During the first week, we have looked at appropriation in photography. Appropriation is the use of pre-existing objects or images with little or no transformation applied to them. Famous photographers that use appropriation includes Richard Prince and Joseph Kosuth. Another famous photographer who is open to using appropriation in his pieces is Yasumasa Morimura. Yasumusa used paintings and other pre-existing images and appropriated them by dressing himself up and masquerading himself as people in paintings from hundreds of years ago. His work includes ‘Vermeer Study: Looking back (Mirror)’ which was a clear appropriation of the ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ by Johannes Vermeer. You can see both images below and it is clear that Yasumasa used the original painting as inspiration. Appropriation has always come under fire as many people just see it as stealing. Pablo Picasso even commented on this by saying that “Good artists borrow; great artists steal.” This quote, however, isn’t the global response from artists and many have actually taken appropriation artists to court over their work being stolen and to this day appropriation art still has a divided response in the art industry.
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