Idea - Appropriation

“To take possession of another's imagery (or sounds), often without permission, reusing it in a context which differs from its original context, most often in order to examine issues concerning originality or to reveal meaning not previously seen in the original. This is far more aggressive than allusion or quotation, it is not the same as plagiarism however. An image reused in collage is an example, but more complete are the photographs that Sherri Levine (American) made of photographs by earlier photographers.”

http://www.artlex.com

copyright Michael Delahunt

I have recently become very intrigued by a set of old photographs, so I decided to re-do them.  I took aspects such as clothing, position, and lifestyle into consideration, and became this woman in the photographs.  This experience was empowering, as stated in the latter quote below, "a strong personal identification with [both] the primordial artist."  This connection is what I am aiming for, yet James Young's article about cultural mixing and their flaws, which he calls an "aesthetic handicap," made me think I may not be doing it properly.  I was not alive in the seventies and can not relate one hundred percent to the culture, because most of what I know is through movies and media, which has a great bias possibility.  Yet I do not feel as if that is as important as a strong connection with the former artist, my uncle.  My use of appropriation is to be put into another's shoes, whether it be my uncle or one or a combination of his lovers.  

QUOTES

“The pictures I make are really ghosts of ghosts; their relationship to the original images is tertiary, i.e., three or four times removed. By the time a picture becomes a bookplate it's already been rephotographed several times. When I started doing this work, I wanted to make a picture which contradicted itself. I wanted to put a picture on top of a picture so that there are times when both pictures disappear and other times when they're both manifest; that vibration is basically what the work's about for me-that space in the middle where there's no picture.”

-Quoted by Sherrie Levine in an interview by Jeanne Siegel

Siegel, Jeanne. "After Sherrie Levine." Sherrie Levine @ art / not art. N.p., Sept. 2010. Web. 29 Sept. 2010. <http://www.artnotart.com/sherrielevine/arts.su.85.html>.

“His inability to cope with [these] forces compelled him to develop his early conception of appropriation, and his relevatory visit to the Trocadero Museum crystallized his realization that the potent weapon of appropriation could be assimilated into his art to control or conquer these dangerous and unpredictable forces throughout his career…Picasso’s subsequent methods of appropriation: a fundamental belief that art is, in his words, ““a form of magic,”” a strong personal identification with both the primordial artist and God the Creator, and a conviction that the appropriation of works by other artists would result in a magical transfer of artistic powers.”

-Timothy Anglin Burgard on Picasso’s use of appropriation

Burgard, Timothy Anglin. "Picasso and Appropriation." The Art Bulletin 73.3 (1991): 479-494. JSTOR. Web. 29 Sept. 2010. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/3045817>.

ARTICLES

Picasso is one of the greatest and most well known examples of use of appropriation.  Go to http://www.jstor.org/stable/3045817 to read more.

Burgard, Timothy Anglin. "Picasso and Appropriation." The Art Bulletin 73.3 (1991): 479-494. JSTOR. Web. 29 Sept. 2010. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/3045817>.

Chinese philosopher writes about appropriation and flaws in mixing culture. Go to http://www.jstor.org/stable/30209982 to read more.

Young, James O. "Art, authenticity, and appropriation." Frontiers of Philosophy in Chine 1.3 (6): 455-476. JSTOR. Web. 29 Sept. 2010. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/30209982>.

There are many different ways to use appropriation, here are some famous examples:

(left) Las Meninas by Diego Velazquez in 1656

(right) Las Meninas (after Velazquez) by Pablo Picasso in 1957

Sherrie Levine

After Walker Evans

1981

Walker Evans

Hale County, Alabama 1936

Artist - Sophie Calle

“These works electrified France's art world, even if Calle had not originally conceived them as art. Her pictures were enticingly enigmatic; her texts read like detective reports, or a psychiatrist's case notes, or even a Le Monde journalist's deadly prose.”

Jeffries, Stuart. "Sophie Calle: stalker, stripper, sleeper, spy." guardian.co.uk. Guardian News and Media Limited , 23 Sept. 2009. Web. 27 Sept. 2010. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/sep/23/sophie-calle>.

