
The art of appropriation
ArticleArts + Culture
BY Oscar Schwartz 14 MAY 2018
In March this year, paintings in an exhibition by the British artist Damien Hirst caused controversy for bearing strong resemblance to works by Aboriginal artists from the Central Desert region near Alice Springs.
Hirst, one of the world’s best known contemporary artists, unveiled 24 new paintings at an exhibition in Los Angeles. The works, called Veil Paintings, were large canvases covered with thousands of multi-coloured dots.
Many Australians immediately noticed the similarity to a style of Indigenous dot painting developed in the Central Deserts region, particularly the paintings of internationally renowned artist, Emily Kngwarreye.
Kngwarreye’s paintings of layered coloured dots in elaborate patterns portray aerial deserts landscapes crafted from memory. Her style has been passed down across generations and has deep cultural importance.
Barbara Weir, an artist from the Central Deserts, told the ABC that Hirst recreated the painting style without understanding the culture behind it. While Hirst denied being aware of Kngwarreye’s paintings, Bronwyn Bancroft of the Arts Law Centre said that he still had a “moral obligation” to acknowledge the influence of the Aboriginal art movement.
Whether or not Hirst was directly copying the style, the controversy his paintings caused centred on the ethical issue of appropriation. Should artists use images or styles that are not their own, especially when those images or styles are tied to the sacred history of another culture?
Avant-garde appropriation
While copying and imitation has been central to artistic practice in many cultures for millennia, appropriation as a creative technique rose to prominence in avant-garde modernist movements in the early 20th century.
Cubists like Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque used appropriation in their collage and pastiche paintings, often lifting images from newspapers to incorporate into their work. Marcel Duchamp developed the practice further through his ready-mades – objects taken form real life and presented as art – like his infamous Fountain, a urinal signed, turned upside down, and positioned on a pedestal.
“These artists used appropriation to challenge traditional notions of originality and often approached art as an ethically weightless space where transgressive ideas could be explored without consequence.”
The art of appropriation was further developed by pop artists like Andy Warhol and Jasper Johns in the 1950s and later in the 1980s by Jeff Koons and Sherrie Levine. These artists used appropriation to challenge traditional notions of originality and often approached art as an ethically weightless space where transgressive ideas could be explored without consequence.
A more recent proponent of appropriation as creative practice is the poet Kenneth Goldsmith, who wrote a book called Unoriginal Genius, which defends appropriation in art. He argues that in our digital age, access to information has made it impossible to be truly original. In such an environment, the role of the artist is to embrace a free and open exchange of ideas and abandon notions of singular ownership of an aesthetic or style.
Cultural appropriation
While appropriating, remixing, and sampling images and media is common practice for artists, it can cause conflict and hurt, particularly if the materials are culturally or politically sensitive. For instance, in 2015, Kenneth Goldsmith performed a poem that appropriated text from the autopsy of Michael Brown, an African American man who was shot by police.
Critics were outraged at Goldsmith’s performance, particularly because they felt that it was inappropriate for a white man to use the death of a black man as creative material for personal gain. Others labelled Goldsmith’s poems as an extreme example of cultural appropriation.
Writer Maisha Z Johnson defines cultural appropriation as “members of a dominant culture taking elements from a culture of people who have been systematically oppressed by that dominant group”. The problem with cultural appropriation, she explains, is not the act of an individual artist, but how that artist perpetuates an unjust power dynamic through their creative practice.
In other words, cultural appropriation in art is seen by some as perpetuating systemic oppression. When artists in a position of power and privilege appropriate from those who aren’t, they can profit from what they take while the oppressed group gets nothing.
Cultural sensitivity
Issues of cultural appropriation are particularly sensitive for Aboriginal artists in Australia because painting styles are not only an expression of the artist’s creative talent, but also often convey sacred stories passed down from older generations. Painting, therefore, is often seen not only as a type of craft, but a way of keeping Aboriginal culture alive in white Australia.
It is possible that Hirst was not aware of this context when he created his Veil Paintings. In an increasingly connected world in which images and cultures are shared and inter-mixed, it can be difficult to attribute where creative inspiration comes from.
Yet, perhaps our connectivity only heightens the artist’s moral obligation for cultural sensitivity and to acknowledge that art is never made in a vacuum but exists in a particular geography, history, economy, and social context.
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BY Oscar Schwartz
Oscar Schwartz is a freelance writer and researcher based in New York. He is interested in how technology interacts with identity formation. Previously, he was a doctoral researcher at Monash University, where he earned a PhD for a thesis about the history of machines that write literature.
2 Comments
I am sure many people from dominant white cultures feel confused about these concerns.
It’s not really about making art or re creating art.
This is a social political issue connected to economic power, status and social mobility. It is about privilege over respect for ethics. It’s about honouring cultural identity, its about history and reviewing what is right and fair given we live in our privilege because of the wrong doings of our forefathers. It is about ‘being’ the evolved kind of humans we can step up to being today so we can authentically create respectful connection with those who have suffered and still do.
We see this concern of ‘appropriation’ infiltrating every sector and structure of our current dominant societies. It is most evident in art and design because our Indigenous and First Nation cultures prefer these modes of communication. They have relied on symbology, the arts, music, dance and the visual to communicate sacred cultural content always. In Australia, we consider for a time in excess of 60,000 years or more. First Nations people do not have traditions of the written word as experienced in dominant world cultures.
First Nations people have suffered greatly at the hands of colonisers historically and still today. Generations of people continue to carry the legacy of this suffering as do those of dominant cultures who enjoy the benefits of their ancestral oppressors.
Interestingly, it is the artists from dominant cultures who enjoy broad access, free expression and economically favourable outcomes in the art industry. They can create whatever art they choose without consultation, research or respect for how it may override, borrow or correlate with those who are attempting to locate themselves in a world that excludes them.
To understand we have to consider who we are and where we have come from.
Consider that UK artist, Damien Hirst, living contemporary white artist, who’s value in dollars for a single artwork is around $19.2 million enjoys the privilege of being able to access the art industry in his inherited first language and culture. He can paint whatever he likes and he generally does. Hirst is not even really clear about his Veil paintings or how they may emulate Kngwarreye’s dot paintings depicting scared country. Kngwarreye lived a very humble life with a late entry into the International Art world. Income from her art was distributed to her family and community. She is now deceased. Her work is magnificent and world renowned. One may ask why is it that Hirst is not aware of the connection?
I think the article asks us to understand this is not a free and equal world. We are not all independents with equal access to everything. It is time to be wise and more attuned to how we can offer reparation for what has gone before us.
How can we offer humility to those that have been wronged for so long? We can refrain from having everything our way. It’s time.
I find this really difficult. Any artist exploring mark making will have a connection to others using mark making. Certain shapes, symbols and marks have been used since the earliest art works known and is part of being a human. It makes me sad that what could be a connection is creating division.
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Is all art appropriation?