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Appropriation in art is the use of pre-existing objects or images with little or no transformation applied to them. The use of appropriation has played a significant role in the
history of the arts The arts are a very wide range of human practices of creative expression, storytelling and cultural participation. They encompass multiple diverse and plural modes of thinking, doing and being, in an extremely broad range of media. Both hi ...
( literary, visual, musical and
performing arts The performing arts are arts such as music, dance, and drama which are performed for an audience. They are different from the visual arts, which are the use of paint, canvas or various materials to create physical or static art objects. Perform ...
). In the visual arts, to appropriate means to properly adopt, borrow, recycle or sample aspects (or the entire form) of human-made visual culture. Notable in this respect are the Readymades of Marcel Duchamp. Inherent in the 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.


Definition

Appropriation, similar to found object art is "as an artistic strategy, the intentional borrowing, copying, and alteration of preexisting images, objects, and ideas". It has also been defined as "the taking over, into a work of art, of a real object or even an existing work of art." The Tate Gallery traces the practice back to
Cubism Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassemble ...
and Dadaism, and continuing into 1940s
Surrealism Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to l ...
and 1950s Pop art. It returned to prominence in the 1980s with the Neo-Geo artists, and is now common practice amongst
contemporary artists This is a list of artists who create contemporary art, i.e., those whose peak of activity can be situated somewhere between the 1970s (the advent of postmodernism) and the present day. Artists on this list meet the following criteria: *The person ...
like Richard Prince, Sherrie Levine, and Jeff Koons.


History


19th century

Many artists made references to works by previous artists or themes. In 1856
Ingres Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres ( , ; 29 August 1780 – 14 January 1867) was a French Neoclassicism, Neoclassical Painting, painter. Ingres was profoundly influenced by past artistic traditions and aspired to become the guardian of academic ...
painted the portrait of Madame Moitessier. The unusual pose is known to have been inspired by the famous ancient Roman wall painting ''Herakles Finding His Son Telephas.'' In doing so, the artist created a link between his model and an Olympian goddess. Edouard Manet painted the Olympia (1865) inspired by Titian '' Venus of Urbino''. His painting '' Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe'' was also inspired by the work of the Old Masters. Its composition is based on a detail of Marcantonio Raimondi's ''The Judgement of Paris'' (1515). Gustave Courbet is believed to have seen the famous color woodcut '' The Great Wave off Kanagawa'' by Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai before painting a series of the Atlantic Ocean during the summer of 1869. Vincent van Gogh can be named with the examples of the paintings he did inspired by Jean Francois Millet, Delacroix or the Japanese prints he had in his collection. In 1889, Van Gogh created 20 painted copies inspired by Millet black-and-white prints. He enlarged the compositions of the prints and then painted them in colour according to his own imagination. Vincent wrote in his letters that he had set out to “translate them into another language”. He said that it was not simply copying: if a performer “plays some Beethoven he’ll add his personal interpretation to it… it isn't a hard and fast rule that only the composer plays his own compositions”. More examples can be found on
Copies by Vincent van Gogh Vincent van Gogh made many copies of other people's work between 1887 and early 1890, which can be considered appropriation art. While at Saint-Paul asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France, where Van Gogh admitted himself, he strived to have s ...
. Claude Monet, a collector of Japanese prints, created several works inspired by these such as ''The Garden at Sainte-Adresse,'' 1867 inspired by ''Fuji from the Platform of Sasayedo'' by Katsushika Hokusai ; ''The Water Lily Pond'' series ''Under Mannen Bridge at Fukagawa,'' 1830-1831 by Hokusai or '' La Japonaise,'' 1876 likely inspired by Kitagawa Tsukimaro ''Geisha, a pair of hanging scroll paintings,'' 1820-1829 .


First half of the 20th century

In the early twentieth century Pablo Picasso and
Georges Braque Georges Braque ( , ; 13 May 1882 – 31 August 1963) was a major 20th-century List of French artists, French painter, Collage, collagist, Drawing, draughtsman, printmaker and sculpture, sculptor. His most notable contributions were in his all ...
appropriated objects from a non-art context into their work. In 1912, Picasso pasted a piece of oil cloth onto the canvas. Subsequent compositions, such as ''Guitar, Newspaper, Glass and Bottle'' (1913) in which Picasso used newspaper clippings to create forms, is early
collage Collage (, from the french: coller, "to glue" or "to stick together";) is a technique of art creation, primarily used in the visual arts, but in music too, by which art results from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole. ...
that became categorized as part of ''synthetic
cubism Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassemble ...
''. The two artists incorporated aspects of the "real world" into their canvases, opening up discussion of signification and artistic representation. Marcel Duchamp in 1915 introduced the concept of the readymade, in which "industrially produced utilitarian objects...achieve the status of art merely through the process of selection and presentation." Duchamp explored this notion as early as 1913 when he mounted a stool with a bicycle wheel and again in 1915 when he purchased a snow shovel and inscribed it “in advance of the broken arm, Marcel Duchamp.” In 1917, Duchamp organized the submission of a readymade into the Society of Independent Artists exhibition under the pseudonym, R. Mutt. Entitled '' Fountain'', it consisted of a porcelain urinal that was propped atop a pedestal and signed "R. Mutt 1917". The work posed a direct challenge, starkly juxtaposing to traditional perceptions of fine art, ownership, originality and plagiarism, and was subsequently rejected by the exhibition committee.Plant, S. (1992)
The most radical gesture: The Situationist International in a postmodern age
London and New York: Routledge, pp.44
The New York Dada magazine '' The Blind Man'' defended ''Fountain'', claiming "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, placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view—and created a new thought for that object." The Dada movement continued to play with the appropriation of everyday objects and their combination in collage. Dada works featured deliberate irrationality and the rejection of the prevailing standards of art. Kurt Schwitters shows a similar sensibility in his "merz" works. He constructed parts of these from found objects, and they took the form of large gesamtkunstwerk constructions that are now called installations. During his Nice Period (1908–1913), Henri Matisse painted several paintings of odalisques, inspired by Delacroix ''
Women of Algiers ''Women of Algiers in their Apartment'' () is the title of two oil on canvas paintings by the French Romantic painter Eugène Delacroix. Delacroix's first version of ''Women of Algiers'' was painted in Paris in 1834 and is located in the Lou ...
''. The
Surrealists Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to l ...
, coming after the Dada movement, also incorporated the use of ' found objects', such as
Méret Oppenheim Meret (or Méret) Elisabeth Oppenheim (6 October 1913 – 15 November 1985) was a German-born Swiss Surrealist artist and photographer. Early life Meret Oppenheim was born on 6 October 1913 in Berlin. She was named after Meretlein, a wild c ...
's ''Object (Luncheon in Fur)'' (1936) or Salvador Dalí's '' Lobster Telephone'' (1936). These found objects took on new meaning when combined with other unlikely and unsettling objects.


