Primitive Art Theory @saulprimitivetheory - Tumblr Blog

http://art.afterculture.org/Solstice-artifacts.html

Marcel Duchamp

Appropriation for the Post Modern - very literal and in my opinion insulting and lazy use of appropriating imagery. Taking an existing piece of art or object and literally relabeling it or drawing on top of it, much like Andy Warhol.

'Fountain' - preface piece to the post modern, was actually done before postmodern views kicked off, Duchamp was very much a prominent influence and establisher of postmodern views.

'L.H.O.O.Q (Mona Lisa with Mustache)' - changing the perception of art by renaming it and altering it, these are the ideals of postmodernism and appropriation.

Austin Osman Spare

David Green Lecture - Austin Osman Spare

Maria Lecture - Post Modernism

Alison Dearborn - http://sacredcave.com/

'It is my hope to send the viewer on a journey which is both ethereal and yet, deeply connected to the earth and the animal spirits that inhabit it.'

-Alison Dearborn

She is an 'ultra modern' artist in the sense she is happening now, but to mean of the word ultramodern she is not using technology to reach a higher conscience.

Using the style of primitive cave paintings in her own work, appropriating the style of the art during the time. Post modern, using it as a homage to the animals and world we live in, using it to take the viewer on a journey much like how primitive artist doing cave painting used to take a journey while creating the art by using herbs, mushroom and natural drugs.

Jamie Mitchell - Oh Deer http://www.jamiedraws.co.uk/

Produces clothing range, including the image of a tiger where a Native Indian AMerican feather head band, appropriating the headwater but people do enjoy it and it does sell.

"The Family Collection" - Dinos and Jake Chapman

it highlights the fact that the history of modern art and Modernism is based on the ‘consumption’ of foreign cultures, misread and designated as ‘primitive’

obvious pretence, a series of self-evident fakes, the work both plays up and ridicules the duplicity of such systems of appropriation, consumption and assimilation

art, or material culture, is dressed up in the symbolic language of the culture in which it is presented – affording readings that maintain the dominant ideologies rather than challenge the status quo

points out the role of multinationals and global capitalism in cultural imperialism, as well as the way we are ‘fed’ corporate brands through marketing logos

root of this work is the aim to make clear the omnipresence within contemporary culture of symbolic language and systems of meaning that we frequently overlook, and thereby to reveal their instability and undermine them

Post modern - parody of capitalism and the consumerism, and how global capitalism devours all other cultures.

WE ARE BEING MCDONALISED!!

http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-liverpool/exhibition/jake-and-dinos-chapman/jake-and-dinos-chapman-room-7

Dinos and Jake Chapman

http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-liverpool/exhibition/jake-and-dinos-chapman/jake-and-dinos-chapman-room-7

The Chapman Family Collection 2002 is a collection of faux-ethnographic sculptures which incorporate logos and symbols associated with the fast food chain McDonalds. References to McDonalds have featured recurrently in the Chapmans’ work as shorthand for the pernicious excesses of capitalism.

Yinka Shonibare and Cultural Unity through Art

The collation of two very different cultural influences and very different cultural powers

- create very traditional western clothing/fashion art, sculptures and paintings (along with many other different mediums and installations), uses the patterns and fabrics of his own culture

- combining African culture with westerns values and influences

This is seen as appropriation in a sense but in a very post modern way - it is creative play, if it was a huge conglomerate using these influences and art style as a means of purely making money, it would then be seen as an insult but instead it is an individual combining two different cultures together in creative play to create wonderful art

- art that in a sense reinforces and celebrates how integrated and collated cultures are today

- we are all influenced by each other and this appropriation can be seen as an insult to many people if use in the wrong setting or way, but it also emphasizes the unity of culture in this modern age

Playful use of appropriation - doesn't offend instead shows unity and almost equality through art, takes away the looming feel of oppression that appropriation brings to the minority culture.

Yinka Shonibare

http://www.yinkashonibarembe.com/articles/past/

Yinka Shonibare is one of those artists who remain consistent in focussing their practice on a specific set of issues – in his case, questions related to British colonial imperialism, which extend further into contemporary postcolonial complexity.

This artist of British-Nigerian descent is known for his theatrical, multi-threaded and colourful works, featuring, among other things: headless mannequins, ballet dancers, wild animals with Black-Berry phones and gilded pistols, as well as opera arias sung by the wife of Admiral Nelson.

Shonibare incorporates fabrics into his paintings, installations and videos as a perfect token of the ambiguity or even contradiction inherent in postcolonial culture.

Manufacturing fabrics that seem truly African turns out to have been initiated in the Netherlands following Indonesian patterns, while the items themselves were marketed in 19th century in Western Africa, where only over the course of time did they become part of the African identity.

Shonibare comes up with apt combinations of both historic and contemporary symbols, histories and paradigms – dressing up Victorian figures in African fabrics; or showing stuffed animals with modern gadgets to refer to the Arab Spring.

