Last class we discussed Appropriation Art. Appropriation art is art, created from images, from photos, and magazines etc. It reuses objects and culture to develop new art that mimics old art or objects that have already been created in the past. There are many copyright issues that come along with appropriation art: Artists artwork vs. ownership of original piece of works. Art forgery is a problem when artists recreate art to make it their own, but there can be issues about how much a piece of art has been altered to make it different enough from the original. Shepard Fairy, is an artist who ran into copyright issues after using a picture that was not his. The picture of Obama he used was taken by someone in the association press. Fairy changed the tilt of Obama's head and the colors, but this was not enough to not be sued by the person who had taken the photo. It would have also been acceptable it he drew the picture and then from his drawing to create his work. Marcel Duchamp in earlier art, also ran into copyright issues when he did his ready mades, including the Fountain. Glenn Brown is an appropriation artist as well. Develops his work from old, famous paintings. He takes images of that are well known from different sources like postcards, calenders, online images (etc.). He then combines all these into one paintings into one.
Shepard Fairy: Not as much of a drastic transformation in creating his artwork as Glenn Brown.
Altered a photograph of Obama. He argued he changed the position of Obama's head slightly, when he used the photo to create his piece.
Glenn Brown: Changes and recreates a piece of work from the past. Expresses that transformation and translation of historical paintings throughout history is a form of decay.
Makes his artwork his own (borrows imagery), looks at the differences in one piece of work (diff. images of same work makes his own art), paints a picture of how a piece of work has been distorted through time.
Glenn Brown's artwork reminds me of the way the Mona lIsa has been mass reproduced and has been altered.
I believe Glenn Brown is incredibly talented. I have appreciation for his artwork because it recognizes changes within the art world which have distorted amazing artworks from the past. I believe he is an important artist in contemporary society. Unlike Shepard Fairy who basically mimics photos and other pieces of art, I believe that Brown has much more talent and does not mimic other artworks, but changes them so dramatically to express the importance of not altering original pieces of artwork.
Mia Powers
No comments:
Post a Comment