“Raking through her emotional life for subjects, she has been compared to women artists including Emin and accused of cheap tricks. "Love, life and death - all of that is the most mundane material for artists. It amuses me because people often say, doesn't it bother you to show your private life? I say, well if you ruled out private life, you would have to eliminate all poetry.”

Chrisafis, Angelique. Calle, Sophie. "He loves me not” guardian.co.uk. Guardian News and Media Limited , 23 Sept. 2009. Web. 27 Sept. 2010. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/sep/23/sophie-calle>.

“Sophie Calle (b. 1953) is a French writer, photographer, installation artist, and conceptual artist. Sophie Calle's work is distinguished by its use of arbitrary sets of constraints and evokes the French literary movement of the 1960s known as Oulipo. Her work frequently depicts human vulnerability and examines identity and intimacy. She is recognized for her detective-like ability to follow strangers and investigate their private lives. Her photographic work often includes panels of text of her own writing.

Sophie Calle questions and challenges the relationship between text and photography, private and public personae, truth and fiction, in a groundbreaking, utterly original way. Her photographic work evokes narrative, affect and emotion, touching the viewer as well as the possibilities and limitations of photography. In 2010 Sophie Calle has been selected as the 30th winner of the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography, in conjunction with the ceremony an exhibition of here work Sophie Calle - 2010 Hasselblad Award Winner was held at the Hasselblad Center at the Göteborg Museum of Art.

Sophie Calle is an artist who works with photographs and performances, placing herself in situations almost as if she and the people she encounters were fictional. She also imposes elements of her own life onto public places creating a personal narrative where she is both author and character. She has been called a detective and a voyeur and her pieces involve serious investigations as well as natural curiousity.

Although much of her work employs voyeurism, Sophie Calle has allowed her own life to be put on display as well. She became so intrigued by following her unwitting subjects that she wanted to reverse the relationship and become the subject herself. She asked her mother to hire a private detective to follow her, without the detective knowing that she had arranged it, with the hopes that his investigation would provide photographic evidence of her existence.”

For entire bibliography, go to http://www.egs.edu/faculty/sophie-calle/biography/

 “Room with a view”

2003

Black and white print, frames (x2)

70 x 51 inches + 20 x 20 inches 

“The breasts” 

2001

Black and white print, aluminum, text, frames (x2)

47 ¼ x 63 inches + 19 ¾ x 19 ¾ inches

View of the exhibition "Prenez soin de vous" in 2008 at Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Site Richelieu, Paris (France)

View of the exhibition "Douleur Exquise" in 2007 at Luxembourg, European Capital of Culture, Luxembourg (Luxembourg)

Sophie Calle's work is very intriguing to me.  I'm not necessarily drawn to images themselves, but by her way of working.  Calle is very much interested in people and in herself.  She is constantly studying, not necessarily making art.  She also switches roles between the watcher and the watched.  She commonly uses excerpts from her own writing to further explain the work, which in my opinion, needs explanation, since the images are part of a whole narrative.  The images that I have chosen to put on here are for different reasons.  The first image is part of her "Sleepers" series, in which she gets strangers to sleep next to her and tell her stories.  This series began as a study, not as art.  She is an interesting person in general, not just an artist giving the media something to look at.  She does it because she cares, because she obsesses.  The second image is the documentation of the revelation of growing breasts.  It is something that bothered her in her childhood, and she developed later on in life, not scared at all to show it.  The last two images I selected are more for the presentation style, yet the projects themselves are also incredibly interesting.  They both happen to be projects that emerged from breakups.  These are both very intimate projects, and it takes a very strong woman to show that to the world. She took over a library in France to exhibit her "Take Care of Yourself" series, in which she allowed 107 women to read a breakup letter she recieved.  In the last photograph, this architecture was built specifically for her exhibit, with turning walls, mesh fabric, and reflective walls that distort the human figure.  These aspects are meant to further explain her conceptual ideas.  Memories blending, distorting.  Presentation style is a factor that I have been considering as well, and can definitely make or break a exhibit.

