ART IN CONTEXT LECTURE: Chris Short: APPROPRIATION

 As we are working on a fine art project that is related to appropriation, Chris Short delivered a very interesting and coherent lecture regarding the subject.

Everything that we do is an appropriation. We are never doing anything original, if we did then others would not know what we were doing. We appropriate all the time. Everything we learn is cultured and we all have an inner world that we express.

Chris Short used Kirchner’s Bathers 1909 as an example of an expressive piece of art portraying out Inner world. As an example of an artist delving around in psychoanalysis and the mind, he referenced Cathedral by Jackson Pollock.

Robert Rauschenberg parodies the idea of an original gesture: he makes a mark and then he does it again, showing that an expressive gesture could be and most likely is taken from people before him. This is particularly evident in his work entitled Factum and Tracer. Other artists work is being included in his work. His work is of a composite nature and there is a definite shift in attitude from Pollock’s work.

Around the time that these artists were at work: the enlightenment, science and the bible had promised progress for mankind and it was felt that if people could know more, then the world would be a better place. Greenburg spoke about progression from realism to abstraction and how art work changed from being life like and realistic to being more about the paint. He calls this progress. Artists had a sense that they were on a mission. Instead of original art, they recycled and took ideas from other places and other existing artworks. Art was important because it mattered to life. Rauschenberg recycled and deliberately appropriated. Artists were also appropriating from the masters during this time.

Appropriation was and is not about throwing a few things together, it was a radical shift of the world and the way that things were perceived.

Leo Steinberg talked about Rauschenberg and his ideas in his art theory book – Other Criteria: He referred to this new work as  a flat bed picture plane and described the new technique as a shift to culture from nature. Art becomes about art in a new kind of way, bringing lots of cultural elements together to create a newer perspective on the world rather than directly referencing nature for example. He uses the example of a noticeboard to back up his points. A noticeboard is a place where a variety of different imagery and text and things come together, it demonstrates conflict and confusion. They are together on the board even though they don’t make sense and give you a different order of experience.

Rauschenberg worked with appropriated transferred photographs, interfering with each other like different noises on the same wavelength.Technology contributed to this shift in consciousness and the new means of production aided appropriation. Rauschenberg’s work surface stood for the mind itself. The piece of artwork created is analogue for the mind and the centre of the works of art are lost.

Eduardo Manet’s work – Rue Mosnier with flags 1878 shows disillusion and is looked at with a confused eye. When he looked at traditional art, he said it was too static. He felt that paintings should capture disorder and portray the movement of life. To him work should be expressive.

A Parody is a modern term that needs a norm to mock something against. Pastiche is a post modern term and is a “parody that has lost its sense of humour” – Jameson. Pastiche and parody open up the idea to take ideas, to be influenced, to repeat and to appropriate. Art shifted from a depth model to a surface model – reiteration. There was a loss of faith in the depth model and a mass loss of faith in progress – artists felt that there was no need to make anything new, they could just work from an influence. Things stopped being new and became appropriated.

Some examples that accurately demonstrate appropriation were shown in this lecture.

Franciso Goya’s The sleep of reason produces monster’s which was originally an attack on neo-classicism and Yinka Shionibares appropriation.

Pablo Picasso’s Las Meninas appropriated from the Diego Velasquez original.

 Yinka Shionibare’s the Swing and Jean Honore Fragonard’s original painted that she was inspired by to create an appropriation.

Appropriations do not have to be almost a copy of the original artwork, artists can rework the visually explored artwork so that it becomes an analysis of the piece as well as a pastiche telling us something further about the work. New appropriations can also help artists reflect on the original pieces of art that their own work was appropriated from.

This lecture was incredibly valuable in terms of aiding my research for my subject work. We have been asked to create a body of work in response an existing artwork. Even though a lot of these artworks are almost copies of the original, I have been given examples of how not to appropriate as I do not want to make a blind copy of the work I have chosen. I want to use it to be inspired and create my own artwork in response to and inspired by my chosen piece. It was highly interesting to learn why artists no longer focused on the new and how using influences from others can be a successful gateway to creating exciting artwork that you may never have produced without a prior observation of other people’s art. I am coming to realise that even if I think that something that I have made is original, it most likely isn’t as subconsciously I could have seen something similar that stuck in my mind. I am looking forward to the end result of this project and to see how far I can actually take my original influence before it becomes too distant from the original and loses all tangents to it or vice versa how closely related my body of work could become.