“APPROPRIATE”:
1. To take for one’s own, usually without the owner’s permission. (Google)
2. Appropriation in art and art history refers to the practice of artists using pre-existing objects or images in their art with little transformation of the original. (Tate)
Appropriation:
The point of appropriation is to change the focus of a pre-existing image or design or to reuse it differently. The Tate references cubism as the beginning of the development of appropriation as an art movement and practise, although it has been around for much longer, which continued over the next one hundred years with a strong point in the 1960s. Dada and Duchamp’s ‘ready mades’ can also be credited with heralding appropriation, creating some of the most famous images of their kind, for example Fountain.
Andy Warhol and Pop Art:
Whilst appropriation legally became more difficult around this time, the 1960s produced some of the most famous appropriation pieces of the century.
Warhol’s Marilyn series involved the appropriation of a publicity photograph of Marilyn Monroe, although it was not legally his, editing and printing it to create something different. Shepard Fairey recently did a similar thing, creating the Obama ‘Hope‘ piece. Warhol similarly evaded legal issues with his Campell’s Soup appropriation piece due to the brand’s appreciation of the free publicity. However, this was not the case with all of his work.
Richard Prince:
The lecture for this brief focused largely on the work of Richard Prince, a controversial appropriation photographer. I chose to look further into his Instagram series through which he took others Instagram photos with his own comments on and displayed them. I found that Prince had been interested for a while in the Internet and image sharing services such as Twitter, Tumblr and Instagram and had begun working with photographs within the context of these sites.
Jeff Koons:
I discovered the work of Jeff Koons through a lawsuit regarding a Gordon’s advertisement. I discovered Koons’ ‘Luxury and Degredation’ series, a collection of reproduced liquor advertisements and metal reproductions of ‘luxurious’ objects. The liquor advertisements themselves all feature appropriation, reimagined by Koons. I also looked at his “ready made art” series of displays, whereby Koons took objects, such as hoovers and bastketballs, and displayed them in an art setting, another example of appropriation.
Resources:
http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/a/appropriation
http://revolverwarholgallery.com/andy-warhol-art-appropriation/
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jul/18/instagram-artist-richard-prince-selfies
http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2014/07/jeff-koons-whitney
http://www.jeffkoons.com/artwork/luxury-degradation/aqui-bacardi