Interview:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/sep/23/sophie-calle

Sophie Calle does not have her own webpage, but she is represented by: 

http://www.galerieperrotin.com/artiste-Sophie_Calle-1.html

Gallerie Emmanuel Perrotin

http://arndtberlin.com/website/artist_937

ARNDT

Idea - Collage

Collage: noun. (1) an artistic composition made of various materials (as paper, cloth, or wood) glued on a surface. (2) a creative work that resembles such a composition in incorporating various materials or elements. (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)

-Copeland, Roger. "Merce Cunningham and the Aesthetic of Collage." TDR 46.1 (2002): 11-28. JSTOR. Web. 23 Sept. 2010. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/1146942>.

-Copeland, Roger. "Cunningham, Collage, and the Computer." PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 21.3 (1999): 42-54. JSTOR. Web. 23 Sept. 2010. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/3245965>.

“In sum, the collage is an awkward amalgam of three unresolved elements (1) purely worldly elements, especially such fragments of dailiness as newspapers; (2) purely artistic elements such as line, color, and shape – the typical constituents of form, and (3) mixed or impure elements, or residual images of an imitated nature, ranging from the famous imitation wood grain and chair caning to traces of such domestic objects as clay pipes and such studio props as guitars…The elements are already “relative” by reason of their displacement from the life-world into the “art world,” and by reason of their fragmentary state…They are an experiment in time and space – which shows that the old idea of Modern art as an experiment concerned with articulating the fourth dimension has, for all its charming naiveté, a certain truth to it.”

-Donald Kuspit quoted in Copeland, Roger. "Merce Cunningham and the Aesthetic of Collage." TDR 46.1 (2002): 11-28. JSTOR. Web. 23 Sept. 2010.

“Within the universe of collage, seemingly unrelated elements begin to “resonate” off one another – across gaps of both space and time – resulting in protean, unstable, and wholly provisional relationships.” 

-Copeland, Roger. "Merce Cunningham and the Aesthetic of Collage." TDR 46.1 (2002): 11-28. JSTOR. Web. 23 Sept. 2010.

“Collage appeals to an age that has come to distrust claims of “unity” and fixed boundaries.”

-Copeland, Roger. "Cunningham, Collage, and the Computer." PAJ: A Journal of

     Performance and Art 21.3 (1999): 42-54. JSTOR. Web. 23 Sept. 2010.

The above quotes are taken from two articles, both centered around the idea of collage related to Merce Cunningham, an American dancer and choreographer who stretches the boundaries of the uses of the word collage.  The article "Merce Cunningham and the Aesthetic of Collage" includes input from various artists and writers, such as Susan Sontag and Max Ernst.  Sontag describes the modern city as a collage, and Ernst  defines collage as "the meeting of two distance realities on a place foreign to them both."  (Merce Cunningham and the Aesthetic of Collage, pg 14) This definition moves me the most.  By using the medium of collage, perhaps I can cancel out feeling uncomfortable about discovering the past because I will be bringing it to a level that has not yet been reached.  I can define that level, and how I want things to work and flow together.  I have control over presenting my past.  The unknown can stay unknown or I can present it as something that it was, or something that I may want it to be.  This idea is very freeing to me.  There are plenty of artists who have worked with the idea of collage, yet Derek Gores' images stand out to me at the moment.  They define their subjects with other symbols, words, shapes, colors, etc, yet there is still emotion and connection coming from the subject alone.