1950–1960: Pop art and realism

In the 1950s,
Robert Rauschenberg Milton Ernest "Robert" Rauschenberg (October 22, 1925 – May 12, 2008) was an American painter and graphic artist whose early works anticipated the Pop art movement. Rauschenberg is well known for his Combines (1954–1964), a group of artwor ...
used what he dubbed "combines", combining readymade objects such as tires or beds, painting, silk-screens, collage, and photography. Similarly, Jasper Johns, working at the same time as Rauschenberg, incorporated found objects into his work. In 1958 Bruce Conner produced the influential ''A Movie'' in which he recombined existing film clips. In 1958 Raphael Montanez Ortiz produced ''Cowboy and Indian Film'', a seminal appropriation film work. The Fluxus art movement also utilized appropriation: its members blended different artistic disciplines including visual art, music, and literature. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s they staged "action" events and produced sculptural works featuring unconventional materials. In the early 1960s artists such as Claes Oldenburg and Andy Warhol appropriated images from commercial art and popular culture as well as the techniques of these industries with for example Warhol painting Coca-Cola bottles. Called " pop artists", they saw mass popular culture as the main vernacular culture, shared by all irrespective of education. These artists fully engaged with the ephemera produced from this mass-produced culture, embracing expendability and distancing themselves from the evidence of an artist's hand. Among the most famous pop artists,
Roy Lichtenstein Roy Fox Lichtenstein (; October 27, 1923 – September 29, 1997) was an American pop artist. During the 1960s, along with Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, and James Rosenquist among others, he became a leading figure in the new art movement. Hi ...
became known for appropriating pictures from comics books with paintings such as ''
Masterpiece A masterpiece, ''magnum opus'' (), or ''chef-d’œuvre'' (; ; ) in modern use is a creation that has been given much critical praise, especially one that is considered the greatest work of a person's career or a work of outstanding creativity, ...
'' (1962) or ''
Drowning Girl ''Drowning Girl'' (also known as ''Secret Hearts'' or ''I Don't Care! I'd Rather Sink'') is a 1963 American painting in oil and synthetic polymer paint on canvas by Roy Lichtenstein, based on original art by Tony Abruzzo. The painting is conside ...
'' (1963) and from famous artists such as
Picasso Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...
or Matisse. Elaine Sturtevant (also known simply as Sturtevant), on the other hand, created replicas of famous works by her contemporaries. Artists she 'copycatted' included Warhol, Jasper Johns, Joseph Beuys, Duchamp, James Rosenquist, Roy Lichtenstein, and more. While not exclusively reproducing Pop Art, that was a significant focus of her practice. She replicated Andy Warhol's ''Flowers'' in 1965 at the Bianchini Gallery in New York. She trained to reproduce the artist's own technique—to the extent that when Warhol was repeatedly questioned on his technique, he once answered "I don't know. Ask Elaine." In Europe, a group of artists called the New Realists used objects such as the sculptor
Cesar Cesar, César or Cèsar may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media * ''César'' (film), a 1936 film directed by Marcel Pagnol * ''César'' (play), a play by Marcel Pagnolt * César Award, a French film award Places * Cesar, Portugal * Ces ...
who compressed cars to create monumental sculptures or the artist
Arman Arman (November 17, 1928 – October 22, 2005) was a French-born American artist. Born Armand Fernandez in Nice, France, Arman was a painter who moved from using objects for the ink or paint traces they leave (''cachets'', ''allures d'objet'') to ...
who included everyday machine-made objects—ranging from buttons and spoons to automobiles and boxes filled with trash. The German artists Sigmar Polke and his friend Gerhard Richter who defined “Capitalist Realism,” offered an ironic critique of consumerism in post-war Germany. They used pre existing photographs and transformed them. Polke's best-known works were his collages of imagery from pop culture and advertising, like his “Supermarkets” scene of super heroes shopping at a grocery store.


