The Case for Copying | The Art Assignment | PBS Digital Studios
Summary
TLDRThis video explores the concept of art appropriation, examining how artists like Walker Evans and Sherri Levine use copying to challenge notions of originality and authenticity. It delves into the history of artistic imitation, the role of context in art, and the impact of mass media on visual representation, ultimately questioning the value of a signature in art.
Takeaways
- 📸 The script discusses the concept of copying in art, contrasting Walker Evans' original 1936 photographs with Sherri Levine's 1981 reproductions, emphasizing the difference between documentation and artistic expression.
- 🎨 It explores the prevalence of copying in modern art, questioning whether it signifies creative inadequacy or a commentary on an image-saturated world.
- 🤔 The script prompts the audience to consider how to distinguish between copying and the historical use of allusions, influences, and visual sampling in art.
- 🖼️ It highlights the tradition of artists copying each other for various reasons, such as training, innovation, or to signal influence, using Raphael, Velasquez, and Picasso as examples.
- 👤 The script describes how images are not neutral but instruments that influence our perception of ourselves and others, with Manet's 'Old Musician' serving as an example of a composite image with multiple citations.
- 🔍 The discussion introduces 'appropriation art' and its focus on representation, citing the 'Pictures Generation' artists who used existing images to explore the structures of signification.
- 🎭 The script mentions how pop art, with its use of mass media images, blurred the lines between art and commercial products, as exemplified by Andy Warhol's work.
- 🤝 It contrasts pop art's embrace by the art market with appropriation art's more critical relationship with popular imagery, aiming to understand the psychological impact of images.
- 🏆 The script challenges the notion of the 'original genius' through appropriation art, suggesting that the concept is a myth linked to societal power structures.
- 👉 It points out that copying in art is about making fresh meanings through interaction with existing signs and symbols, emphasizing the importance of context in understanding art.
- 🌐 Finally, the script reflects on the broader implications of copying, suggesting that it exposes the myth of originality and highlights the power dynamics that determine representation in society.
Q & A
What was the purpose of Walker Evans' photographs from 1936?
-Walker Evans' photographs from 1936 were taken to document the American South during the Great Depression. He was hired by the Farm Security Administration for this purpose.
What is the significance of Sherri Levine's photographs in relation to Walker Evans' work?
-Sherri Levine's photographs, taken in 1981, were reproductions of Walker Evans' photographs. They are part of a series titled 'After Walker Evans', raising questions about the nature of originality and the role of copying in art.
What is the role of copying in the history of art?
-Copying has been a longstanding practice in art, used for training, demonstrating stylistic innovation, signaling influence, claiming prestige, or reworking subjects. It is not merely about imitation but also about engaging with existing imagery and traditions.
How did Raphael's portrait of Pope Julius II influence later artists?
-Raphael's portrait of Pope Julius II served as a model for Velasquez's portrait of Pope Innocent X, which in turn inspired Francis Bacon to create over forty-five versions of his own, each reflecting the psychological depths of the subject.
What is the concept of 'appropriation art'?
-Appropriation art is a movement where artists use existing images or cultural objects in their work. It foregrounds representation itself and explores how images inform our psyche and provide a basis for collective life.
What was the significance of the 'Pictures' exhibition curated by Donald Kuspit in 1977?
-The 'Pictures' exhibition brought together artists interested in understanding the picture itself. It marked the emergence of the 'Pictures Generation', who plundered existing images for their own work, focusing on the structure of signification rather than sources or origins.
How did Cindy Sherman's work challenge traditional notions of portraiture?
-Cindy Sherman's work involved photographing herself in poses and scenarios of generic feminine personas, challenging expectations and demonstrating how each portrait is influenced by our associations with other images and narratives.
What is the relationship between pop art and mass media?
-Pop art, including works by artists like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, built upon the ubiquity of mass media images. It used images from pop culture and commercial products, reflecting and critiquing the pervasive influence of mass media.
How does appropriation art challenge the concept of artistic originality?
-Appropriation art questions the value added by a signature and the authority of the artist over the meaning of a work. It suggests that the idea of the original genius is a myth and that the context and history of images are integral to their meaning.
What is the role of the art market in the reception of pop art and appropriation art?
-The art market quickly embraced pop art as another luxury object, while appropriation art had a different relationship with popular imagery, focusing more on understanding the psyche and challenging the structures of power that determine what kinds of representation are made available in society.
How does the concept of 'the death of the author' relate to the discussion of copying in art?
