Jed Perl considers the ironies of postmodern appropriation art.
[T]he Andy Warhol Foundation [has refused] to authenticate a silkscreen self-portrait that Warhol instructed somebody else to make. Warhol had signed the painting and authorized its inclusion in his first catalogue raisonné, where it was even reproduced on the cover. I am not sure that anybody has actually said that this silkscreen is in fact a plagiary, but the Foundation will not say that it is real, either. …Warhol wasn’t even present; the artist spoke to the fabricator on the phone, to specify the red that he wanted.
Reminds me of Bill Reid.
Perl distinguishes between being influenced by a precursor, and simply appropriating the precursor (in the case of Warhol and Reid, the precursor is yourself):
[S]usceptibility, the sense of emotional connectedness, is what influence is all about as it unfolds in Western art, in the work of Michelangelo, Poussin, Delacroix, Cézanne, Picasso, and countless others. The chill of appropriation, with its emphasis on impersonality and anonymity, suggests not the great tradition but the academic tradition, a calculation about the past rather than an engagement with the past.
The appropriated piece can stage a statement or two — Everything is mass produced, including art. Individuality is a myth. — but cannot express feeling or craft.
February 3rd, 2011 at 10:14AM
What I don’t understand about all this Warhol controversy is why everyone involved gets away with describing silkscreens – silkscreen PRINTS run off in multiples – as “paintings.” As far as I’m concerned, they’re all fakes.