1970–1980: The Picture Generation and Neo Pop

Whilst appropriation in bygone eras utilised the likes of 'language', contemporary appropriation has been symbolised by photography as a means of 'semiotic models of representation'. The Pictures Generation was a group of artists, influenced by Conceptual and Pop art, who utilized appropriation and montage to reveal the constructed nature of images. An exhibition named The Pictures Generation, 1974–1984 was held at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met) in New York City from April 29 – August 2, 2009 that included among other artists John Baldessari, Barbara Kruger, Sherrie Levine, Richard Prince, David Salle, Cindy Sherman. Sherrie Levine, who addressed the act of appropriating itself as a theme in art. Levine often quotes entire works in her own work, for example photographing photographs of Walker Evans. Challenging ideas of originality, drawing attention to relations between power, gender and creativity, consumerism and commodity value, the social sources and uses of art, Levine plays with the theme of "almost same". During the 1970s and 1980s Richard Prince re-photographed advertisements such as for Marlboro cigarettes or photo-journalism shots. His work takes anonymous and ubiquitous cigarette billboard advertising campaigns, elevates the status and focuses our gaze on the images. Appropriation artists comment on all aspects of culture and society. Joseph Kosuth appropriated images to engage with epistemology and metaphysics. Other artists working with appropriation during this time with included Greg Colson, and
Malcolm Morley Malcolm A. Morley (June 7, 1931 – June 1, 2018) was a British-American artist and painter. He was known as an artist who pioneered in varying styles, working as a photorealist and an expressionist, among many other styles. Life Morley was ...
. In the late 1970s Dara Birnbaum was working with appropriation to produce feminist works of art. In 1978-79 she produced one of the first video appropriations. '' Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman'' utilised video clips from the '' Wonder Woman'' television series. Richard Pettibone began replicating on a miniature scale works by newly famous artists such as Andy Warhol, and later also modernist masters, signing the original artist's name as well as his own. Jeff Koons gained recognition in the 1980 by creating conceptual sculptures ''The New series'', a series of vacuum-cleaners, often selected for brand names that appealed to the artist like the iconic Hoover, and in the vein of the readymades of Duchamp. Later he created sculptures in stainless steel inspired by inflatable toys such as bunnies or dogs.


1990s

In the 1990s artists continued to produce appropriation art, using it as a medium to address theories and social issues, rather than focussing on the works themselves.
Damian Loeb Damian Loeb (; born May 9, 1970) is an American artist best known for contemporary realist painting, though he has also exhibited digital collage and photographic prints. He has shown in New York at Mary Boone and Acquavella Galleries and interna ...
used film and cinema to comment on themes of simulacrum and reality. Other high-profile artists working at this time included Christian Marclay,
Deborah Kass Deborah Kass (born 1952) is an American artist whose work explores the intersection of pop culture, art history, and the construction of self. Deborah Kass works in mixed media, and is most recognized for her paintings, prints, photography, sculp ...
, and Genco Gulan. Yasumasa Morimura is a Japanese appropriation artist who borrows images from historical artists (such as Édouard Manet or
Rembrandt Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (, ; 15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669), usually simply known as Rembrandt, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker and draughtsman. An innovative and prolific master in three media, he is generally consid ...
) to modern artists as Cindy Sherman, and inserts his own face and body into them. Sherrie Levine appropriated the appropriated when she made polished cast bronze urinals named ''Fountain''. They are considered to be an "homage to Duchamp's renowned readymade. Adding to Duchamp's audacious move, Levine turns his gesture back into an "art object" by elevating its materiality and finish. As a feminist artist, Levine remakes works specifically by male artists who commandeered patriarchal dominance in art history."


21st century

Appropriation is frequently used by contemporary artists who often reinterpret previous artworks such as French artist Zevs who reinterpreted logos of brands like Google or works by David Hockney. Many urban and street artists also use images from the popular culture such as Shepard Fairey or Banksy, who appropriated artworks by Claude Monet or Vermeer with his girl with a pierced eardrum. Canadian Cree artist Kent Monkman appropriates iconic paintings from European and North American art history and populates them with Indigenous visions of resistance. In 2014 Richard Prince released a series of works titled ''New Portraits'' appropriating the photos of anonymous and famous persons (such as Pamela Anderson) who had posted a selfie on Instagram.The modifications to the images by the artist are the comments Prince added under the photos. Damien Hirst was accused in 2018 of appropriating the work of Emily Kngwarreye and others from the painting community in Utopia, Northern Territory with the Veil paintings, that according to Hirst were "inspired by Pointillist techniques and Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painters such as Bonnard and Seurat". Mr. Brainwash is an urban artist who became famous thanks to Banksy and whose style fuses historic pop imagery and contemporary cultural iconography to create his version of a pop–graffiti art hybrid first popularized by other street artists. Brian Donnelly, known as Kaws, has used appropriation in his series, ''The Kimpsons,'' and painted ''The Kaws Album'' inspired by the Simpsons Yellow Album which itself was a parody of the cover art for the Beatles album ''
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band ''Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'' is the eighth studio album by the English rock band the Beatles. Released on 26May 1967, ''Sgt. Pepper'' is regarded by musicologists as an early concept album that advanced the roles of sound composi ...
'' replaced with characters from the Simpsons. On April 1, 2019, at Sotheby's in Hong Kong, ''The Kaws Album'' (2005), sold for 115.9 million Hong Kong dollars, or about $14.7 million U.S. dollars. In addition, he has reworked other familiar characters such as
Mickey Mouse Mickey Mouse is an animated cartoon Character (arts), character co-created in 1928 by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks. The longtime mascot of The Walt Disney Company, Mickey is an Anthropomorphism, anthropomorphic mouse who typically wears red sho ...
, the Michelin Man, the Smurfs, Snoopy, and SpongeBob SquarePants.