-The concept of 'the death of the author' suggests that the author has no particular authority over the meaning of a text or artwork. This idea is relevant to copying in art as it emphasizes the role of the viewer in interpreting the work and the web of connotations and cultural significance that a work exists within.
Outlines
📸 The Art of Copying: Reinterpretation and Influence
This paragraph discusses the concept of copying in art, using the works of Walker Evans and Sherri Levine as examples. Evans' photographs from the 1930s documented the American South during the Great Depression, while Levine's work from 1981 was based on reproductions of Evans' photographs. The paragraph explores the idea that copying in art is not new, but rather a long-standing practice where artists imitate each other to train, innovate, or signal influence. It delves into the history of art, referencing Raphael's portrait of Pope Julius II and its influence on Velasquez and later, Picasso. The discussion also touches on the notion of originality and the role of context in art, highlighting the work of modernist artists like Manet and Picasso, who used existing imagery to create new meanings. The paragraph concludes with the introduction of appropriation art, a movement that emerged in the late 1970s, focusing on the representation itself and questioning the structures of signification in art.
🎨 Pop Art and Appropriation: Challenging Originality
This paragraph examines the relationship between pop art and appropriation art, highlighting how artists like Andy Warhol and Richard Prince used mass media and advertising images in their work. It discusses the idea that these artists blurred the lines between art and commodity, challenging the traditional notions of originality and authorship. The paragraph also touches on the work of artists like Jack Goldstein and Darren Baum, who used appropriation to explore themes such as technology and sexual objectification. It further delves into the concept of the 'death of the author,' suggesting that the meaning of an artwork is not determined by the artist but by the reader's or viewer's experience. The discussion also includes the role of the art market in embracing pop art and the ways in which appropriation art challenges the institutions that rely on the idea of exceptionality and originality. The paragraph concludes by emphasizing the importance of context in understanding the meaning of art and how copying can reveal the myth of the original genius.
🌐 Art Assignment: Supporting Creative Expression
The final paragraph shifts focus to the Art Assignment, a platform funded by viewers through Patreon, allowing supporters to contribute to the creation of content they enjoy. It acknowledges the contributions of viewers and specific patrons, such as the Grand Master of the Arts Indianapolis Holmes Realty, and invites others to support the show through Patreon. This paragraph serves as a call to action, encouraging viewers to become active participants in the creation and continuation of the Art Assignment series.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Walker Evans
💡Sheree Levine
💡Great Depression
💡Appropriation Art
💡Mimesis
💡Pictures Generation
💡Pop Art
💡Authorship
💡Raphael
💡Michel Foucault
💡Context
Highlights
Walker Evans' 1936 photograph documented the American South during the Great Depression, serving as an iconic and indisputable historical record.
Sheree Levine's 1981 photograph is a reproduction of Evans' work, raising questions about the nature of originality and forgery in art.
The distinction between copying as creative inadequacy and as a form of artistic expression is explored in contemporary art.
Art history is filled with instances of visual sampling and allusions, predating modern concepts like hip hop's sonic sampling.
Copying in art has been a method for training, demonstrating innovation, signaling influence, and reworking subjects for contemporary contexts.
Raphael's portrait of Pope Julius II influenced Velasquez and later Francis Bacon, each adding their own psychological depth.
Picasso's reinterpretation of Velasquez's Las Meninas and Edouard Manet's Déjeuner sur l'herbe shows the evolution of artistic influence.
Mayonnaise's Old Musician is a composite image with numerous citations, challenging the notion of a painting as a single representation.
Appropriation art of the late 1970s, such as Donald Crimp's 'Pictures' exhibition, focused on the structure of signification in images.
Artists like Jack Goldstein and Darren Baum used appropriation to explore themes of anticipation, deferral, and sexual objectification in media.
Cindy Sherman's work challenges the predetermined narratives and expectations associated with gender and representation.
The concept of the 'flatbed picture plane' describes how paintings became surfaces for mass media images, reflecting our visual experience.
Andy Warhol's work in advertising influenced his choice of subjects, emphasizing the societal approval of images in art.
Richard Prince's work with copied advertising images questions the history and authorship associated with art.
Appropriation art challenges the institutions and structures that define originality and value in art.
Martha Rossler's work inserts war imagery into domestic scenes, highlighting the cognitive dissonance between the two.
The ready-made movement and appropriation art draw attention to the artist's role in assigning value through selection.
Appropriation art questions the value added by a signature and who has historically been authorized to sign works.
