Quoting & Appropriation Whose Work is it?

Abstract

When Picasso placed images of African masks in his painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, viewers were reasonably certain that he either personally observed African masks, or at the very least had access to quality reproductions. Today, Picasso could have bought a laser disk on African art, cut out the mask with only a passing glance at the visual qualities of the object, and then placed it into his painted image. With scanners and laser disks turning all of history into clip art, how do we know that the artist even really looked at the source? And does this lack of direct interaction really make a difference? The computer is actually better suited for dialogue with source images than the traditional methods of notating the source in drawings before working with it. When, as artists, we must recreate an image for future reference, we filter the image in terms of our own aesthetic prejudices and technical skills. Working with the computer and scanned images, the appropriating artist is not limited by preconceived filtering, but can keep returning to the original image, taking and discarding information each lime, and engaging in a different filtering in each instance. It is therefore the ideal medium for expanding our cultural vocabularies.