Proposed bibliography

Grewe, C., 2012. Art Bulletin, 94(2), pp.175-178.

McLean, I., 2012. Art Bulletin, 94(2), pp.179-181.

Weaver, C., 2011. The Panda Appropriations: When Your Property Is My Medium, The Huffington Post, [online] Available at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cat-weaver/the-panda-appropriations-_b_808353.html [Accessed 15 April 2013].

Weaver, C., 2011. The Panda Appropriations -- Part Two: Ethics and Aesthetics, The Huffington Post, [online] Available at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cat-weaver/the-panda-appropriationsp_b_811395.html [Accessed 15 April 2013].

Weaver, C., 2011. The Panda Appropriations -- Part 3: Playing the Courts, The Huffington Post, [online] Available at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cat-weaver/the-panda-appropriations-_1_b_815114.html [Accessed 15 April 2013].

Whyte, I.B., 2012. Art Bulletin, 94(2), p.185.

A close description of one art work

Nine equally square and the same pictures of Merilyn Monroe are showed as if it would be a collage. One picture is copied into nine, but all nine are different because of contrasting colors. In all the pictures Merilyn portrait has different color background, hair, lips and teeth, skin tone, eye shadow and the natural shadows of original picture such as shadows in hair, cheekbone line, neck. Chosen colors are really bright and it seems as if Warhol was trying to choose the most not suitable and contrasting colors for all nine portraits. 

Relevant images

Relevant images to appropriation (art)

Levine, S., 1991. Fountain

Warhol, A., 1968. Campbell's Soup

Warhol, A., 1967. Marilyn. [Prints, Print] (Factory Additions, New York).

Picasso, P., 1912. Composition with Fruit, Guitar and Glass.

Clayton, M., 2010. Arrangement in Grey and Black: The Artist’s Mother

Boym, C. The Ultimate Art Furniture

Johann Friedrich Overbeck and                                   Claude Marie François Dien, 1810.

Peter Cornelius, 1812. DoublePortrait.                         Raphael's SelfPortrait and Portrait of

[Photograph by Engelbert Seehuber]                           Peruano from the School of Atlien.

(Private collection, Munich).                                        [photograph] (Philadelphia Museum of Art).                                         

Relationship to your own practice

“You get an idea and think, that's great, but after a certain time you realize that precisely this idea has been chewed on for a long time already. When I was in school, I was constantly frustrated because all that I did was somehow derivative. Therefore, when I began with copying works at hand, I understood this path as a kind of resistance against such frustrations. I can cease to be original.” (Sherrie Levine)

We try so hard to be original and even after a brilliant idea comes to your head and you are so excited to start something new at some point a frustrating feeling visits you: I have seen something similar before... 

I believe a lot of young artists feels this way, not only me. You have an itch to create, but only a few pieces ends up finished. Furthermore, you have a bunch of sketches or unfinished art work laying somewhere in a corner only because that 'I have seen something similar before' visited you. 

Appropriation existed for a long time, it existed even before people understood what it is. Only nowadays copyrights became such a huge thing. Everything has to be on the paper singed and sealed. Maybe we feel the need to put our work away since we saw something similar because we feel like thieves. Copyrights live for a long time now and it became a huge and popular thing. It seems as if everything is there already. And the thing is, because of the Internet our brains absorbs so many images per day that we can not help but add some of the already seen details to our work. But is it a bad thing? Is it a violation of someones copyrights? Do we really have to feel like thieves or is it just a new way of brainwashing? 

Outline of points to be discussed

• Definition of appropriation (general understanding of what it is ).
• History of appropriation ( the beginning, how did it started, changed, how does it look these days, does it still exists ).
• Artists that use appropriation (compere the initiators and nowadays appropriation artist, do they still exists, what kind of difficulties are they facing ).
• Appropriation existence when the definition of it was yet to be discovered. 
• Appropriation and constantly growing issue of copyrights. 

Topic

After one lesson with Lisa I was really intrigued with this quote :

Sherrie Levine, “Statement,” 1982

“The world is filled to suffocating. Man has placed his token on every stone. Every word, every image, is leased and mortgaged. We know that a picture is but a space in which a variety of images, none of them original, blend and crash. A picture is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centers of culture. Similar to those eternal copyists Bouvard and Péchuchet [characters in a Flaubert novel], we indicate the profound ridiculousness that is precisely the truth of painting. We can only imitate a gesture that is always anterior, never original.  Succeeding the painter, the plagiarist no longer bears within him passions, humors, feelings, impressions, but rather this immense encyclopedia from which he draws. The viewer is the tablet on which all the quotations that make up a painting are inscribed without any of them being lost. A painting’s meaning lies not in its origins, but in its destination. The birth of theviewer must be at the cost of the painter.”

I used to think that our world is so crowded with things, knowledge, even people that to find something pure, new, unique is really hard, maybe even impossible. In her statement Sherrie Levine (1982) said that “we can only imitate a gesture that is always anterior, never original.” I strongly agree with her and that is why I looked for more information about her and her statement. This is how I stumbled upon Appropriation (art). After a bit of reading about it I decided to choose this idea as my topic. 

First task: Draft

Preparation for draft plan

Uploaded the following to your blog by Tuesday 16 April:

•Topic (what idea/artist/designer interests you)

•Outline of points to be discussed (eg aspects of an artist's practice)

•Relationship to your own practice

•Relevant images

•A close description of one art work  (as if I cannot see it)

•Proposed bibliography

(eg articles/books/images etc you are looking at) using Harvard or Vancouver referencing system