Annotated Mona Lisa, The - Strickland, Carol [147]
APPROPRIATION ART: THE ART OF RECYCLING. A key Modernist concept undermined by ’80s art was the idea of the art object as a handmade original. This magnum opus was supposed to be a culminating statement, the product of an artist’s gradual progress. Forget progress, said the Post-Modernists, for whom “new” did not automatically equate with “improved.” The future of art lay in the past more than in the individual imagination.
Artists began to appropriate images from diverse sources, as Pop artists had done, but drew on art history and mythology as well as the mass media. They combined pre-existing images with their own (as in the work of Julian Schnabel and David Salle) or presented the appropriated images as their own (Louise Lawler’s montages of famous art works, Mike Bidlo’s obvious forgeries of masterpieces, and Sherrie Levine’s photographs of Edward Weston photographs). Jeff Koons recast kitsch images like an inflatable bunny in stainless steel. By retreading familiar ground, Appropriation Artists sought to annex both the power of the original image and reveal its manipulative force as propaganda.
Kruger, “Untitled (What big muscles you have!),” 1986, Centre Pompidou, Paris. Kruger’s jolting combination of language and image speaks out on political issues like censorship, abortion, domestic violence, and bigotry.
Schnabel, “Hope,” 1982, Whitney, NY. Schnabel layers different images and objects, showing how Appropriation Art recycles pre-existing elements into new statements.
PHOTOGRAPHY-DERIVED ART: RERUNS.
A form of Appropriation Art uses photographic images in unexpected combinations to re-interpret history and comment on socio-political issues. Relying on mechanical reproduction rather than handmade imagery, this new hybrid art form fragments, layers, and juxtaposes photographed images (as in the torn, yellowed photo-assemblages of Doug and Mike Starn, known as the Starn Twins) to change their context and meaning.
KRUGER: BILLBOARD BARRAGE. New Jersey-born Barbara Kruger (b. 1945) splices cropped photographic images with text in an impassioned, punchy, feminist art. Kruger’s aggressive polemics use a mock-advertising graphic style of blown-up images with confrontational messages that assault the viewer. “I want to speak and hear impertinent questions and rude comments,” Kruger said. “I want to be on the side of surprise and against the certainties of pictures and property.”
Sherman, “Untitled #228,” 1990, Metro Pictures, NY. Sherman photographs herself as characters based on Old Master portraits.
SHERMAN: COSTUME MELODRAMAS.
American artist Cindy Sherman (b. 1954) specializes in fabricated self-portraits in which she dresses up like Hollywood or Old Master stereotypes and photographs herself. In the 1970s she “starred” in imaginary black-and-white movie stills based on ’50s film noir clichés. The sham images of terrified, wide-eyed ingenues often implied sex and violence as well as the limitations of traditional female roles — always the victim, never the victor.
Her ’80s work shifted to large-scale color prints in which she masqueraded as both male and female characters derived from art masterpieces. Yet, though she closely resembled a Holbein monk, Fragonard courtesan, or van Eyck matron, the re-creations were deliberately artificial, emphasizing obvious bits of fakery like false noses, wigs, or latex bosom. Although the sham self-portraits seem like narcissistic role-playing, they are “pictures of emotions personified,” Sherman insisted, “not of me.” Her stated goal: “I’m trying to make other people recognize something of themselves rather than me.”
LONGO: THE CITY AS CINEMA. American artist Robert Longo (b.