconds
https://vimeo.com/3039571
9

103. TODAY: SPEADABILITY

104. HENRY JENKINS
“SPREADABILITY”
“If it doesn’t spread, it’s dead”
"memes" and "media viruses"
“regrams” and “reposts”
TikTok challenges
Sourdough, green goddess salad,
etc

105. IN ART…. Appropriation of other artists
work………………

106. What would it look like not to repress the concept of the copy in spreadable media?

107. 1. CECILIA CONDIT
“POSSIBLY IN MICHIGAN” (1983) VIDEO
TIKTOK (2019-PRESENT)
• https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/06/t-magazine/possibly-in-michigan-
tiktok-artist.html
• https://www.tiktok.com/@nyxstolgiaa/video/7032184078497746222?is_from
_webapp=v1&item_id=7032184078497746222
• https://www.tiktok.com/@vintagepast/video/7069505406770449706?is_from
_webapp=v1&item_id=7069505406770449706
• https://www.tiktok.com/@ratsputin_/video/6760806384637332742?is_from_
webapp=v1&item_id=6760806384637332742
• https://www.tiktok.com/@143joannagc/video/6727716474774899974?is_fro
m_webapp=v1&item_id=6727716474774899974
• https://twitter.com/Chris_Osborn/status/1150043085180719105?ref_src=twsr
c%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1150043085180719105
%7Ctwgr%5E4f533459ace664e5497367dc71a205eb75ef4dd3%7Ctwcon%5Es
1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Foembed.vice.com%2F8C9X4bJ%3Fapp%3D1v%
3D1lazy%3D1

108. II. LINA IRIS VIKTOR
Constellation I (2016)
Pure 24K Gold, Acrylic, Gouache,
Print on Matte Canvas
60 x 84 in. / 152.4 x 213.4 cm
https://theculturetrip.com/north-
america/usa/articles/kendrick-lamars-
video-black-panther-song-accused-
copying-british-liberian-artist/

110. Left, an image from the video for “All the Stars” by Kendrick Lamar
and SZA; right, the painting “Constellation I” by Lina Iris
Viktor.Credit...Left, Universal Music Group; right, Lina Iris Viktor, via
Mariane Ibrahim Gallery

111. III. RICHARD PRINCE