Appropriation Art

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Appropriation Art ( English appropriation = appropriation), also spoken in German appropriation , is a form of expression of contemporary artistic creation. It is usually assigned to conceptual art .

In the narrower sense, one speaks of Appropriation Art when artists consciously and strategically copy the works of other artists , whereby the act of copying and the result itself should be understood as art (otherwise one speaks of plagiarism or forgery ). Strategies include “borrowing, stealing, appropriating, inheriting, assimilating ... influenced, inspired, dependent, hunted, possessed, quoting, rewriting, revising, remodeling ... revision, reevaluation, variation, version, interpretation , Imitation, approach, improvisation, supplement, growth, prequel ... Pastiche, paraphrase, parody, piracy, forgery, homage, mimicry, travesty, Shan-Zhai, echo, allusion, intertextuality and karaoke. "

In a broader sense, Appropriation Art can be any art that deals with found aesthetic material , e.g. B. with advertising photography, press photography, archive images, films, videos, etc. These can be exact, detailed copies; however, the size, color, material and medium of the original are often manipulated in the copy .

This appropriation in the Appropriation Art can be done with critical intent or as an homage . Appropriation was introduced through the Pictures exhibition curated by Douglas Crimp at New York's Artists Space in the fall of 1977. The selected artists from the very beginning were Sherrie Levine , Jack Goldstein , Phillip Smith, Troy Brauntuch and Robert Longo . Cindy Sherman had had a solo show at Artists Space the year before and was mentioned in Douglas Crimp's revised version of the catalog text that appeared in the Marxist art magazine October in 1979 .

The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles hosted major retrospectives for the Pictures Generation in 1989 , and in 2009 the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York showed the early work of thirty artists from the New York art scene of the 1970s in the exhibition The Pictures Generation, curated by Douglas Eklund , 1974–1984 .

At this Pictures Generation include Louise Lawler , Barbara Kruger , Richard Prince , Sarah Charlesworth , from the art scene in Buffalo ( New York State came) Robert Longo, Cindy Sherman, Nancy Dwyer , Charles Clough and Michel Zwack . The movement's main “hotbed” was John Baldessari's seminar at the California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles, where David Salle , Jack Goldstein , James Welling , Matt Mullican , Barbara Bloom , Ross Bleckner and Eric Fischl had studied.

Features of art appropriation

Appropriation art works mostly deal with abstract properties of works of art and the art market itself . Through the act of appropriation, they problematize fundamental categories of the art world such as authorship , originality , creativity , intellectual property , signature , market value , museum space (so-called white cube ), history , gender , subject , identity and difference . She concentrates on paradoxes and self-contradictions and makes them visible and aesthetically tangible.

The individual strategies of individual artists differ greatly, so that a uniform overall program is not easy to identify. Many artists who are assigned to Appropriation Art deny being part of a "movement". “Appropriation Art” is therefore just a label that has been used in art criticism since the early 80s and is quite controversial.

The techniques used are diverse. Appropriation is u. a. operated with painting , photography , film art , sculpture , collage , décollage , environment , happening , fluxus and performance .

Artist

Examples

In the early 1970s, Elaine Sturtevant copied works by Robert Rauschenberg , Andy Warhol , Jasper Johns and Frank Stella, among others , using screen printing or color, i.e. using the original techniques . It is said that some of the artists who copied it gave her advice on technique. Andy Warhol is said to have even given her his original sieves. Sturtevant herself said that she wanted to escape the pressure of originality that weighs on every artist by exploring this category through the means of art.

Richard Pettibone frequently copied Warhol and saw himself in the following relationship to him: “I am a careful craftsman, he is a sloppy.” Pettibone's imitations have already been auctioned by Sotheby's.

Mike Bidlo gave a performance based on a biographical anecdote in which he urinated in an open fireplace disguised as Jackson Pollock . For his exhibitions he had works of art by Andy Warhol or Constantin Brâncuși produced in series. He is currently producing thousands of drawings and models of the ready-made fountain by Marcel Duchamp . Duchamp's ready-made is considered one of the most important works of art of the modern age . Bidlo's project can therefore be understood both as a homage to Duchamp and as a symbolic processing of the generation conflict.

Louise Lawler photographed works of art in the living rooms of art collectors and in museums in situ , i.e. with their respective surroundings. It thus shows the context in which art is received and how it is staged in rooms.

A series of photos by Cindy Sherman are the History Portraits , in which she dresses up and stages herself in the style of old masters . She temporarily takes on the historical roles of women and men. Sherman often deliberately uses sloppy costumes and rough make-up so that the staging remains recognizable in the picture. The History Portraits can be understood as a commentary on art history, in which women mostly only served as models, that is, objects for the gaze of male painters; At the same time, they also ask questions about the historical construction of identity, femininity and masculinity (see gender , self-portrait ).

