Introduction

Appropriation Art: Artist As Support Personnel

Artists have various support personnel that are involved in the artistic process. We consider a painter to be an artist, this painter may have many support personnel that aid in the artistic process such as the manufacturer of the canvas, or the manufacturer of the gesso that primes it, whoever mixes the pigments to make the paints (unless this is done by the painter him/self), the maker of the brushes, and potentially even assistants that help in the painting process. In nonvisual arts there are many more support personnel to consider who aren’t considered “artists” and aren’t given credit for the work as a whole. A question that comes out of this is, “How little of the core artistic activity can a person do and still be an artist?”[1]. This question becomes more complicated when looking at appropriation art.

What is Appropriation Art?

“Appropriation is the intentional borrowing, copying, and alteration of preexisting images and objects. It is a strategy that has been used by artists for millennia, but took on new significance in mid-20th-century America and Britain with the rise of consumerism and the proliferation of popular images through mass media outlets from magazines to television.”[2]

In the process of appropriation art, the artist turns another artist into support personnel.

“Marchel Duchamp… by insisting that he created a valid work of art when he signed a commercially produced snowshovel or a reproduction of the Mona Lisa on which he had drawn a mustache, thus classifying Leonardo as support personnel along with the snowshovel’s designer and manufacturer. Outrageous as that idea may seem, something like it is standard in making collages, entirely constructed of other people’s work”[3]

[1] Art Worlds Pg. 19

[2] “MoMA Learning.” MoMA | Appropriation. Accessed February 08, 2017. https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/themes/pop-art/appropriation.

[3] Art World Pg. 19