1. Taking Pictures: Appropriation and its Consequences
“Our fine arts were developed, their types and uses were established, in times very different from the present, by men whose power of action upon things was insignificant in comparison with ours. But the amazing growth of our techniques, the adaptability and precision they have attained, the ideas and habits they are creating, make it a certainty that profound changes are impending in the ancient craft of the Beautiful. In all the arts there is a physical component which can no longer be considered or treated as it used to be, which cannot remain unaffected by our modern knowledge and power. For the last twenty years neither matter nor space nor time has been what it was from time immemorial. We must expect great innovations to transform the entire technique of the arts, thereby affecting artistic invention itself and perhaps even bringing about an amazing change in our very notion of art.”
Paul Valéry, Pièces sur L’Art, 1931
Epigraph to Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”

2. Sherrie Levine, Untitled (Presidents Series), 1979
Sherrie Levine, Untitled (Presidents Series), Collage on paper, 24 x 18" (60.9 x 45.7 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
2.2 Sherrie Levine, Untitled (President 4), Collage on paper, 24 x 18" (60.9 x 45.7 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. © Sherrie Levine. Courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery, New York.

3. 2. 4 Walker Evans, Farmhouse Hale County, Alabama, 1936
2.4 Walker Evans, Farmhouse Hale County, Alabama, Gelatin silver print. 71 1∕16 x 6 5∕16" (19.5 x 16.1 cm). The Library of Congress.
(left) Sherrie Levine, After Walker Evans: 7, 1981, gelatin silver print, 5 1∕16 x 3 7∕8,"
(right) Walker Evans, Farmhouse Hale County, Alabama, 1936, gelatin silver print. 71 1∕16 x 6 5∕16“ (or is it the other way around?)
Key text: Rosalind Krauss: “The Originality of the Avant-garde and other Modernist Myths”

4. (left) Sherrie Levine (US Postmodern Appropriation artist, b
(left) Sherrie Levine (US Postmodern Appropriation artist, b.1947) Untitled (After Alexander Rodchenko: 9), (right) Alexander Rodchenko (Russian Constructivist, avant-garde modernist), ), Portrait of Mother, 1924
Postmodern “Appropriation” of “high” art challenged modernism’s key values of “originality” and “aura.” Key text: Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”

5. Cindy Sherman (US, b.1954) Untitled Film Still #27, film stills from 1977 (23 years old) to She stopped making film stills, she has explained, when she ran out of clichés.

6. "She's good enough to be a real actress.“ Andy Warhol
Cindy Sherman, (left) Untitled Film Still #35, 1979; (right) Untitled Film Still # The Museum of Modern Art, New York. 8 x 10” glossies just like “real” film stills.
"She's good enough to be a real actress.“
Andy Warhol

7. Cindy Sherman, (left) Untitled Film Still #37, (right) UFS #13, 1979 See Kalb on Laura Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (p.54)

8. Cindy Sherman, Untitled #474, 2008

9. Richard Prince, (left) Untitled (cowboy), 1981, Ektacolor photograph, 20 x 24 in (right) Untitled (cowboy) , Ektacolor photograph, 27 x 40 in. “Pictures Generation” appropriation from mass visual culture: advertising photography

10. Richard Prince, Untitled (Cowboy), 1995 ektacolor photograph, 48 x 72“
2.5 Richard Prince, Untitled (Cowboy), Ektacolor photograph, 48 x 72“ (121.9 x cm). Courtesy Richard Prince Studio.
Richard Prince, Untitled (Cowboy), 1995
ektacolor photograph, 48 x 72“

11. Richard Prince (U.S., b.1949), Untitled (four single men with interchangeable backgrounds looking to the right), 1977, Mixed media on paper, 23 x 19 in. Metropolitan Museum, NYC

12. Louise Lawler (American, born 1947), Pollock and Tureen, Arranged by Mr. and Mrs. Burton Tremaine, Connecticut, 1984, silver dye bleach print, 28 x 39 in.

13. Barbara Kruger (U.S. b. 1945), (left) Untitled (Your Gaze Hits the Side of My Face), 1981, gelatin silver print, 72 x 48 in.; (right) Untitled (I Shop Therefore I Am), “Pictures Generation”

14. 2. 16 Barbara Kruger, Untitled (We don’t need another hero), 1986
2.16 Barbara Kruger, Untitled (We don’t need another hero), Photographic silkscreen/vinyl. 109 x 210" (277 x 533 cm). © Barbara Kruger. Courtesy Mary Boone Gallery, New York.
2.16 Barbara Kruger, Untitled (We don’t need another hero), Photographic silkscreen/vinyl. 109 x 210" (277 x 533 cm). © Barbara Kruger. Courtesy Mary Boone Gallery, New York.

15. Barbara Kruger, Mary Boone Gallery Installation, New York, 1991

16. Guerrilla Girls, Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum
Guerrilla Girls, Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum? 1989, poster, 11 x 28"
2.18 Guerrilla Girls, Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?, Poster, 11 x 28" (27.9 x 71.1 cm). Private collection. Courtesy Guerrilla Girls.
Ingres, La Grande Odalisque, o/c, 1814

17. Jenny Holzer, from Truisms ( ), (above) posters installed in windows of Printed Matter, New York

18. Jenny Holzer (US, 1950) Texts in Stone, 1999, Matsui Federal Courthouse, Sacramento, US General Services Administration. 99 square paving stones, each measuring 12 x 12 inches. Texts all relate to justice. Cast bronze sculpture installation is Gold Rush by Tom Otterness, 1999