Appropriation

Appropriation is a fundamental aspect in the history of the arts (literary, visual, musical). Appropriation can be understood as "the use of borrowed elements in the creation of a new work" Strategies include "re-vision, re-evaluation, variation, version, interpretation, imitation, approximation, supplement, increment, improvisation, prequel...pastiche, paraphrase parody, mimicry, homage, shan-zhai, echo, allusion, intertextuality and karaoke". The term appropriation refers to the use of borrowed elements in the creation of a new work. This involves ideas, symbols, artifacts, image, sound, objects, forms or styles from other cultures, from art history, from popular culture or other aspects of man made visual or non visual culture. Inherent in our understanding of appropriation is the concept that the new work recontextualizes whatever it borrows to create the new work. In most cases the original 'thing' remains accessible as the original, without change.

To appropriate is to take possession of something. Appropriation artists are copying images to take in their own possession. They are not stealing or plagiarizing. They are not passing off this work as their own as some want the viewer to recognise it, and hope that the viewer will bring their own associations which the artists bring with their new context. The deliberate borrowing of an image for this new context is called 'Recontextualization'. For example Andy Warhol's 'Campbell's Soup' can series (1961). These images are appropriated as he copied the original labels exactly, but filled the picture plain with it's iconic appearance, which looks like portraits of a soup can. The brand is the image's identity. Warhol isolated the image of these products to simualte product recognition (just like in advertising) and stir up associations with the idea of Campbell's Soup. He also tapped into a whole bunch of other associations such as; consumerism, commercialism, big business, fast food, middle class values and food representing love. Warhols use of popular imagery became a part of the pop art movement.

Sherry Levine's 'After Walker Evans'(1981) - is a photograph of a Walker Evans photograph. She is challenging the concept of ownership: If she photographed the photograph, whose photograph was it, really ? And she is addressing the predominance of male artists in the textbook version of art history. Kathleen Gilje appropriates masterpieces in order to comment on original content and propose another. In 'Bacchus, Restored' (1992), she appropriated Carvaggio's 'Bacchus' (CA 1505) and added open condoms to the festive offerings of wines and fruit on the table. Painted when AIDS had taken the lives of so many artists, the artist commented on unprotected sex as the new forbidden fruit. Other well known artists who have explored appropriation are Richard Price, Jeff Koons, Louise Lawler, Gehrard Rithter, Yasumasa Morimura and Hiroshi Sugimoto. Marcel Duchamp - is credited with introducing the concept of readymade, in which 'industrially produced utilitarian objects achieve the status of art merely through the process of selection and presentation.'