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Summary of Appropriation Art
Appropriation art is the practice of taking existing images, objects, or cultural symbols and re-presenting them as new artworks in order to question originality, ownership, and meaning. Rather than creating something entirely from scratch, artists select, copy, or restage materials from the world, anything from everyday objects to mass-media images, historical artworks, or even personal identities, and place them in a new context. This shift of setting and authorship transforms their significance and often sparks debate about plagiarism, intellectual property, and the very definition of art. From early Cubist collages and Duchamp's "readymades" to Pop Art's mass-media borrowings and the Pictures Generation's photographic re-uses, appropriation has remained a key strategy for exposing how culture itself is built from repetition and reinterpretation.
Key Ideas & Accomplishments
- From Duchamp's urinal to digital memes and AI, appropriation opened fine art to everyday objects, advertising, and the entire flood of popular imagery, collapsing barriers between "high" and "low" culture.
- Appropriation art injected the debate around authorship and originality into the art canon. By openly copying or rephotographing existing works, artists such as Sherrie Levine and Richard Prince forced audiences and legal systems to rethink ideas of ownership, copyright, and original creator.
- Appropriation art became a driver for social and political critique enabling artists to expose racial stereotypes, gender roles, and consumerist power structures by turning society's own images back on themselves.
- The strategy of appropriation laid the groundwork for Conceptual art, Pop art, and today's remix culture, proving that art can operate as a conversation across time, technology, and identity rather than as a single, isolated creation.
Overview of Appropriation Art
Where does the line between inspiration and plagiarism reside? How far do copyright laws extend in defining artistic ownership? And to what extent can acts of copying, remixing, and recombining be considered creative? By repurposing existing images, ideas, and cultural symbols, appropriation not only reconfigures artistic meaning but also raises broader philosophical and legal questions in regard to ownership and creativity.
Artworks and Artists of Appropriation Art
La Mer Orageuse
In this particular painting, it is believed that Gustave Courbet was inspired by Hokusai's iconic The Great Wave off Kanagawa. As with Hokusai's wave, the work derives its beauty from its menacing character. However, the piece does not appear to have been created with the intention to instill fear or panic; rather, it seems absorbed in its own movement and the chaos of the scene. By presenting a more dynamic, raw, and untamable vision of nature - one that contrasts sharply with the Western idealization of natural beauty - Courbet produced a work that is both distinctive and provocative.
This artwork may not be the typical result one expects when searching for works associated with appropriation art. However, it is worth noting that Courbet, along with other artists of the nineteenth century, became associated with the term Japonisme - a term referring to a widespread fascination with Japanese art. Many of these artists experimented with and appropriated elements of Japanese visual language.
Courbet's work served as a foundational influence on the development of the Impressionist movement. The trend of Japonisme also impacted Édouard Manet, Camille Pissarro, and Claude Monet. These artists appropriated a range of formal elements from the Japanese concept of ma (the use of negative space), to stylistic experiments such as blending Western and Japanese attire in their compositions, and atypical portrayals of wild, oppressive nature. In other words, with Courbet and the Impressionists, we witness how formal appropriation can substantially shape the trajectory of an entire artistic movement.
This kind of early appropriation is purely formal and differs from what is currently associated with appropriative practices from the twentieth century onward.
Oil on canvas - Musée d'Orsay, Paris
Fountain
Marcel Duchamp's Fountain may be seen as a joke and indeed contains an element of humor: a urinal acquired (not created) by the artist, turned on its side, and presented as an artwork. Fountain was also signed by Duchamp with the mysterious signature "R. Mutt," which sounds like the German word armut (poverty), while the artist also stated that the R stands for Richard (the French term for "moneybags").
One of the first artists who consciously engaged with many of the concepts discussed under the umbrella of appropriation, Duchamp explored the questions of "what is art?" and "what do artists do?" in his Fountain and subsequent "Found Object" or "Readymade" artworks. These works are a reaction to what he referred to as "retinal art," or works merely appealing to the eye.