Sherrie Levine became famous for her appropriation of Walker Evans' photographs , which she took from picture books and exhibited under her name under the title After Walker Evans . In 2001 Michael Mandiberg applied this action to the artist : He photographed Sherrie Levine's copies and presented his photos under the title After Sherrie Levine . Mandiberg was not the only representative of the "second generation" of appropriationists who appropriated the first generation: Yasumasa Morimura staged herself from photographs by Cindy Sherman , in which she portrayed herself in various disguises and roles ( film stills ). Since Sherman often slips into male roles as a woman in her pictures, while Morimura appears as a transvestite , the confusion of gender identity is increased even further.

philosophy

Philosophically, the conceptual strategies of appropriation are close to deconstruction , media theory and intertextuality . Artistic techniques such as quotation , allusion , travesty , parody and pastiche , which are generally regarded as characteristics of postmodern art, can be found in works of appropriation art. Since many strategies of Appropriation Art are oriented towards the art system itself, one can also speak of meta art or of the art system becoming self-reflective (see systems theory ). It is one of those art movements that can actively explore the conditions and limits of art and force the art system to redefine itself.

Law

A work of Appropriation Art can also be protected under copyright law, even if it resembles an existing work by another artist in every detail. The protectable creative achievement then consists in the development of the concept and the independent strategy of the copying artist. Fraud or deception is not intended by the artists. Just like sampling or the cover version in music, however, appropriation art moves in areas where copyright applies. However, since it can be argued that the process of copying is also an original, artistic process in this case, conflicts of a legal nature rarely arise. In addition, the value of the model in the visual arts, unlike in media products, is mostly bound to its material existence, which is not affected by appropriation.

According to Austrian law, creations of appropriation art are generally to be qualified as free subsequent uses in accordance with Section 5 (2) of the Austrian Copyright Act, or at least a justification based on freedom of art and expression is possible.

Appropriations in the digital age

Since the 1990s, the forms of appropriation of historical precursors have been as diverse as the concept of appropriation is unclear. A veritable flood of appropriations pervades not only the field of visual arts, but all cultural areas. We are talking about an art of "post-production" that is based on already existing creations of art or products of everyday culture that it reworks in order to rewrite the script of the culture. Others describe the new appropriations as a kind of "contemporary archeology". In any case, the annexation of the works of others mostly follows the concept of use or exploitation. Browse so-called "prosumer" - the same time a consuming as producing - through the ever-open archive the digital world (more rarely by the analog world) to images, words and sounds via ' copy-paste ' / ' drag-drop to' Sampling and to change in a mashup or remix as you like. Appropriations like this are an everyday phenomenon, especially within the social media of the Internet. The new "Generation Remix", which has not only climbed the levels of the visual arts, but also those of music, literature, dance and film, provokes controversial debates. On one side are the defenders who conjure up the new age of innovative, useful and entertaining art in the digitized and globalized 21st century. The new appropriationists would not only complete Joseph Beuys' well-known dictum that everyone is an artist, but also help to build a free society. Such art, freed from traditional concepts like aura , originality and genius , would finally create the conditions for the understanding and definition of art to be revolutionized. Critical observers see this as the starting point for a problem. If creation is based on nothing other than the careless copying, recombining and manipulation of already existing media, concepts, forms, names etc. from any source, the understanding of art would shift towards a trivial, undemanding and regressive activity . With regard to the limitation of art to references and appropriations, they diagnose endless repetitions of familiar clichés. Many skeptics see an obsession with the past in this culture of recycling. Some say that only lazy people who have nothing to say get inspiration from the past in this way. Others fear that this new trend of appropriation is based on nothing more than motivation to adorn oneself with an attractive genealogy. The term "appropriationism" reflects the current overproduction of reproductions, revisions, reconstructions, re-enactments , Remakings , Reloadings etc. through copies, imitations, repetitions, quotes, plagiarism , adaptations and simulations .

In comparison to the forms and concepts of appropriation of the 20th century, which aimed at re-visualizing and negotiating apparently secured knowledge, appropriationism is discussed as a kind of "frenzied standstill"; a blind actionism as a reaction to the acceleration of uncontrollable processes in the increasingly mobilized western societies that are subject to ever more abstract and rigid forms of control. Unrestricted access to the digital archive of creations and easy-to-use digital technologies, as well as the priority of fresh ideas and creative processes over a perfect masterpiece, legitimize such hyperactive busyness that nostalgically revolves around the past instead of brave new expeditions into previously unexplored terrain to dare to give the forgotten ghosts and phantoms of our projects, myths and ideologies new visibility.

