Artists appropriate when they adopt imagery, concepts and ways of making art other artists have used at other times

"Appropriation, first of all, is a common technique. People appropriate when they make things their own and integrate them into their way of life, by buying or stealing commodities, acquiring knowledge, claiming places as theirs and so on. Artists appropriate when they adopt imagery, concepts and ways of making art other artists have used at other times to adapt these artistic means to their own interests, or when they take objects, images or practices from popular (or foreign) cultures and restage them within the context of their work to either enrich or erode conventional definitions of what an artwork can be. As such, this technique could be described as comparatively timeless, or at least, as being practiced as long as modern society exists. For, ever since labour was divided and the abstract organization of social life alienated people from the way in which they would want to live, appropriation has been a practice of getting back from society what it takes from its members. At the same time, appropriation can be understood as one of the most basic procedures of modern art production and education. To cite, copy and modify exemplary works from art history is the model for developing art practice (neo)classicist tendencies have always championed. During the last two centuries this model was repeatedly challenged by advocates of the belief that modern individuals should produce radically new art by virture of their spontaneous creativity. The postmodern critics of this cult of individual genius in turn claimed that it is a gross ideological distortion to portray the making of art as a heroic act of original creation. Instead they advanced the paradigm of appropriation as a materialist model that describes art production as the gradual re-shuffling of a basic set of cultural terms through their strategical re-use and eventual transformation."

(Jan Verwoert, 2007)

ART&RESEARCH: A Journal of Ideas, Contexts and Methods, Volume 1. No. 2. Summer 2007, ISSN 1752-6388

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Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs at Tate Modern

Tate Modern: Exhibition, 17 April–7 September 2014

"Henri Matisse is a giant of modern art. This landmark show explores the final chapter in his career in which he began 'carving into colour' and his series of spectacular cut–outs was born. ...

In his late sixties, when ill health first prevented Matisse from painting, he began to cut into painted paper with scissors to make drafts for a number of commissions. In time, Matisse chose cut–outs over painting: he had invented a new medium. ...

For the first time ever, we are broadcasting live into cinemas around the country with an exclusive film about the exhibition. Matisse Live offers an intimate, behind–the–scenes view of the artist via beautiful footage of the works, interviews with his friends plus rare archive footage of Matisse at work."

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Artist's spoof Ladybird book provokes wrath of Penguin

"An artist and comedian [Miriam Elia] has been told by the publisher Penguin that her new satirical art book breaches its copyright, and if she continues to sell copies it could use the courts to seize the books and have them pulped. ...

Elia's version sees them visiting an exhibition at a modern art gallery and grappling with existential questions about the nature of Tracey Emin–style conceptualist work, much of it peppered with distinctly adult imagery."

(Gareth Rubin, 2 March 2014, The Guardian)

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Goldsmiths Department of Art MA: Computational Aesthetics

Sonia Delaunay and the Art Simultané

"Together, the Delaunay [Sonia and Robert Delaunay] start a research on color that will be the essence, the content and the form but also the line of a new painting for a non–figurative art. Influenced by the Fauvism, she first presents works whose subjects and models are marked, slashed by the brutality of the shades. Creative perfection to aim at, the music offers to the artists, at this time, the philosophical assessment that will underlie their respective works. Powerful associations of rhythms and melodies, the compositions gather in the idea of 'simultaneous' what makes a new challenge for poets and painters. Sonia Delaunay then progressively develops a lyrical use and signification of the color, close from cubism, between rhythm and shade. Repetitions of forms, structures but also colors, her paintings take a direction all her artistic propositions will follow."

(Ozarts Etc, 3 December 2011)

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