You are currently browsing the daily archive for December 3rd, 2007.
In thinking about some of the themes and theories we talked about over the course of this term, I started to reconsider what some of my thoughts were regarding issues of appropriation. It was always something I was aware of, but was never really certain what some of the reasons behind it were, or what it meant. I’m certain that the way I think about and look at art will be affected by some of things we’ve talked about in this class. My definition for what appropriation is, and what an author is have changed dramatically.
I recently read an essay that was extremely critical of Shepherd Fairey’s OBEY campaign, and his exhibition that is now on in Los Angeles. The main critique was that Fairey had plagiarized most of the works he was displaying in this show. If anyone is familiar with his style, he has built a small empire on using images of war and propaganda to comment on the culture of fear and media saturation we live in. These works most often take the form of stencils and posters, put up guerilla style around major urban centers.
I couldn’t believe just how angry the author was about what he thought of as Fairey’s career being built on stealing, when, as we have seen, artists from all eras have used the art created before them to make new works.
I think this has a lot to do with the relationship between art and commerce. Artists of any stripe can and should appropriate. T-shirt and coffee mug salesman should not. The art of making art with appropriated materials will change the original meaning behind them, even if the physical change of the appropriated object is not dramatic. The act of appropriating an image to sell something will always be different than the act of appropriating an image to say something.
This is the article: http://www.art-for-a-change.com/Obey/index.htm
This is Shepherd Fairey’s OBEY campaign site: http://obeygiant.com/main.php/
– Matt
OK – this is the last time I will write about Richard Prince. Well, maybe.
My first blog entry, and the focus of my essay for this class was on Richard Prince’s Nurse Paintings, one of the few works of art that I could identify as ‘appropriation’ before this class began. While I was looking for resources to write my essay, I came across a YouTube clip that seemingly had nothing to do with what I was looking for, but was tagged with ‘Richard Prince’ and ‘Nurse paintings’. The clip comes from the Summer 2008 Marc Jacobs for Louis Vuitton fashion show.
The clip can be seen here – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcOMsz8f3og
Prince collaborated with Jacobs to present a new collection of handbags. Jacobs dressed the models in white nurse uniforms and hats, with semi-translucent surgical masks covering their mouths, a direct reference to Prince’s paintings. Prince also inspired the bags these models were carrying. Jacobs printed some of Prince’s ‘Joke Paintings’ on the outside of the Louis Vuitton bags.
While this cannot be considered ‘true’ appropriation (Prince would undoubtedly have collaborated with Jacobs, and given his permission for his work to be used), it is a second appropriation of Prince’s original appropriation of the covers of pulp fiction novels. I think that this multi-level appropriation adds even more meaning to the work. In his paintings, he transformed highly sexualized nurses into supposedly non-sexual figures covered in filth and dirt. Jacobs takes these nurses and cleans them up, dressing them up in crisp white. The nurses were now portrayed by supermodels, another huge step away from what they originally were.
– Matt
One of the topics I have had trouble with through this entire course has been the idea that an entire style can be appropriated. This became even clearer to me while beginning to study for my Modern Art exam last week, where I found multiple references to artists appropriating a style and making it their own. From what I have seen, new artists appropriate a style from the artists that came before them. No matter how original they claim to be, there are still elements of the style that came before. This process seems to be inevitable for any facet of the arts. Even as I am writing this, I know that the logical conclusion of this idea would be in a question like “is all art appropriated?”
Even after taking this course and studying the theories behind appropriation, it’s still a murky grey area for me. Art doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and artists are constantly inspired and influenced by the art that comes before them, but at the same time, you can point to almost any major artist of the past century, especially those representing the avant-garde, and see how styles developed and were changed over time.
The one example I can think of is the influence of Gauguin on Matisse and the Fauves, who influenced the abstraction of Kandinsky, whose ideas were extended by the Abstract Expressionists. While the art of Gauguin looks nothing like that of Pollock or de Kooning, the ideas and theories of Gauguin were passed through several filters in order to reach its final destination.
–Matt
