Sherrie Levin takes plagiarism to new heights with her blatant copies of other artists work. Levin is making a statement about the value of art, and she states that,
‘A painting’s meanings lies not in its origin, but in its destination.’
(source from from OCA website, Art in theory 1900-2000)
She is questioning originality and authenticity and putting the meaning and interpretation of the work back to the viewer. However, I say that she came up with an original idea, which was to openly to plagerise other’s work, therefore her work is no different really…maybe someone will plagerise her plagerised work!
I found an interesting ‘Tate Shot’ with John Myatt, looking at an exhibition of Glen Brown’s work. Wyatt is a well known art forger, who was arrested for his work in 1995. He has a very interesting outlook on copying others’ work!
Myatt challenges the idea that authenticity is absolutely everything, the idea that a painting is only valuable if it can be absolutely traced back to the artist’s studio. Glen Brown refers to existing artworks and artists in his work, and incorporates what he finds into his own paintings. He mostly seems to work using thick, swirly paint strokes. His work is familiar, even if you do not totally recognise the original work which he references. In this way, he is not using the same approach as Levin, whose work was mostly identical to the ‘original’. (note: I was not able to find the conversation with Rochelle Steiner)
Jan Verwoert, ‘Living with ghosts: from appropriation to invocation in Contemporary art.’
Quite a challenging read, but the notes below are what I took from this essay.
‘Tranformation’ here implies creativity. Transformation of appropriated ideas/art. He talks about a reshuffling of a basic set of cultural terms through their strategical reuse and eventual transformation. Is he suggesting that the death of Modernism suspended historical continuity in art? He talks about frozen figures from moving pictures exemplifying this, which are then picked up and used or appropriated. Ownership of objects, styles, art , fashion, architecture – no one can hold onto possession of these as they re-emerge and are reinvented. History is now essentially ungraspable. The distance between ourselves and the past must be accepted. He states that words can still haunt us and force their way into the present day through echoes from the past and that art is the same. These are the ‘ghosts’ which cling to life from the past to the present.
Appropriation then involves letting history or the past ghosts re-appear without imposing conventional meaning on them. What it means for something to have meaning today…expose the unresolved moments of latent presence as they are now.
Tiger by my side 