Have you ever copied an image from a photograph, advertisement, or other source? When it is OK to do this? When is it not OK?

We live in a culture that overflows with images and objects. From television to the Internet, from the mall to the junkyard, we are surrounded by words, images, and objects that are cheap, or free and throwaway. It is not surprising that artists today incorporate this stuff into their creative expression.

To appropriate is to borrow. Appropriation is the practice of creating new work by taking a preexisting image from another source—art history books, advertisements, the media—and transforming or combining it with new ones. The three-dimensional version of appropriation is the use of found objects in art. A found object is an existing object—often a mundane manufactured product—given a new identity as an artwork or part of an artwork.

In art that uses appropriation, two questions can to be explored:

What is the source of the image or object that has been appropriated? Why has the artist chosen this source for images?

Some common sources of appropriated images are works of art from the distant or recent past, historical documents, media (film and television), or consumer culture (advertisements or products). Sometimes the source is unknown, but it may have personal associations for the artist. The source of an appropriated image or object can be politically charged, symbolic, ambiguous, or can push the limits of imagery deemed acceptable for art.

What does the artist do with the appropriated image?

Appropriated imagery can be photographically or digitally reproduced, copied by mechanical means such as an overhead projector, attached directly onto an artwork, or re-created in a number of ways. The result can be a deadpan representation or a startling transformation. Artists sometimes re-create an object or repaint it, altering its scale or style to create new meaning. Artists can also juxtapose different images or objects, layer them with other images, break them into fragments, or recontextualize (glossary) them, which means to redefine images or objects by a placing them in a new context.

Each of the artworks below includes some form of appropriation. Look at them, read the quotes and “more info,” and then discuss the following questions: What elements of this work are appropriated? Can you identify the source of the appropriated image or object? What did the artist do to it to create this artwork? What do you think the artist was trying to express in this artwork? How does the source and/or the transformation of the appropriated image or object help create the meaning of this artwork?

Andy Warhol Sixteen Jackies 1964

“The more you look at the same exact thing, the more the meaning goes away and the better and emptier you feel.” —Andy Warhol, 1975

Glenn Brown You Never Touch My Skin in the Way You Did and You've Even Changed the Way You Kiss Me 1994

“All of my work concerns itself with notions of reproduction and originality.” —Glenn Brown, 1995 “In all of [my sources], there was originally a model sitting in a chair in a studio who gets characterized by that artist. He finished it and it gets photographed. Then the photograph gets turned into a print, which gets put in a book. I get that book and do my paintings from it. Through these stages, the original person gets further and further back. Further and further lost, further removed. The whole notion that there was a character underneath the images kept me wanting to do them. It was that sense of loss as if they were ghosts.” —Glenn Brown