Appropriation art involves borrowing and recontextualizing pre-existing images and objects without significantly altering them. It has roots in Cubism and Dadaism and was prominent in Pop Art. Some key artists who used appropriation include Andy Warhol, who appropriated Campbell's Soup labels to comment on consumerism, and Sherrie Levine, who photographed Walker Evans' Depression-era photograph to examine concepts of authorship. Appropriation can be controversial as some view it as unoriginal or theft, but appropriation artists intend to recontextualize images to create new meanings or perspectives.

1. ART AND
APPROPRIATION

2. WHAT IS APPROPRIATION?
• To "appropriate" is to take possession of something.
• in art it is the use of pre-existing objects or images with little or no transformation applied to them.
• to appropriate means to properly adopt, borrow, recycle or sample aspects (or the entire form) of
human-made visual culture.
• The Tate Gallery traces the practise back to Cubism and Dadaism, but continuing into
1940s Surrealism and 1950s Pop art. It returned to prominence in the 1980s with the Neo-
Geo artists.

3. WHAT IS APPROPRIATION?
• Appropriation artists deliberately copy images to take possession of them in their
art. They are not stealing or plagiarizing, nor are they passing off these images as
their very own.
• 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.
• Yet, this artistic approach does stir up controversy because some people view
appropriation as unoriginal or theft. Due to this, it's important to understand why
artists appropriate the artwork of others.

4. WHAT'S THE INTENT OF
APPROPRIATION ART?
• Appropriation artists want the viewer to recognize the images they
copy.
• They hope that the viewer will bring all of his original associations with
the image to the artist's new context, be it a painting, a sculpture,
a collage, a combine, or an entire installation.
• The deliberate "borrowing" of an image for this new context is called
"recontextualization."
• Recontextualization helps the artist comment on the image's original
meaning and the viewer's association with either the original image or
the real thing.
• aimed to create a new situation, and therefore a new meaning or set of
meanings, for a familiar image.
• Appropriation can be confusing, because the line between borrowing,
appropriating, and copying it often quite blurry.
• Appropriation art raises questions of originality, authenticity and
authorship, and because of this it is a useful tool for exploring these
concepts.
Sir Eduardo Paolozzi, Meet the People, 1948,
printed papers on card, 35 x 24 cm (Tate)

5. ANDY WARHOL’S
CAMPBELL SOUP CAN
• He copied the original labels exactly but filled
up the entire picture plane with their iconic
appearance.
• look like portraits of a soup can.
• The brand is the image's identity. Warhol
isolated the image of these products to
stimulate product recognition (as is done in
advertising) and stir up associations with the
idea of Campbell's soup. He wanted you to
think of that "Mmm Mmm Good" feeling.
• Also made associations, such as consumerism,
commercialism, big business, fast food, middle-
class values, and food representing love. As an
appropriated image, these specific soup labels
could resonate with meaning (like a stone
tossed into a pond) and so much more.
• Warhol's use of popular imagery became part
of the Pop Art movement.
• All appropriation art is not Pop Art, though.

6. SHERRY LEVINE'S
"AFTER WALKER EVANS"
(1981)
• is a photograph of a famous Depression-era photograph.
• The original was taken by Walker Evans in 1936 and titled "Alabama
Tenant Farmer Wife."
• In her piece, Levine photographed a reproduction of Evans' work. She
did not use the original negative or print to create her silver gelatin
print.
• Levine is challenging the concept of ownership: if she photographed the
photograph, whose photograph was it, really? It is a common question
that has been raised in photography for years and Levine is bringing this
debate to the forefront.
• goal was to examine the effect of mass media—advertisements, films,
and photography—on the public.
• In addition, Levine is a feminist artist. In work like "After Walker Evans,"
she was also addressing the predominance of male artists in the
textbook version of art history.

7. • 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,
became categorized
as synthetic cubism.
• incorporated aspects of the "real
world" into their canvases, opening
up discussion of signification
and artistic representation.
PABLO PICASSO
“GUITAR, NEWSPAPER,
GLASS AND BOTTLE”

8. • ready-made, 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
mounted a stool with a bicycle wheel and again in
when he purchased a snow shovel and humorously
inscribed it “in advance of the broken arm, Marcel
Duchamp.”
• posed a direct challenge to traditional perceptions of
fine art, ownership, originality and plagiarism, and was
subsequently rejected by the exhibition committee.
• Duchamp publicly 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
point of view—and created a new thought for that
object."
MARCHEL DUCHAMP
READY-MADE
FOUNTAIN
DADAISM

10. Left: Robert Colesscott, Les Demoiselles d’Alabama, 1985;
Right: Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907

11. THE ART AND POLITICS OR CULTURAL
APPROPRIATION
• One of the key arguments of many such critics is that one speaks through one’s identity;
• ‘as a’: ‘as a woman’, ‘as a Muslim’, ‘as an immigrant’. And those who are not ‘as a’ must take their cue from those who
are, especially if they happen to be privileged by being white or male or straight.
• ‘Lived experience is on its way to becoming the superior and most veracious form of truth.’
• What is really being appropriated, in other words, is not culture but the right to police cultures and experiences, a
right appropriated by those who license themselves to be arbiters of the correct forms of cultural borrowing.
• It deadens creativity and it assaults imagination.
• he importance of imagination is that we can take ourselves beyond where we are, beyond our own narrow
perspectives, to imagine other peoples, other worlds, other experiences. Without the ability to do that, both artistic
creativity and progressive politics shrivel.
• For critics of cultural appropriation, however, the real difference is not aesthetic, but identitarian.

12. Take the debate about Dana Schutz’s Open Casket (2016), a
painting derived from photographs of the body of Emmett Till, a
fourteen-year-old African American murdered by two white men
in Mississippi in 1955. Till’s mother had urged the publication of
photographs of her son’s mutilated body as it lay in its coffin.
Till’s murder, and the photographs, played a major role in
shaping the civil-rights movement and have acquired an almost
sacred quality.

13. • Many critics of cultural appropriation insist that they are opposed not to cultural
engagement, but to racism.
• They want to protect marginalised cultures and ensure that such cultures speak
for themselves and are not simply to be seen through the eyes of more privileged
groups

14. JEFF GILLETTE
“SHADOW CITY MINNIE”

15. BANKSY
TELEPHONE BOOTH

16. Photo of Banksy work, sold into an art print, and pillow design?

17. REFERENCES
• 10 Jul 2016 Little Art Talks, “The Meaning of Appropriation in Art | Art Terms | LittleArtTalks” Retrived from:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpjzJdojNS8
• Tate Gallery “Appropriation”, Retrieved from: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/a/appropriation
• Wikipedia “Appropriation” Art, Retrieved from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appropriation_(art)
• 30 December 2018, Gersh-Nesic, Beth S. “What Is Appropriation Art?”, Retrieved from
https://www.thoughtco.com/appropriation-appropriation-art-183190
• 8 December 2017, Malik Kenan “The Art & Politics of Cultural Appropriation”, Retrieved from
https://kenanmalik.com/2017/12/08/the-art-politics-of-cultural-appropriation/
• Sherrie Levine American “After Walker Evans: 4,1981” Retrieved from
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/267214
• Revolver Gallery, “Campbell’s Soup” Retrieved from: https://revolverwarholgallery.com/portfolio/campbells-soup-ii-
full-suite/

18. ART AND APPROPRIATION PLATE
• Reaction plate can be an installation, sculpture or painting.
• Must be 18x24 inches on canvas or 432 in3 in area
• Studies should be approved
• Deadline: 25 March 2019, 1:30 pm