Appropriation Cinema

Appropriation Cinema

In the art of film , the term appropriation cinema is occasionally used (more often: found footage film). These are cinematic works that take over and manipulate existing film material. The American director Gus Van Sant shot z. B. Psycho (1998), a remake of Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece Psycho (1960), which consistently recreates the original scene by scene. The equipment and the staging were only slightly modified in some scenes. The film faced many attacks; the cinema audience did not see it as an independent achievement and therefore as superfluous. Since the remake of films is a common genre in the film industry, the situation here is different from that in art - van Sant's film can also be understood as a parody of remakes or as pastiche .

The British video artist Douglas Gordon also dealt with psycho , who in his installation 24 Hour Psycho extended the film to 24 hours in a video projection. Gordon sees his work as a game between the artistic aura of the masterpiece and the individual interventions and manipulations that every owner of a video recorder can undertake on a film if he wants to immerse himself meditatively or analytically in individual image sequences.

Appropriation theater

In 2010 the theater company Shanzhai Institute was founded . Based on the Chinese Shanzhai tradition of copying and appropriation art, the group copies and re-enacts historical and existing theater productions in great detail, only the actors are cast. In 2016, the re-enactment of Chekhov's “ The Seagull ”, directed by Jürgen Gosch from 2008, is planned for the Leipzig Theater.

literature

  • Anna Blume Huttenlauch: Appropriation Art - Art at the limits of copyright , Nomos 2010. ISBN 3-8329-4838-4
  • Jörg Heiser: Auratic toast and art from the assembly line , Süddeutsche Zeitung , February 23, 2004
  • Richard Wagner: In search of the lost original. Scenes from Immediate Unreality , Neue Zürcher Zeitung , February 21, 2004
  • Stefan Römer: Artistic strategies of fake: Criticism of the original and forgery , Cologne: DuMont 2001. ISBN 3-7701-5532-7
  • Elaine Sturtevant, Udo Kittelmann, Lena Maculan: Sturtevant , 2 volumes, Stuttgart: Hatje Cantz 2005. ISBN 3-7757-1485-5 (catalog for the exhibition at MMK Frankfurt)
  • Mike Bidlo: The Fountain Drawings , New York 1999 ISBN 3-905173-43-3
  • Cecilia Hausheer, Christoph Settele: Found Footage Film . Lucerne: VIPER / zyklop 1992
  • Appropriation Now! . Texts on Art 46 (2002), ISBN 3-930628-44-9 , ISSN  0940-9459
  • The cut 18 (2000): Appropriating Cinema . ISSN  0949-7803
  • Juan Martín Prada (2001) La Apropiación Posmoderna: Arte, Práctica apropiacionista y Teoría de la Posmodernidad . Fundamentos. ISBN 84-245-0881-5 (in Spanish)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ La photographie appropriationniste la fin du droit d'auteur? | PM . In: PM . October 1, 2016 ( photographemarocain.com [accessed November 13, 2016]).
  2. ↑ Statements on Appropriation. (PDF; 312 kB) fillip # 11, Vancouver 2010. Archived from the original on December 26, 2012 ; Retrieved July 25, 2011 .
  3. ↑ Interview in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on February 22, 2007; quoted based on Annette Spohn: Andy Warhol . Frankfurt am Main 2008, p. 131.
  4. ↑ Anderl: Appropriation Art on the DORDA BRUGGER JORDIS website  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. As of February 19, 2009@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.dbj.co.at  
  5. ^ Nicolas Bourriaud: Postproduction. Culture as screenplay. How art reprograms the world. New York: Lucas & Sternberg 2002.
  6. ↑ Paolo Bianchi, quoted by Hedinger J .; Meyer, T. (2011). " Introduction to Whats Next ". Cadmos. Retrieved February 15, 2016.
  7. ^ Alvin Toffler: The third wave. The classic study of tomorrow. New York: Bantam 1980.
  8. ^ Djordjevic, V .; Dobusch, L. (Ed.) (2014). Generation Remix . iRights Media.
  9. ↑ Hardy, S. " Rip !: A Remix Manifesto ". Creative generalist. Accessed February 15, 2016.
  10. ↑ cf. Reynolds, Simon. Retro Mania Pop Culture's Addiction To Its Own Past. London: Faber & Faber 2011.
  11. ↑ Albini, Steve, quoted by Benjamin Franzen; Kembrew McLeod :, Steve (2009). Copyright Criminals. Documentary.
  12. ↑ Diedrich Diedrichsen "show freaks and monsters". Texts on art: artist artist. (September 2008). No. 71: 150.
  13. ↑ Maike Aden (April 2016). "Let's dance like we used to .... A critical intervention on a new trend of appropriationism". Art Chronicle. No. 4: 201 ff.
  14. ↑ Maike Aden (Summer 2016). "Ulises Carrión Carries On!". Journal of Artists' Books (JAB). No. 40, in prep.
  15. ↑ Paul Virilio : Racing standstill. Munich: Hanser 1992.
  16. ↑ Byung-Chul Han: Shanzhai Deconstruction in Chinese, Merve Verlag, ISBN 978-3-88396-294-8