In the digital age

Since the 1990s, the exploitation of historical precursors is as multifarious as the concept of appropriation is unclear. An unparalleled quantity of appropriations pervades not only the field of the visual arts, but of all cultural areas. The new generation of appropriators considers themselves "archeolog sof the present time". Some speak of "postproduction", which is based on pre-existing works, to re-edit "the screenplay of culture". The annexation of works made by others or of available cultural products mostly follows the concept of use. So-called "prosumers"—those consuming and producing at the same time—browse through the ubiquitous archive of the digital world (more seldom through the analog one), in order to sample the ever accessible images, words, and sounds via 'copy-paste' or 'drag-drop' to 'bootleg', 'mashup' or 'remix' them just as one likes. French curator Nicolas Bourriaud coined the neologism ''Semionaut'' – a portmanteau of semiotics and
astronaut An astronaut (from the Ancient Greek (), meaning 'star', and (), meaning 'sailor') is a person trained, equipped, and deployed by a human spaceflight program to serve as a commander or crew member aboard a spacecraft. Although generally r ...
– to describe this. He writes: "DJs, Web surfers, and postproduction artists imply a similar configuration of knowledge, which is characterized by the invention of paths through culture. All three are "semionauts" who produce original pathways through signs." Appropriations have today become an everyday phenomenon. The new "generation remix"—who have taken the stages not only of the visual arts, but also of music, literature, dance and film—causes, of course, highly controversial debates. Media scholars Lawrence Lessig coined in the begin of the 2000s here the term of the remix culture. On the one hand are the celebrators who foresee a new age of innovative, useful, and entertaining ways for art of the digitized and globalized 21st century. The new appropriationists will not only realize Joseph Beuys' dictum that everyone is an artist but also "build free societies". By liberating art finally from traditional concepts such as aura, originality, and genius, they will lead to new terms of understanding and defining art. More critical observers see this as the starting point of a huge problem. If creation is based on nothing more than carefree processes of finding, copying, recombining and manipulating pre-existing media, concepts, forms, names, etc. of any source, the understanding of art will shift in their sight to a trivialized, low-demanding, and regressive activity. In view of the limitation of art to references to pre-existing concepts and forms, they foresee endless recompiled and repurposed products. Skeptics call this a culture of recycling with an addiction to the past Some say that only lazy people who have nothing to say let themselves be inspired by the past in this way. Others fear, that this new trend of appropriation is caused by nothing more than the wish of embellishing oneself with an attractive genealogy. The term appropriationism reflects the overproduction of reproductions, remakings, reenactments, recreations, revisionings, reconstructings, etc. by copying, imitating, repeating, quoting, plagiarizing, simulating, and adapting pre-existing names, concepts and forms. Appropriationism is discussed—in comparison of appropriation forms and concepts of the 20th century which offer new representations of established knowledge—as a kind of "racing standstill", referring to the acceleration of random, uncontrollable operations in highly mobilised, fluid Western societies that are governed more and more by abstract forms of control. Unlimited access to the digital archive of creations and easily feasible digital technologies, as well as the priority of fresh ideas and creative processes over a perfect masterpiece leads to a hyperactive hustle and bustle around the past instead of launching new expeditions into unexplored territory that could give visibility to the forgotten ghosts and ignored phantoms of our common myths and ideologies.


Appropriation art and copyright

Appropriation art has resulted in contentious copyright issues regarding its validity under copyright law. The U.S. has been particularly litigious in this respect. A number of
case law Case law, also used interchangeably with common law, is law that is based on precedents, that is the judicial decisions from previous cases, rather than law based on constitutions, statutes, or regulations. Case law uses the detailed facts of a l ...
examples have emerged that investigate the division between transformative works and
derivative work In copyright law, a derivative work is an expressive creation that includes major copyrightable elements of an original, previously created first work (the underlying work). The derivative work becomes a second, separate work independent in fo ...
s.


What is fair use?

The
Copyright Act of 1976 The Copyright Act of 1976 is a United States copyright law and remains the primary basis of copyright law in the United States, as amended by several later enacted copyright provisions. The Act spells out the basic rights of copyright holders, cod ...
in the United States, provides a defense against copyright infringement when an artist can prove that their use of the underlying work is "fair". The Act gives four factors to be considered to determine whether a particular use is a fair use: # the purpose and character of the use (commercial or educational, transformative or reproductive, political); # the nature of the copyrighted work (fictional or factual, the degree of creativity); # the amount and substantiality of the portion of the original work used; and # the effect of the use upon the market (or potential market) for the original work.


