We have all heard the saying ‘there are no new ideas’, and as a singular statement this can be quite a daunting concept. However, when Mark Twain declared this, he actually wrote:
“There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of coloured glass that have been in use through all the ages.” (1907)
As such, we can see that Twain was not lamenting the downfall or original or new thought, he was simply examining the way in which we, as a human race, use the ideas, teachings and works of others to influence our own thinking, which is not to say we are simply regurgitating old ideas, we are instead looking at them from a new and exciting perspective, even it is through the same coloured glass. This occurrence in the world of fine art is often referred to as appropriation. Tate defines appropriation as “the practice of artists using pre-existing objects or images in their art with little transformation of the original” (www.tate.org.uk), which directly refers to the appropriation of materials or imagery in the creation of art. Personally, I believe that appropriation can apply to the theme or concept behind a work as well, but let us first unpack the notion of appropriated imagery and object.
The first documented or acknowledged appropriation of materials in fine art dates back to the early 20thcentury, when artists such as Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque began to incorporate newspaper clippings, old clothes and sketches into their cubist paintings, however the widely accepted view is that the introduction of the readymade in fine art marked the beginning of a common practice of appropriation and pastiche within the arts. The most famous readymade of course being Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain (1917); an upturned urinal signed ‘R.Mutt’. Jumping forward past Dali’s Lobster Telephone(1936), Robert Rauchenberg’s “combines” (1950s) and we arrive at the likes of Andy Warhol, Barbara Kruger, Sherrie Levine and Richard Prince, whose practices all revolve around the appropriation of media and pop culture imagery, either through collage, printing or re-photographing. In doing so, these artists not only repurposed the images they incorporated into their work, but also repositioned the subjects, giving new meaning or themes to the work. For example, Richard Prince’s Cowboys(1980s), used the cropping of adverts to frame a corporate image in a new light; something that “embodied adventure, self-reliance, and rugged individuality” (Guggenheim.org) and in doing so, created a new perception of the advertising image and situating it within the spheres of fine art.
This is precisely where appropriation relates to my work. As you will probably already be familiar with, my cropping, stylising and recreating through paint, is a process which all stems from and is reliant upon, the use of an existing photograph of a person, and more specifically, their body. My source images vary in provenance, from social media, my personal archive, submissions from the public, from porn, film, pop culture and the press, and while the images submitted to me and my own personal images are used with consent and understanding from their author, often, my work is created through the appropriation of an image not taken by me and often without the authors knowledge of my use of it. This may seem problematic – and there are well documented legal disputes concerning artists who have made vast profits by simply re-using someone else’s photograph or image; Jeff Koons and Richard Prince being the most prolific – however, if we are to look back to Mark Twain’s ideas on originality and ‘newness’, is using another person’s image as inspiration an infringement of their ownership, or is this simply the starting point of an idea?
Unfortunately, there is no cut and dried definition of fair use within copyright law, which is why many artists like Prince and Koons often end up in long, drawn out legal disputes over the intellectual property behind their work – sometimes erring in their favour, other times not. In my painting practice, the use of an existing image is a key conceptual factor in my work, and so if I were to only take inspiration and create paintings from images I had personally taken, the entire concept of my work which comments of the intended viewer, the context of a body, self-image and diversity in media, would fall flat. Also, as I am painting the images in abstracted ways, it could be said that I am merely referencing each photograph I use and not attempting to claim ownership of the original image.
I must stress here that I do not feel the need to defend my particular avenue of appropriation, merely to clearly explain to you the relevance of understanding the artistic movement in relation to my painting. As such, let us now discuss the notion of appropriating an idea or concept.
Continuing with my focus on Twain’s statement, if it is impossible for there to be new ideas, then surely any artwork that is dealing with an idea, concept or theme, is, by default, piggybacking an existing idea, which has an author or school of thought attributed to it. As such, all artwork is the appropriation of someone else’s idea, most probably looked at through a new combination of kaleidoscope panes and with a slightly different tone or perspective, but none-the-less, an appropriated idea. My work, for example, grapples with notions of feminism, the male gaze, perception, image and viewer intention, abstraction, the body as landscape, diversity and body confidence; none of which are concepts that I conceived or have ownership of, but I do have ownership of my particular exploration into these concepts, of the way I create images, of the way I crop each photograph and of the paintings I create. This surely is the beauty of appropriation, that while there are countless artists who inspire me, numerous thinkers whose ideas have influenced my practice, and multiple sources from which I find vision, but no one has ever considered these concepts of images in quite the way I have. Which is, certainly, the most beautiful thing about art and appropriation.
Sherrie Levine epitomises the need and reason for appropriation in contemporary society quite elegantly in her ‘Statement’ for Style Magazine (1982), she states:
“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 clash. A picture is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture.” (Cited in Evans, 2009: 81)
This awareness of the pluralistic nature of the world and the society we live in brimming with knowledge and definition, echo’s Twain’s notion that new ideas are impossible, but new ways of thinking, seeing and feeling, through the appropriation of existing materials and ideas, are not.
Bibliography
Evans, D. (2009) Appropriation. London; Cambridge, Mass.: Whitechapel; MIT Press. (Documents of contemporary art; Documents of contemporary art series.).
(Sherrie Levine, ‘Statement’ [incorporating appropriated phrases from sources such as Roland Barthes’ ‘The Death of the Author’], Style magazine, special issue as catalogue of ‘Mannerism: A Theory of Culture’, Vancouver Art Gallery (Vancouver, March 1982) 48; reprinted in Charles Harrison and Paul Wood, Art in Theory 1900-2000 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003) 1067.)
Twain, M (1907) Own Autobiography: Chapters from my autobiography. Second Edition (2010). University of Wisconsin Press.
Tate.org.uk
Guggenheim.org