Here we see a key shift in twentieth-century art, and in appropriation itself, toward valuing an artwork's meaning more than its appearance. By negating formal aspects and employing a mass-produced object, he shifted the focus to content and highlighted elements of his practice now associated with appropriation. His artistic vision emerged through the conception of an idea, the selection of a store-bought object, and its recontextualization. This process developed into a kind of technique - a template adopted by many subsequent artists. This appropriation-based approach laid the groundwork for what would later be known as conceptual art.
Found Object - Original lost, a copy can be found in the Philadelphia Museum of Art
George Washington Carver Crossing the Delaware: Page from an American History Textbook
The father of his country, the hero of democracy, and one of the key figures behind the United States Constitution - George Washington remains one of the most emblematic figures in American history. His image, deeply embedded in the national consciousness, continues to symbolize the ideals upon which the nation was founded. In 1851, Emanuel Leutze's Washington Crossing the Delaware evoked both patriotic pride and critical reflection. Monumental in scale and heroic in tone, the painting presented Washington as a steadfast leader, guiding his troops toward victory. Impossible to ignore, the grand depiction consistently sparked political debates, reflecting the evolving tensions in American identity.
Over a century later, Robert Colescott offered this radically different vision of American heroism. In George Washington Carver Crossing the Delaware: Page from an American History Textbook, he appropriated Leutze's iconic composition but replaced George Washington with George Washington Carver - arguably the most prominent Black scientist of the twentieth century. Carver's contributions extended far beyond agricultural science; he championed sustainable farming, pioneered methods to prevent soil depletion, and worked tirelessly to improve the lives of impoverished farmers. His legacy, rooted in direct action, addressed pressing global issues such as environmental sustainability and food security.
By substituting Washington with Carver, Colescott exposed an often-overlooked narrative within American history - one shaped by racial injustice, exploitation, and systemic inequality. His reimagining functions as a subversive critique, an uncomfortable mirror reflecting the exclusionary nature of the nation's foundational myths. The stark contrast between Leutze's neoclassical grandeur and Colescott's satirical, cartoonish style reinforces this critique. Saturated colors, exaggerated forms, and racial caricatures - featuring banjos, cigarettes, alcohol, and working-class stereotypes - intensify the work's biting commentary on how Black figures have been historically marginalized and misrepresented. The piece is pivotal to appropriation art for its injection of Black narrative into the nation's visual mythology.
Oil on Canvas - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Untitled Film Still #21
Cindy Sherman's Untitled Film Still #21 (1978) is a black-and-white photograph showing the artist herself dressed smartly and standing on a New York street, glancing warily over her shoulder as if caught in a suspenseful moment from a mid-century movie. The image feels instantly familiar, echoing the mood of 1950s B-movies yet it depicts no actual film scene. Sherman constructed the costume, pose, and setting, then photographed herself to create a fiction that masquerades as an authentic still.
The piece is a cornerstone of appropriation of identity. Instead of copying a specific photograph, Sherman appropriates the visual language of Hollywood and European art-house cinema with its camera angles, lighting, and archetypal female role while using her own body as the raw material. By embodying a "type" rather than an individual, she exposes how femininity and narrative are produced through media conventions. This shift from appropriating objects (as in Duchamp's readymades) to appropriating personas and stereotypes expanded the very definition of appropriation art and profoundly influenced later artists exploring gender, representation, and performance.
Gelatin silver print - Museum of Modern Art, New York
After Walker Evans: 4
In 1936, Walker Evans documented the harsh realities of rural poverty through a series of photographs, among them his now-iconic portrait of Allie Mae Burroughs. Her expression, often interpreted as conveying quiet resentment, has been widely analyzed, with some critics drawing comparisons to the enigmatic smile of the Mona Lisa. The photograph's formal subtlety and psychological depth have cemented its status as a cornerstone of American documentary photography.