He concentrates on the dynamics of meanings generated in-between the great narrations.

It Matters Who is Appropriating

Due to the imbalance of power, a more powerful person or culture generally doesn't see the need to give recognition to what they have appropriated - postmodern!

If a powerful, dominant culture fancies a random element from a minority culture it is seen as marginalizing the culture and narrowing it down to a stereotype - it is hard to explain in hard fact, but its a truthful phenomenon and something that happens all the time.

The main area of insult towards appropriation seems to be corporate. It is a definite insult to the appropriated culture when a huge corporation ( American Apparel) appropriate from a culture and instantly stereotypes it, while reaping the benefits and profits without any recognition, respect or understanding for the culture or their beliefs.

The dominant power is able to take a part of a culture, an element of its heritage and possibly a meaningful and highly respected element - instantly take credit for it, alter it in anyway they want, market it as anything they want and call it their own - without understanding or recognition to the culture it originated from.

SURELY IT IS AN INSULT ?

Cultural Appropriation: Homage Or Insult?

Oppression

The elements that define oppression within cultural appropriation is history and power. Coloinsation has made Anglo western culture the supreme power over all other cultures, this means that when a western power appropriates from a minority culture, like Asia or Africa, this immediately gets a negative response, it is almost seen as a symbol of greed, the super power always taking from the minority and not giving the right recognition or respect to what they are using.

It matters who is doing the appropriating - there is a difference between someone is Asia wearing a t-shirt branded by a huge western conglomerate to a celebrity sporting a bindi as a latest fashion rage and reinventing.

http://www.racialicious.com/2008/09/18/cultural-appropriation-homage-or-insult/

Cultural appropriation is the adoption of some specific elements of one culture by a different cultural group. It denotes acculturation or assimilation, but often connotes a negative view towards acculturation from a minority culture by a dominant culture.

The term cultural appropriation can have a negative connotation. It generally is applied when the subject culture is a minority culture or somehow subordinate in social, political, economic, or military status to the appropriating culture; or, when there are other issues involved, such as a history of ethnic or racial conflict between the two groups.

Cultural appropriation is often seen as a negative, and occurs when a dominant culture selects a cultural minority and adapts elements of their culture and call it their own, altering them to their needs, this then changes the respect of the cultural element and its heritage. This is why many cultures take offense and often there are debates and arguments over the use of the appropriated elements and whether it is seen as racism.

http://zinelibrary.info/files/culturalappropriationread.pdf

Cultural Appropriation: Homage or Insult? - What Tami Said (september 9th 2008)

American Apparels Afrika line of clothing:

no one is saying that wearing animal print is inherently racially offensive - distilling a continent of many countries, cultures and languages down to ts wildlife and faux tribal print is too much of a stereotype

no one is bothered to know the difference between Zambia and Mauritania - Africa just becomes a mush of dark tribal folk and wild animals

Appropriation and Authorship in Contemporary Art - Sherri Irvin

An article that looks into the pros and cons of appropriation art nd the concept of an artist having authorship over his own art, and whether or not that concept is misguided and overlooked. The main striking point that i have highlighted was the concept that the person writing this article believes that appropriation of art in a sense strengthens and reinforces the original piece, almost in a way promotes the original art.

Appropriation art has often been thought to support the view that authorship in art is an outmoded or misguided notion.

examine and reject a number of candidates for the distinction that makes artists the authors of their work while forgers are not. The crucial difference is seen to lie in the fact that artists bear ultimate responsibility for whatever objectives they choose to pursue through their work, whereas the forger’s central objectives are determined by the nature of the activity of forgery.

Far from undermining the concept of authorship in art, then, the appropriation artists in fact reaffirmed and strengthened it.

In art of the last several decades, practices of radical appropriation from

other artworks are common. Elaine Sturtevant, often considered the earliest practitioner, began in the 1960s to reproduce, ‘as exactly as possible’, the works of her contemporaries, including Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Jasper Johns, Frank Stella and Andy Warhol. She aimed to use the same techniques they used, and in some cases enlisted their aid: on at least one occasion, Warhol lent his screens for her copies of his silkscreen works. Sturtevant has said that in the 1960s, she usually allowed in one ‘mistake’ which distinguished her product from the original work. But in general, the results were very close to the originals.

Sherrie Levine, perhaps the best known appropriation artist, produced a substantial body of radical photographic appropriations during the 1980s.

MoMA Learning - Appropriation

https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/themes/pop-art/appropriation

Appropriation is the intentional borrowing, copying, and alteration of preexisting images and objects

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

Pop artists like Robert Rauschenberg, Claes Oldenburg, Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselman, and Roy Lichtenstein reproduced, juxtaposed, or repeated mundane, everyday images from popular culture - absorbing and acting as a mirror for the ideas, interactions, needs, desires, and cultural elements of the times

Andy Warhol - Appropriating the Campbells brand and recreating it as art:

Robert Rauschenberg, using existing patters, textiles and materials to create an artistic piece:

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