Appropriation by jgyoungmd
I recently went to a discussion of the Cut & Paste art show at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art.
“Collage as a form of artistic expression dates back as far as images on paper could be cut out, reassembled, and affixed to a support. With the wide distribution of printed images in the 20th century, the technique was discovered as a way to reference and comment on modern life and current events. The ease with which images can be taken out of their original context to create a new statement has amused and inspired artists for generations. The Dadaists employed it to comment on the irrationality and horrors of war, while the Surrealists appreciated the ability to randomly arrange the cut up parts to facilitate new associations. With its overtones of opposition and political protest, the cut-up messiness of ransom notes became the preferred look to carry the do-it-yourself and no-future attitudes of the 1970s punk movement.
With the availability of computers, graphic programs, and the endless and immediate supply of images through the Internet, digital collage replaced the need to physically manipulate paper and ways of manipulation evolve in step with the development of new digital tools. But many artists today are rediscovering the physical aspects of printed source material. Appreciating texture and colors and the implied date and place of creation as an additional dimension, contemporary artists often identify sourcing these images as part of the creative process.
Cut & Paste at Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art presents work ranging from paper collage to large-scale sculptural work and multi-media installations by Colorado-based, as well as nationally and internationally acclaimed artists.”
This description is from the current Cut & Paste art show at Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art. If I did not put parentheses and site the source and just plagiarized the words describing collage, would I have appropriated it?
This very interesting show and the discussion of it by one of the artist’s, Tyler Beard, raises for me the issue of appropriation and re-contexting.
Tyler said that by altering the original image by cutting away parts he was adding new creativity. Some of his pieces were enlarged and affixed to aluminum and bent in interesting shapes. His “creative cropping” did create new positive and new negative space or spaces. Other works on his website shows he uses other’s images only as part of his creation. He said he had had no issues with copyright infringement. It seems the age of appropriation is alive and well.
Much of collage work makes use of images that are from older sources, which are beyond copyright protection, but is the use of these images creative? Or when is it creative? They say that “Nothing is new under the sun” so every creative artist does not create ex nihilo, out of nothing, but how much change is necessary for a new creation?
Taking only a portion, so called “fair use” of a piece of another’s writing does not seem to run into copyright issues, but if you use the whole image like Warhol’s Campbell soup, I wonder. When Duchamp renamed a porcelain urinal to a “Fountain,” was the name change and the placement in an art gallery enough to be called creative? History seems to say it was. It was early conceptual art where the concept of change of use, i.e. to make a comment about commercialization,iteration or the change of context was the transformation.
When, how and is appropriation appropriate? Picasso has been quoted to say that “Good artists borrow, great artists steal.” Tennyson– “ great poets imitate and improve, whereas small ones steal and spoil.” T. S. Eliot–“the immature poet imitates and the mature poet plagiarizes.” Lionel Trilling– “Immature artists borrow; mature artists steal.” Igor Stravinsky–“A good composer does not imitate; he steals.” William Faulkner’s–“immature artists copy, great artists steal.”[1]
I have often thought that if the image stolen is chewed up, digested and made into new tissue, then stealing an image is transformative and creative. [p.s. I think Tyler’s constructions are new tissue.]
I once wrote a poem,
He tried to swallow me whole
Then wondered why
He had a stomach ache.
Just as patients who try to incorporate their therapist whole, those who take other’s images and make slight transformations like adding a little salt or pepper are not really cooks or artists. Shelly Esaak says, “It means the difference between aping and assimilating; between copying and internalizing; between being unoriginal and innovative.”[3]
I have tried to use my own images to change or modify for use in other contexts. Like Shelly Esaak, I do feel some anger when “non-transformative “works” are, in turn, copyrighted, feted, receive royalties and/or are sold for staggering sums–though the original artist does not often benefit by so much as a credit line. “
As I pointed out in my video, The Creative Adventure, re-labeling and altering context is important to the creative process. Often the meaning of a situation is changed by changing the context. It promotes new perspectives. As I said in the video, “A man steals a loaf of bread. To the psychologist, he is a sociopath, to the minister he is a sinner, to the judicial system, he is a criminal, to the social worker, he is a victim, to his starving family, he is a hero.” [4]
I found that re-contextualizing is an important part of the creative process. In the “Show in Chicago” video I removed the paintings hanging on the walls, and substituted my own, retaining the shadows and frames of the original paintings of the Art Institute of Chicago. I then re-contexted a proposal for an exhibition I was planning at the Macky Art Gallery. They changed the format for the gallery so I modified the proposal into a photobook about creating:
This book is a supplement to a one-man multimedia show that takes paintings that have been in my videos in different roles and re-contextualizing them for this art show. Stills from the many videos I created over the last 20 years become the subject of this conceptual show. The commentary on the paintings with the stills is the art show. At times paintings are backdrops for other actors; at other time the paintings, especially the portraits, are the main actor. Thus this book is about an art show that is art about art about art. It also begins to address a new way of thinking about creating.
References
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The Quote Investigator, dedicated to tracing quotations. http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/03/06/artist
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Young, John G., M.D., “Taking it all in,” A Psychiatrist’s Notebook, Adventures in Creativity Productions, p. 76
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“Good Artists Borrow, Great Artists Steal” From Shelley Esaak, Former About.com Guide January 26, 2009
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The Creative Adventure. Video created by John G. Young, M.D.
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