Examples of lawsuits

Andy Warhol faced a series of lawsuits from photographers whose work he appropriated and silk-screened. Patricia Caulfield, one such photographer, had taken a picture of flowers for a photography demonstration for a photography magazine. Without her permission, Warhol covered the walls of
Leo Castelli Leo Castelli (born Leo Krausz; September 4, 1907 – August 21, 1999) was an Italian-American art dealer who originated the contemporary art gallery system. His gallery showcased contemporary art for five decades. Among the movements which ...
's New York gallery with his silk-screened reproductions of Caulfield's photograph in 1964. After seeing a poster of Warhol's unauthorized reproductions in a bookstore, Caulfield sued Warhol for violating her rights as the copyright owner, and Warhol made a cash settlement out of court. In 2021, the Second Circuit held that Warhol's use of a photograph of Prince to create a series of 16 silkscreens and pencil illustrations was not fair use. The photograph, taken by celebrity photographer Lynn Goldsmith, was commissioned in 1981 as an artist reference for '' Newsweek'' magazine. In 1984, Warhol used the photograph as a source to create a work for '' Vanity Fair'' along with 15 additional pieces. Goldsmith was not made aware of the series until after the musician's death in 2016, when '' Condé Nast'' published a tribute featuring one of Warhol's works. In its opinion, the Court held that each of the four "fair use" factors favored Goldsmith, further finding that the works were substantially similar as a matter of law, given that “any reasonable viewer . . . would have no difficulty identifying the oldsmith photographas the source material for Warhol's Prince Series.” On the other hand, Warhol's famous '' Campbell's Soup Cans'' are generally held to be a non-infringing fair use of the soup maker's trademark, despite being clearly appropriated, because "the public sunlikely to see the painting as sponsored by the soup company or representing a competing product. Paintings and soup cans are not in themselves competing products," according to expert trademark lawyer
Jerome Gilson Jerome Gilson (born January 12, 1931) was an American trademark lawyer and author of a multivolume treatise on trademark law. Life Jerome Gilson was born in Chicago, Illinois on January 12, 1931. In 1952, he graduated from the University o ...
.as quoted in Grant, Daniel, ''The Business of Being an Artist'' (New York: Allworth Press, 1996), p. 142 Jeff Koons has also confronted issues of copyright due to his appropriation work (see '' Rogers v. Koons''). Photographer Art Rogers brought suit against Koons for copyright infringement in 1989. Koons' work, ''String of Puppies'' sculpturally reproduced Rogers' black-and-white photograph that had appeared on an airport greeting card that Koons had bought. Though he claimed fair use and parody in his defense, Koons lost the case, partially due to the tremendous success he had as an artist and the manner in which he was portrayed in the media. The parody argument also failed, as the appeals court drew a distinction between creating a parody of modern society in general and a parody directed at a specific work, finding parody of a specific work, especially of a very obscure one, too weak to justify the fair use of the original. In October 2006, Koons successfully defended a different work by claiming " fair use". For a seven-painting commission for the Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin, Koons drew on part of a photograph taken by
Andrea Blanch Andrea Blanch, is an American portrait, commercial, and fine art photographer. Blanch was born in Brooklyn and raised in Great Neck, New York. She graduated from Ohio State University with a Bachelor of Arts in Painting. After working under Ric ...
titled ''Silk Sandals by Gucci'' and published in the August 2000 issue of ''Allure'' magazine to illustrate an article on metallic makeup. Koons took the image of the legs and diamond sandals from that photo (omitting other background details) and used it in his painting ''Niagara'', which also includes three other pairs of women's legs dangling surreally over a landscape of pies and cakes. In his decision, Judge Louis L. Stanton of U.S. District Court found that ''Niagara'' was indeed a "transformative use" of Blanch's photograph. "The painting's use does not 'supersede' or duplicate the objective of the original", the judge wrote, "but uses it as raw material in a novel way to create new information, new aesthetics and new insights. Such use, whether successful or not artistically, is transformative." The detail of Blanch's photograph used by Koons is only marginally copyrightable. Blanch has no rights to the Gucci sandals, "perhaps the most striking element of the photograph", the judge wrote. And without the sandals, only a representation of a woman's legs remains—and this was seen as "not sufficiently original to deserve much copyright protection." In 2000, Damien Hirst's sculpture ''Hymn'' (which
Charles Saatchi Charles Saatchi (; ar, تشارلز ساعتجي; born 9 June 1943) is an Iraqi-British businessman and the co-founder, with his brother Maurice, of advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi. The brothers led the business – the world's largest a ...
had bought for a reported £1m) was exhibited in ''Ant Noises'' in the Saatchi Gallery. Hirst was sued for breach of copyright over this sculpture. The subject was a 'Young Scientist Anatomy Set' belonging to his son Connor, 10,000 of which are sold a year by Hull (Emms) Toy Manufacturer. Hirst created a 20-foot, six-ton enlargement of the Science Set figure, radically changing the perception of the object. Hirst paid an undisclosed sum to two charities,
Children Nationwide A child (plural, : children) is a human being between the stages of childbirth, birth and puberty, or between the Development of the human body, developmental period of infancy and puberty. The legal definition of ''child'' generally refers ...
and the Toy Trust in an out-of-court settlement. The charitable donation was less than Emms had hoped for. Hirst sold three more copies of his sculpture for similar amounts to the first. Appropriating a familiar object to make an artwork can prevent the artist claiming copyright ownership. Jeff Koons threatened to sue a gallery under copyright, claiming that the gallery infringed his proprietary rights by selling bookends in the shape of balloon dogs. Koons abandoned that claim after the gallery filed a complaint for declaratory relief stating, "As virtually any clown can attest, no one owns the idea of making a balloon dog, and the shape created by twisting a balloon into a dog-like form is part of the public domain." In 2008, photojournalist Patrick Cariou sued artist Richard Prince, Gagosian Gallery and Rizzoli books for copyright infringement. Prince had appropriated 40 of Cariou's photos of
Rastafari Rastafari, sometimes called Rastafarianism, is a religion that developed in Jamaica during the 1930s. It is classified as both a new religious movement and a social movement by scholars of religion. There is no central authority in control of ...
from a book, creating a series of paintings known as ''Canal Zone''. Prince variously altered the photos, painting objects, oversized hands, naked women and male torsos over the photographs, subsequently selling over $10 million worth of the works. In March 2011, a judge ruled in favor of Cariou, but Prince and Gargosian appealed on a number of points. Three judges for the U.S. Court of Appeals upheld the right to an appeal. Prince's attorney argued that "Appropriation art is a well-recognized modern and postmodern art form that has challenged the way people think about art, challenged the way people think about objects, images, sounds, culture" On April 24, 2013, the appeals court largely overturned the original decision, deciding that many of the paintings had sufficiently transformed the original images and were therefore a permitted use. ''See
Cariou v. Prince ''Cariou v. Prince'', 714 F.3d 694 (2d Cir. 2013) is a copyright case in the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, on the question of whether artist Richard Prince's appropriation art treatment of Patrick Cariou's photographs was ...
.'' In November 2010, Chuck Close threatened legal action against computer artist
Scott Blake Scott Blake (born October 20, 1976 in Tampa, Florida) is an American artist. Similar to the works of pop art, Blake has used everyday images to produce his art. His early works were based entirely on the idea of creating images and art from barc ...
for creating a photoshop filter that built images out of dissected Chuck Close paintings. The story was first reported by online arts magazine ''
Hyperallergic ''Hyperallergic'' is an online arts magazine, based in Brooklyn, New York. Founded by the art critic Hrag Vartanian and his husband Veken Gueyikian in October 2009, the site describes itself as a "forum for serious, playful, and radical thinking ...
'', it was reprinted on the front page of Salon.com, and spread rapidly through the web.
Kembrew McLeod Kembrew McLeod is an American artist, activist, and professor of Communication Studies at the University of Iowa. He is best known as a performance artist or "media prankster" who filed an application in 1997 to register the phrase "Freedom of ...
, author of several books on sampling and appropriation, said in '' Wired'' that Scott Blake's art should fall under the doctrine of fair use. In September 2014, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit questioned the Second Circuit's interpretation of the fair use doctrine in the ''Cariou'' case. Of particular note, the Seventh Circuit noted that "transformative use" is not one of the four enumerated fair use factors but is, rather, simply part of the first fair use factor which looks to the "purpose and character" of the use. The Seventh Circuit's critique lends credence to the argument that there is a split among U.S. courts as to what role "transformativeness" is to play in any fair use inquiry. In 2013, Andrew Gilden and Timothy Greene published a law review article in The ''University of Chicago Law Review'' dissecting the factual similarities and legal differences between the ''Cariou'' case and the
Salinger v. Colting
' case, articulating concerns that judges may be creating a fair use "privilege largely reserved for the rich and famous."


