Appropriation is the act of creating work which has been previously created from another source, this is most commonly seen within re-creating advertisement and popular media. Transforming and manipulating these images to create a new identity and meaning which can be used and seen as a form of art, which may have been passed previously. A good example of this would be the artist ‘Andy Warhol’, with the iconic piece of the can of Campbell soup.
However it is heavily debated to whether this is art in some regards and how it should be treated in line with the copyright Act 1968, which protects the source material of an image or media from being used, preventing the work from being infringed upon. However artist’s are able to appropriate work around this as the copyright law protects the expression of an idea, rather than the form of the idea such as an image. This means that it is not an infringement of copyright to appropriate upon an idea, though appropriating on the idea of which is being expressed from the source material from the original artist may be seen as a form of infringement.
Richard Prince is a popular example of the pros and cons of using appropriation, as he has become famous in the art world for heavily relying and using others work to become successful, through the ability to use appropriation. A clear example of this was through the exhibition “New portraits” which was a compilation of Instagram images from various users such as the “SuicideGirls”, presenting 38 in total. These had all been adapted by Richard Prince by placing his own comment section in each of their pieces, creating another identity to the work. However some artist’s find this highly controversial as the original artist SuicideGirls only made £90 from the same image, whereas Richard Prince who was not the original artist and used the source material made £9000 for the same image, without distributing any off the profits with the artist’s.
When Richard Prince was questioned on how he found the inspiration for the exhibition he mentioned how he had questioned his daughter around the subject of Tumblr another online tool for distributing art, he then followed up asking about who owned the images and whether they could be deleted and to what permission was need to work upon images.
“I asked my daughter about Tumblr. Are those your photos? Where did you get that one? Did you need permission? How did you get that kind of crop?”
“You can delete them? Really? What about these ‘followers’. Who are they? Are they people you know? What if you don’t want to share? How many of your friends have Tumblrs?”
Though I find appropriation as a useful and effective technique of questioning and manipulating work to create a new meaning, I feel it is important to reference and acknowledge the original artist, as preventing appropriation would prevent the progression of art, limiting what art can and cannot be. Although if the piece were to create a large amount of profit in comparison to the original idea, some of the profits should be distributed as the majority of the work was created by the source artist.
References;
Guardian Newspaper (2015) Instagram, and artist and the $100,000 selfies – appropriation in the digital age. Available from http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jul/18/instagram-artist-richard-prince-selfies
http://schools.walkerart.org/arttoday/index.wac?id=2363
https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&es_th=1&ie=UTF-8#safe=active&q=appropriation+art
http://www.artslaw.com.au/articles/entry/appropriation-art-an-overview-of-copyright-and-consumer-protection-for-arti/