The myth of the original genius is critiqued through the concept that all creative works are built upon existing influences.
Appropriation art demonstrates that the context of images is integral to their meaning and that they exist within history.
Artists copying work shows the creation of fresh meanings through interaction with existing signs and symbols.
Transcripts
[Music]
this is a photograph by Walker Evans and
this is a photograph by Sheree Levine
Walker Evans photograph dates from 1936
when he was hired by the Farm Security
Administration to document the American
South in the wake of the Great
Depression Sherri Levine's was taken in
1981 from a reproduction of the Evans
photograph as part of a series titled
yes after Walker Evans credit where
credit is due but a forgery is not at
issue here
what is Evans photographs are iconic and
indisputable documents of a depression
they show us its face but what exactly
do Levine's photographs show us recent
art is full of copying of all kinds and
degrees art that borrows Steele's
pilfers or poaches existing images some
of them iconic others not are these
confessions of creative inadequacy bald
opportunism masquerading as concept are
these cries for help as we drown in an
image saturated world or the death
rattle of the great pictorial tradition
how are we supposed to distinguish this
kind of copying from a long history of
art full of allusions influences and
innumerable instances of visual sampling
long before hip hop spread the sonic
version of it coast to coast a sample
after all is just one part of a whole
song but what if the copy is the artwork
this is the case for copying artists of
course have been copying since time
immemorial in fact the earliest Western
traditions of aesthetic thought defined
art as mimesis or imitation of the
visible world but artists don't just
imitate the world they imitate each
other
copying in order to train their hands or
demonstrate stylistic innovation they
copy to signal the influence of other
artworks to claim the prestige of a
particular heritage or to rework a stock
artistic subject for their own time
working from existing imagery and
traditions can also suggest new ways to
navigate history Raphael's intimate
portrait of pope julius ii became a
model for Velasquez's portrait of Pope
Innocent the tenth which in turn
inspired Francis Bacon to make over
forty five versions of his own each
portrait transgressive in its own time
for how it exposed psychological depths
of the man at the seat of the church's
power Velasquez's Las Meninas was also
metabolized by Pablo Picasso who
additionally made numerous versions of
the déjeuner sur la painted by Edouard
in 1863 Monday's dejeuner in turn
borrowed its composition from a Raimondi
engraving of Raphael's judgment of Paris
and its subject from the concession
Petra but it's mayonnaise old musician
that establishes him as the modernist
Mixmaster though it might look like a
genre painting the old musician is in
fact a composite image with an
extravagant number of citations a
painted phrase as the art historian
Carol Armstrong called it that reads
after Watteau after myself and movie Oh
after linen and Velazquez and so on
mayonnaise painting is not a window onto
another reality but a cluster of
representations each one like a song
that can be sampled again and again
mayonnaise mashup moreover stares back
at us the old musician personifies the
way that all pictures so to speak regard
us images aren't just neutral depictions
of the world they're instruments
influencing how we perceive ourselves
and others DISA wareness inspired a
number of artists in the late 1970s to
make arts that foregrounded
representation itself our historians
refer to this work as appropriation art
in 1977 art critic Donald crimp curated
an exhibition titled pictures bringing
together artists who shared an interest
in understanding the picture itself
artists of the pictures generation as
they came to be called plundered
existing images for their own work Jack
Goldstein film metro-goldwyn-mayer loops
the familiar MGM lion's roar suspending
us between the pleasure of anticipation
and the frustrating deferral of the
feature film Darren Baum's technology
transformation Wonderwoman fragments and
repeats clips from the TV series to draw
out the relationship between technology
and sexual objectification by isolating
and manipulating images these artists
direct our attention toward their
subtext and demonstrate how they get
their meanings not through our actual
experience with lions or superheroes but
through our associations with other
pictures like them in our series of film
skills Cindy Sherman photographed
herself in the poses and scenarios of
generic feminine personas that evoked
stalked narratives so that each version
of Sherman's seems over determined from
the start by our expectations for her as
crimp wrote we are not in search of
sources or origins but of structures of
signification underneath each picture
there is always another picture these
artists certainly weren't the first to
use images from pop culture the aptly
named pop art movement built upon the
work of artists including Jasper Johns
and Robert Rauschenberg who made bronze
casts of mass-produced objects or
incorporated news prints and rubbish
into their work art historian Leo
Steinberg described this work as
belonging to the flatbed picture plane
borrowing the term from the flatbed
printing press that had flooded the
post-war world with mass media images a
Steinberg sought paintings were no
longer doorways to imaginary world Avoca
our visual experience
they were like tabletops strewn with
papers and objects to simulated how we
look at pictures in newspapers and