Artists using appropriation

The following are notable artists known for their use of pre-existing objects or images with little or no transformation applied to them: * ABOVE *
Ai Kijima Ai Kijima, born in 1970 in Tokyo, Japan, is a contemporary artist residing in New York City. She is noted for her use of traditional quilting techniques to create colorful fabric collages from found materials such as bed sheets, vintage kimono, t-sh ...
* Aleksandra Mir * Andy Warhol * Banksy * Barbara Kruger * Benjamin Edwards * Bern Porter * Bill Jones * Brian Dettmer * Burhan Dogancay * Christian Marclay * Cindy Sherman * Claes Oldenburg *
Cornelia Sollfrank Cornelia Sollfrank (born 1960) is a German digital artist, she was an early pioneer of Net Art and Cyberfeminism in the 1990s. Life and work Cornelia Sollfrank was born in 1960, in Feilershammer, Germany. Sollfrank studied painting at the Academ ...
* Cory Arcangel *
Craig Baldwin Craig Baldwin (born 1952) is an American experimental filmmaker. He uses found footage from the fringes of popular consciousness as well as images from the mass media to undermine and transform the traditional documentary, infusing it with the ...
*
Damian Loeb Damian Loeb (; born May 9, 1970) is an American artist best known for contemporary realist painting, though he has also exhibited digital collage and photographic prints. He has shown in New York at Mary Boone and Acquavella Galleries and interna ...
* Damien Hirst * David Salle *
Deborah Kass Deborah Kass (born 1952) is an American artist whose work explores the intersection of pop culture, art history, and the construction of self. Deborah Kass works in mixed media, and is most recognized for her paintings, prints, photography, sculp ...
*
Dominique Mulhem Dominique Mulhem (b. June 13, 1952 in Neuilly-sur-Seine) is a French painter. Early life Mulhem was born in Neuilly-sur-Seine. Mulhem spent part of his childhood and adolescence in Asnières-sur-Seine where Georges Seurat painted a bather. Hi ...
* Dorothy Cross * Douglas Gordon * Elaine Sturtevant *
Eric Doeringer Eric Doeringer (born July 1, 1974) is an artist currently living and working in Los Angeles, California. He graduated from Brown University in 1996 with a B.A. and received an MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 1999. "Bootleg ...
* Fatimah Tuggar *
Felipe Jesus Consalvos Felipe Jesus Consalvos (1891 – c. 1960) was a Cuban-American cigar roller and artist, known for his posthumously discovered body of artwork based on the vernacular tradition of cigar-band collage. Life Felipe Jesus Consalvos was born nea ...
* Genco Gulan * General Idea * George Pusenkoff *
Georges Braque Georges Braque ( , ; 13 May 1882 – 31 August 1963) was a major 20th-century List of French artists, French painter, Collage, collagist, Drawing, draughtsman, printmaker and sculpture, sculptor. His most notable contributions were in his all ...
* Gerhard Richter * Ghada Amer * Glenn Brown *
Gordon Bennett Gordon Bennett may refer to: People * Gordon Bennett (artist) (1955–2014), Australian artist * Gordon Bennett (football) (died 2020), English football manager * Gordon Bennett (general) (1887–1962), Australian soldier * Gordon Bennett (union or ...
* Graham Rawle * Graig Kreindler * Greg Colson *
Hank Willis Thomas Hank Willis Thomas (born 1976 in Plainfield, New Jersey; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY) is an American conceptual artist working primarily with themes related to identity, history, and popular culture. Early life and education Hank Willis Tho ...
* Hans Haacke * Hans-Peter Feldman *
J. Tobias Anderson J Tobias Anderson (born 1971 in Gothenburg) is a Swedish artist and filmmaker, working with found footage and animation. He is best known for the short films ''879'' (1998), ''My Name Is Grant'' (1999), ''879 Colour'' (2002) and ''Prairie Stop, ...
* Jake and Dinos Chapman *
James Cauty James Francis Cauty (born 19 December 1956), also known as Rockman Rock, is an English people, English artist and musician, best known as one-half of the duo The KLF, co-founder of The Orb and as the man who K Foundation Burn a Million Quid, b ...
* Jasper Johns * Jeff Koons * Jim Ricks *
Joan Miró Joan Miró i Ferrà ( , , ; 20 April 1893 – 25 December 1983) was a Catalan painter, sculptor and ceramicist born in Barcelona. A museum dedicated to his work, the Fundació Joan Miró, was established in his native city of Barcelona i ...
* Jodi * John Baldessari * John McHale * John Stezaker * Joseph Cornell * Joseph Kosuth *
Joy Garnett Joy Garnett (born 1960) is an artist and writer from New York, United States. Trained as a painter, her work explores contemporary practices around cultural preservation, alternative histories and archives. Her interdisciplinary work combines cr ...
* Kaws *
Karen Kilimnik Karen Kilimnik (born 1955) is an American painter and installation artist. Life and work Karen traveled through much of the United States and Canada as a young child. She often spoke of Russell, Manitoba as being an inspiration for her later w ...
* Kelley Walker * Kenneth Goldsmith * Kurt Schwitters * Lennie Lee *