Sherrie Levine's appropriation of Evans' work is notable for its stark literalism. Rather than modifying or transforming the image, Levine simply rephotographed Evans' original print, assigned it a new title, and exhibited it under her name. This act, devoid of material intervention, foregrounds the very mechanism of appropriation itself, shifting the work's critical focus from representation to authorship, reproduction, and institutional context.
If this is not interesting enough, one may debate that Walker Evan's photograph is as well a work of appropriation, as well as any photograph ever taken. So, Levine's homage to Evans may be seen as an appropriation of an appropriation.
It was perhaps this conceptual clarity that, despite earlier precedents of artistic appropriation, rendered Pictures (1977) - the exhibition in which Levine's work first appeared - a pivotal moment in critical discourse. The exhibition catalyzed sustained debates over the nature of artistic authorship, the limits of originality, and the legal and ethical distinctions between appropriation and plagiarism.
Gelatin silver print - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Untitled (Cowboy)
In the 1950s, the power of advertising emerged as a cultural force strong enough to rival mythology, shaping collective imagination by redefining archetypes of masculinity. Nowhere was this more evident than in the figure of the Marlboro Man, a modern reinterpretation of the cowboy. He embodied both raw aggression and untamed energy yet was framed with an air of elegance and control - a "civilized animal." At the center of this carefully crafted image was the cigarette, a symbol of masculine sophistication and power.
More than fifty years later, Richard Prince revisited these images through re-photography, stripping them of their commercial intent. By removing the original advertisements' text and branding, he reframed the imagery, shifting the focus from marketing to aesthetics. Many of the photographs he appropriated no longer featured cigarettes at all, further distancing them from their original purpose.
Though Prince's Cowboys series (begun around 1980) represents some of his earliest work, it remains among his most recognized. His approach to appropriation is not rooted in nostalgia or critique alone, but in the act of re-examining familiar imagery from a new perspective. By isolating and recontextualizing these iconic advertisements, he invites viewers to reconsider how mass media constructs, disseminates, and ultimately alters cultural symbols over time.
Chromogenic Print - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Made in Heaven
In 1990 Jeff Koons unveiled a giant outdoor billboard in New York's SoHo district showing himself in an explicitly sexual embrace with his then-wife, Italian porn star and politician Ilona Staller (a.k.a. Cicciolina). Shot in a glossy advertising style, the image mimicked luxury perfume ads and pop-culture marketing. By placing hardcore eroticism in the public advertising space, Koons appropriated the visual language of mass media to question how desire and commerce are sold.
The billboard promoted his Made in Heaven exhibition at Sonnabend Gallery (New York) which presented large-scale photographs, sculptures, and glass works of the couple in graphic sexual poses. These pieces borrowed the seductive polish of commercial photography while flaunting taboo content, and collapsing distinctions between high art, pornography, and consumer advertising.
The work extended the legacy of Duchamp and Warhol by turning Koons' own life and body into readymade material, demonstrating that appropriation could encompass not only found images but also the mechanics of celebrity culture itself.
Widely regarded as the most controversial episode in Koons's career, Made in Heaven not only provoked public outrage but also entailed legal consequences. Three decades later, Koons was sued for allegedly appropriating a snake sculpture by artist Michael Hayden in one of the works. Several other pieces in the series were derived from existing imagery, most notably the work of Édouard Manet.
Koons has continually produced works that engage directly with the tradition of the readymade, typically involving the meticulous reproduction of pre-existing cultural objects and artworks as high-production-value sculptures. This strategy has led to numerous lawsuits throughout his career, and continues to provoke debates around authorship, originality, and the limits of appropriation in contemporary art.
An Inner Dialogue with Frida Kahlo (Hand Shaped Earring)
Yasumasa Morimura's An Inner Dialogue with Frida Kahlo (Hand Shaped Earring) (2001) is a striking self-portrait in which the artist photographed himself dressed and made up as Frida Kahlo. Wearing her signature unibrow, clothing, and distinctive hand-shaped earring, he recreates one of her famous photographic poses while subtly inserting his own features.
