Appropriation

Dolores Garnica

Appropriation

If it is about decontextualizing and resignifying, then the resulting possibilities are infinite. Appropriation is a noun of contemporary art that argues, discusses and inquires ... 

“Its only a tire in a museum”, is one classical and repeated argument in all discussion about contemporary art. I remember the smile of a painter when answered that oil paint was for him “a small tube from which paint comes out”. Then, “is only a stained fabric” could be an ironic reply to the discussion. This is well known to Mike Bidlo, an American visual artist author of his ‘Not Pollock’, ‘Not Picasso’ and ‘Not Duchamp’ reproductions of the original oeuvres that remind us the material and substantial value of art. In the same manner in which Richard Serra arises consciousness about our body, Bidlo gives us back materiality and theory of what makes us shudder inside a museum.

The ready-made is the closest antecedent of “appopriation”, but validating it after almost a hundred years seems pointless and there are several articles referring to this. Marcel Duchamp explained in an interview: “The word ‘ready-made’ presented at that moment, seemed to adapt perfectly to stuff that is not artwork, nor rough-drafts, and something where the term ‘art’ wasn’t implied. You have to go near stuff with visual indifference and, at the same time, with the lack of bad nor good taste.” Sherry Levine melted into bronze a reproduction of Duchamp’s urinary, and not for denying its originality and authenticity, but rather as a dialectic game with these concepts.

Other examples could be Rubén Méndez when he painted an scene of the film ‘Girl with a Pearl Earing’, a Peter Webber’s adaptation of the novel by Tracy Chevalier, which is written inspired on a painting by Vermeer. Also, Richard Prince when photographed articles from magazines with the Marlboro campaign, created by Leo Burnett, in 1954, ‘Marlboro Man’, one of the best advertising ideas of last’s century. The appropriation seems to have added characteristics, like serving to remark the importance of images, or the influence of the consumeristic society, the omnipresence of advertising, the exploitation of an original idea to the extreme, and many more thoughtful reflections, expressions, visions and meditations.

If the first sense of the ready-made was to alienate something from its context to bestow to it a new significance, a distinct voice, then the possibilities in appropriation will be infinite: everything is prone to be decontextualized. Any object in a museum is endowed with new meaning and poses new questions? Suffices to look around and to find the immense amount of everlasting things disposed to fulfill this duty. Displacement, even physical, played an important role in Duchamp’s exercise: the urinary went to the museum. The tire of a bike arrived to a space that validates art. There they were endowed with meaning.

“Duchamp from the beginning was a painter of ideas that never give way to the fallacy of conceiving painting as a purely manual or visual art,” wrote Octavio Paz. Duchamp conceived verbally what later would be transformed as an image. The sense in appropriation has to do with its verbal idea, with the process, contexts, texts, speeches, surroundings, scenarios, spaces and times that surround the object in particular (painting, photography, utilitarian objects, etc.) From these appropriation finds several angles, meanings, characteristics and formats: photography, painting of a painting, or the installation of an installation. Always with the mission of decontextualizing. In ‘The bed Ethel Rosenberg slept in the night before her execution’ by Ronald Jones, dated between 1953-1998 (the year of her execution and the year of the exposition) according to some art critics goes beyond the borders of appropriation, and yet is art that explores the everyday object. Without its title, the piece would be a simple bed in the hall of a museum.

The piece by Ronald Jones also meditates on other main-role which is essential in appropriation: the viewer, the one that beholds the oeuvre and understands conditions, contexts, all about an artwork reproducing another artwork, or a decontextualized object that will ask for a query of a new sense; or even maybe is asking something about politics, morality, market, collective conscience, originality, etc. Its appropriation what legitimates the bed of Ronald Jones as his piece, even when Ronald Jones did nothing to fabricate it.

If photography obligated painters to change (if we agree with the postmodernists), the concerning around the ready-made obligated appropriation to find new purposes that depicted it, not to be understood, but yet to find new challenges and reinvent a way to endure and develop. It looks easy to bring stuff and more stuff to the museums to make them look different in there, but is a goal that is dull and decays easily, as demonstrated by many vanguards. Appropriation knows about its brief future when is pleased with its first sense only, that's why sought and seeks new strategies and processes to conceive itself more as a medium rather than a expression.

In addition of the inquiries and responses posed by the artist, the appropriation carries-out with a deep discussion about status, values, characteristics and qualities of art; from the ones that make, validate, expose, sell, buy, admire, contemplate, or enjoy art. The appropriation itself is the bearer of some cogitation; which can be used to raise more ideas, images, discussions, pleasures and horrors. Primeval matter to create carefully and in great detail. Abusing of it is bad to health. We will have to wait to see what the future has in store for it: definition, theoretic frame, a methodology; is a matter of how the creators utilize it, how is exhibited, sold, bought, and legitimated by the new theoretical visions concerning to art. At the end, “is only a tire in the museum.”