The following images are by Derek Gores:

"Derek has gained national attention for his collage portrait series, recycling magazines, labels, and found materials to create the works on canvas. The series showcases Gores’ contrasting interests in the natural beauty of the figure, the angular design aesthetics of fashion (and machinery), and a fearless sense of play."

 http://www.artistaday.com/?p=4493

Artist - Tom Chambers

TOM CHAMBERS
http://www.tomchambersphoto.com

Chase Young Gallery, Boston, MA
http://www.chaseyounggallery.com
Galería Hartmann, Barcelona, Spain
http://www.galeriahartmann.com

Prom Gown 3

From the series : Rite of Passage

Archival Pigment Ink on Cotton Rag Paper

Aground

From the series : Ex Votos

Archival Pigment Ink on Cotton Rag Paper

Saccharine Perch

From the series : Entropic Kingdom

Archival Pigment Ink on Cotton Rag Paper

Winged Migration

From the series : Entropic Kingdom

Archival Pigment Ink on Cotton Rag Paper

Tom Chamber's work was introduced to me through Lauren in our second individual meeting.  Out of all of the photo-collage artists that were brought up, I felt as if Chamber's final images had the most outstanding impact on me visually and conceptually.  A lot of his work deals with ideas like tension, vulnerability, and collision.  In many of Chamber's pictures, the viewer can interpret what they want from it, as stated in the first quote by Chambers himself below.  I like the idea of not being too straightforward, yet having some sort of vision and working with what you have as the material.  Chambers combines elements of both his film and digital images, scanning in the film to make the final product look seamless.  The idea of combining the two aspects of photography advocates what I hope to produce with my work.  I would like to replicate his dream-like quality of his images, but I am hesitant only because Chambers states that each of his photographs take about a month to produce, so I must find a way to produce a similar result in much quicker turn around. 

INTERVIEW
http://www.tomchambersphoto.com/pdfs/Chambers_Shots_Article.pdf

BIOGRAPHY
“Tom Chambers was born and raised on a farm in the Amish country of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Tom completed a B.F.A. in 1985 from Ringling School of Art, Sarasota, Florida with an emphasis in graphic design and strong interest in photography. For many years Tom has worked as a graphic designer, including the design of packaging and magazines. Since 1998 Tom has devoted himself to photomontage for sharing the intriguing unspoken stories which reflect his view of the world and elicit feelings in the viewer.

Currently, Tom is represented by a number of galleries in the United States and Europe. His work has been shown nationally and internationally through solo and group exhibitions, as well as in a wide range of print and online publications. Recently, NPR's (National Public Radio) "All Things Considered" and "All Songs Considered" presented a collaborative Project Song based on the photograph "Black Dog's Retreat" (October 12, 2009). Tom has received recognition for his photography through a variety of awards, such as Worldwide Photography Gala Awards, First Place Digital Enhanced; Fotoweek DC, First Place Fine Arts (2009) and Second Place Fine Arts (2008); Critical Mass Top 50 (2008 and 2006); and Texas Photographic Society National Competition Third Place (TPS #18, 2009) and First Place (TPS #15, 2006). Tom has received fellowships from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and the Virginia Commission for the Arts.”
-Tom W. Chambers; “about” section on http://www.tomchambersphoto.com

QUOTES
"Through photomontage I present unspoken stories which illustrate fleeting moments in time and which are intended to evoke a mood in the viewer. These mythical illustrations might address the fragility of childhood or the delicate transition experienced by a child passing into adolescence and then adulthood. Others express the tension in the uncertain coexistence between man and his environment, a delicate balance too often ignored and damaged. Each photomontage is carefully constructed, using both images that have been planned and those that unexpectedly enhance the story. With digital photography I desire to move beyond documentation of the present, and rather seek to merge reality and dreams in musing about possibilities of the future."
-Tom W. Chambers; http://www.tomchambersphoto.com found under "portfolio"

“… the assemblages by Chambers show scenes from a world one would believe to come straight from the dreams of a sleeping child’s spirit, a world where exaggeration and fantasies are the driving force of searching a sense of mystery and one’s faith. Still, his images are open to individual interpretation: “I try to create scenes that are ambiguous, where it is up to the viewer to interpret what is happening.”…Tom Chambers' works of art bridge the gap between an inspiration belonging to the past and decisively modern techniques.”
-Tanguay, Antoine. Photo Selection Magazine, Culture. Page 20. http://www.tomchambersphoto.com/pdfs/Chambers_Photo_Selection.pdf