Leon Golub Leon Golub (January 23, 1922 – August 8, 2004) was an American painter. He was born in Chicago, Illinois, where he also studied, receiving his Bachelor of Arts, BA at the University of Chicago in 1942, and his Bachelor of Fine Arts, BFA and Ma ...
* Louise Lawler *
Luc Tuymans Luc Tuymans (born 14 June 1958) is a Belgian visual artist best known for his paintings which explore people's relationship with history and confront their ability to ignore it. World War II is a recurring theme in his work. He is a key figure ...
*
Luke Sullivan Luke Sullivan (born 30 March 1961, in Singapore) is an Australian visual artist most notable for his internationally controversial work, ''The Fourth Secret of Fatima''. Sullivan's practice is considered to be representative of Eclecticism, a ...
*
Malcolm Morley Malcolm A. Morley (June 7, 1931 – June 1, 2018) was a British-American artist and painter. He was known as an artist who pioneered in varying styles, working as a photorealist and an expressionist, among many other styles. Life Morley was ...
* Marcel Duchamp * Marcus Harvey * Mark Divo * Marlene Dumas * Martin Arnold * Matthieu Laurette * Max Ernst * Meret Oppenheim * Mic Neumann * Michael Landy *
Michel Platnic Michel Platnic (born February 26, 1970, France) is a French–Israeli Contemporary art, contemporary visual artist who has been working in Tel Aviv since 1998, and in Berlin from 2014 to 2017. He is known for his "living paintings". He uses mult ...
*
Mike Bidlo Michael Bidlo (born 20 October 1953) is an American conceptual artist who employs painting, sculpture, drawing, performance, and other forms of "social sculpture." Early life and education Bidlo was born in Chicago, Illinois and studied at the U ...
* Mike Kelley *
Miltos Manetas Miltos Manetas ( el, Μίλτος Μανέτας; born October 6, 1964 in Athens) is a Greek painter and multimedia artist. He currently lives and works in Bogotá. Manetas has created internet art as well as paintings of cables, computers, video ...
*
Mohammad Rakibul Hasan Mohammad Rakibul Hasan ( bn, মোহাম্মাদ রকিবুল হাসান ; born 29 September 1977), also known as M R Hasan and MRH, is a Bangladeshi documentary photographer, photojournalist, filmmaker and visual artist. He h ...
* Nancy Spero * Negativland *
Nikki S. Lee Nikki Seung-hee Lee (이승희, born 1970) is a South Korea-born visual artist, living in New York City and Seoul, that works with photography and film. Early life and education Lee was born in Geochang, South Korea. During her childhood, Lee ...
*
Norm Magnusson Norm Magnusson (born March 20, 1960) is a New York City, New York-based artist and political activist and founder, in 1991, of the art movement ''funism''; he began his career creating allegorical animal paintings with pointed social commentaries. ...
*
PJ Crook Pamela June Crook (born 1945), known professionally as P J Crook, is an English painter and sculptor. Her shows have appeared in London, France, the United States, Japan, Canada, and Estonia. Her professional name "P J Crook" lacks full stops; ...
* Pablo Picasso * Sigmar Polke * People Like Us * Peter Saville * Philip Taaffe *
Pierre Bismuth Pierre Bismuth (6 June 1963) is a French artist and filmmaker based in Brussels. His practice can be placed in the tradition of conceptual art and appropriation art. His work uses a variety of media and materials, including painting, sculpture, co ...
* Pierre Huyghe *
Reginald Case Reginald Case (December 23, 1937 – April 24, 2009) was an American artist who made American Folk Art collages and Hollywood iconographic mixed-media assemblages and sculptures. Life and work Case was born in Watertown, New York, and graduate ...
* Richard Prince * Rick Prelinger *
Rob Scholte Rob Scholte (born June 1, 1958 in Amsterdam) is a Dutch contemporary artist. From 1977 to 1982 he studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam. His work consists of reproductions of images from the media and from art history. He lives and w ...
* Robert Longo *
Robert Rauschenberg Milton Ernest "Robert" Rauschenberg (October 22, 1925 – May 12, 2008) was an American painter and graphic artist whose early works anticipated the Pop art movement. Rauschenberg is well known for his Combines (1954–1964), a group of artwor ...
* Shepard Fairey * Sherrie Levine *
Stephanie Syjuco Stephanie Syjuco (born 1974, in Manila, Philippines), is a Filipino-American conceptual artist and educator. She currently lives and works in San Francisco Career Syjuco's artwork explores the friction between the authentic and the counterfei ...
*
System D-128 System D-128 also known as Duey FM, born name Brian Torres Korlofsky is a music video and film director, editor, video artist, new media artist and producer. Early life Brian Korlofsky was born in New York City to parents of Puerto Rican and Russ ...
* Ted Noten * Thomas Ruff * Tom Phillips * Vermibus *
Vik Muniz Vik Muniz (; born 1961) is a Brazilian artist and photographer. Initially a sculptor, Muniz grew interested with the photographic representations of his work, eventually focusing completely on photography. Primarily working with unconventional m ...
* Vikky Alexander * Vivienne Westwood * Yasumasa Morimura