magazines not incidentally Andy Warhol
began his career in advertising war I'll
explain that he chose the subjects of
his paintings from commercial products
to celebrities precisely because
everyone already liked them the artists
job so Warhol claimed was not to offer
up new images of beauty but to reproduce
what society had already approved this
authorized him to appropriate images of
mass-produced objects and to turn them
out in the studio he called the factory
blurring the distinctions between artist
and factory worker and between commodity
and art in more recent years Richard
Prince who may sit atop the high throne
of copied M described his interest in
copying this way advertising images
aren't associated with an author they
look like they have no history to them
like they showed up all at once they
look like what art always wants to look
like yet of course Prince Warhol and
other pop artists certainly didn't fade
into the woodwork on the contrary a
Campbell Soup can is almost synonymous
with the name Warhol a single blown up
cartoon frame with Roy Lichtenstein pop
art held up a mirror to ubiquity of mass
media but a mirror is often the weakest
form of critique after all that other
thing that looks like it showed up all
at once without history that's the
mass-produced commodity perhaps it's no
surprise then that the art market
quickly embraced pop art is one more
luxury object appropriation art on the
other hand had a very different
relationship to popular imagery more
like certain strands of Dada and
surrealism appropriation art sought to
understand how images around us inform
our psyche and provide a basis for
collective life Martha rossler's House
Beautiful bringing the war home used a
technique similar to surrealist
inserting photographs from the Vietnam
War into scenes of American domestic
life both sets of images were taken from
copies of life Rossler just reassembled
what was already bound together in the
magazine and what only a serious
threshold for cognitive dissonance holds
apart appropriation aren't also
hearkened back to the ready-made by
highlighting how an artist gesture of
selection could confirm value on the
most mundane object like the ready-made
appropriation drew attention to the
institutions whose operations depend on
ideas of exceptionality and originality
even and especially in the face of total
on originality appropriations by
Sturdevant who made perfect copies of
artist's work in the case of Warhol
actually borrowing his silk streams to
get the job done as well as those by
Shari Levine compel viewers to question
just what kind of value is added by a
signature and more importantly what
kinds of people have historically been
authorized to sign works in the first
place
hint hint they be usually looked more
like Walker Evans and Duchamp than Shari
Levine our Sturdivant indeed countless
creative achievements in our museums are
considered anonymous many of them seized
from regions and social groups that have
been denied recognition and
representation this is to say nothing of
conventionally unethical chiral
contributions from quilts to recipes to
folk or blues songs in his essay the
death of the author the theorist roland
bart argued that writing contains many
layers of association that can only be
unified in the readers experience of a
text this meant that the author had no
particular authority over the meaning of
a book because anything she wrote
existed in a web of connotations and
cultural significance to interpret a
book or an artwork was therefore not to
decode it or to identify its definitive
meaning but to demonstrate how it
functioned in this web of significance
Michel Foucault followed with his essay
what is an author which argued that an
author is actually just an organizing
principle that allows us to group
together a certain number of cultural
objects more importantly it clarifies
who did not make the work impeding
rather than helping along the free
circulation and inventiveness of
creative output no less of a paradigm
for the artistic genius than Pablo
Picasso once said good artists borrow
great artists steal this is often taken
to mean that great artists transform
their influences into their own
authentic and original inventions but
appropriation art turns this meaning on
a pad appropriation art asks us to
recognize that so-called great artists
managed to convince us that their works
are authentic and original because
society has already given them the power
to be authentic and original for reasons
that have little to do with genius and a
lot to do with the structures of power
that concerned Foucault yes there are
people who have done amazing things and
gotten credit for it and we're grateful
for their work but copying shows that
the idea of the original originating
genius is a myth it shows that this myth
is linked to the power of images
themselves to determine what kinds of
representation visual as well as
political are made available in our
societies appropriation art well
sometimes confounding and often
contested helps us see that the context
of pictures is absolutely integral to
their meaning it reminds us that
pictures don't just have histories they
exist in history a copy no matter how
perfect is never really the same as the
original since its context is always
shifting and since we exist in history
our perspective is always shifting to
when artists copy we recognize that
they're making fresh meanings through
their interaction with signs and symbols
and bits of information already out in
the world and that this work is never
done not for them and not for us the art
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[Music]
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