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