See also

* Art intervention * Assemblage * Classificatory disputes about art *
Collage Collage (, from the french: coller, "to glue" or "to stick together";) is a technique of art creation, primarily used in the visual arts, but in music too, by which art results from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole. ...
* Conceptual art *
Copies by Vincent van Gogh Vincent van Gogh made many copies of other people's work between 1887 and early 1890, which can be considered appropriation art. While at Saint-Paul asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France, where Van Gogh admitted himself, he strived to have s ...
*
Cultural appropriation Cultural appropriation is the inappropriate or unacknowledged adoption of an element or elements of one culture or identity by members of another culture or identity. This can be controversial when members of a dominant culture appropriate from ...
* Decollage * Fair use * Found object * Postmodern art * Scratch video


References


Sources

* David Evans, '' Appropriation: Documents of Contemporary Art'', Cambridge: MIT Press 2009


Further reading

* Margot Lovejoy, ''Digital Currents: Art in the Electronic Age'' Routledge 2004. * (es) Juan Martín Prada (2001) ''La Apropiación Posmoderna: Arte, Práctica apropiacionista y Teoría de la Posmodernidad''. Fundamentos. . * Brandon Taylor, ''
Collage Collage (, from the french: coller, "to glue" or "to stick together";) is a technique of art creation, primarily used in the visual arts, but in music too, by which art results from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole. ...
'', Thames & Hudson Ltd, 2006, p. 221.


External links


Michalis Pichler: ''Statements on Appropriation''Appropriation Art Coalition-Canada''Blanche v. Koons'' Decision (August 2005)
1/2006


Creative CommonsFree Culture
an international student movement
The New York Institute for the Humanities Comedies of Fair U$e conference (Archive.org)
* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20040725074848/http://www.benedict.com/Info/law/publicDomain/publicDomain.aspx Public Domainbr>Sherri Levine InterviewLichtensteinWarholtransordinator/edition
Remixing conceptual artworks
Temporary appropriation
or in Wikipedia
Temporary appropriation Temporary appropriation refers to the action in which a person or a group of people realises an activity in a public space for which it was not designed for. According to Lara-Hernandez and Melis, it is process that implies dynamism similar to what ...
. {{DEFAULTSORT:Appropriation (Art) Aesthetics Artistic techniques Concepts in aesthetics Contemporary art Dada . Modern art Repurposing Reuse