Accompanying the photographic work is an imagined interview between Morimura and Kahlo, blurring the lines between artistic tribute, self-exploration, and speculative dialogue. Morimura's approach is not limited to visual likeness; he carefully researches the stylistic elements and motifs characteristic of Kahlo's work, ensuring that his reinterpretations remain deeply informed by the original source.
Similar to American photographer Cindy Sherman who, for her Untitled Film Stills series (1977-80) photographed herself dressed up as a wide variety of imaginary film characters based on archetypal female roles, Morimura defines himself as a hybrid between actor and artist, employing elaborate makeup, costumes, and traditional painting techniques to transform himself into a wide range of influential cultural figures. Through photography, he meticulously stages the illusion of becoming another person, embodying iconic historical and artistic personas. His works function simultaneously as homage and as a means of interrogating his own perspective on these figures, creating an alternative version of them - one that merges the subject with Morimura himself.
Paradoxically, it is through the impossibility of perfect imitation that Morimura's work asserts its uniqueness. Each of his transformations highlights the collaborative nature of art history - where influential figures, knowingly or unknowingly, continue to shape contemporary artistic practice. His work suggests that appropriation is not merely an act of borrowing but a dynamic process in which past and present, self and other, merge to create something entirely new.
Color photography on canvas - Private collection - Colección Norte de Arte Contemporáneo
Couch Monster: Sadzěʔ yaaghęhch'ill
The first iteration of Brian Jungen's Couch Monster: Sadzěʔ yaaghęhch'ill (2002) looked at first like a strange, looming creature that might have stepped out of a science-fiction story. As the viewer moved closer though, they realized the entire sculpture was built from old leather sofas, their cushions cut apart and re-stitched into a hulking, four-legged beast. The cracked upholstery formed a patchwork hide; seams and stuffing peeked out like scars and sinew. Its stance was both playful and unsettling inviting its audience to think about consumer waste, the lives of objects after they're thrown away, and the uneasy overlap between everyday comfort and something far more primal. It was later cast in bronze for a commission by the Art Gallery of Ontario.
Titled with the Dane-zaa (an Athabaskan-speaking group of First Nations people in Canada) subtitle Sadzěʔ yaaghęhch'ill - which translates to "My heart is ripping" - the work draws upon the tragic story of Jumbo, the famous circus elephant who was fatally struck by a train. Jungen said of the tale, "Once captured and trained, things are no longer themselves: Jumbo was no longer an elephant, but a monster created by humans for entertainment. Its will and spirit were broken."
Jungen's use of mass-produced, everyday furniture echoed Duchamp's readymade strategy of taking a common object and transforming its context and meaning. He also appropriated the visual language of First Nations ceremonial masks and regalia, but did so with Western consumer goods, creating a tension between Indigenous traditions and capitalist excess. By merging furniture waste with Indigenous forms, he critiqued both environmental waste and the commodification of Native culture.
Bronze Sculpture - Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto
Beginnings of Appropriation Art
Appropriation, at its most distilled essence, means taking something that exists and making it one's own, or using it for one's own purpose. This appropriation might refer to a material object, but it also applies to the realm of art and ideas.
Cultural appropriation has existed since ancient times which saw Roman sculptors copying Greek originals so faithfully that some "Greek" masterpieces survive only as Roman replicas. Japonisme, a term used to describe the fascination with -and influence of -Japanese art, design and aesthetics on Western art and culture has spanned from 1870s France when European designers were flooding the markets with ukiyo-e woodblock prints to recent decades where Southern California-born pop singer Gwen Stefani sang about and popularized Tokyo-based "Harajuku Girl" fashion for a generation of American teeny boppers.
When applied to the realm of fine art, appropriation can become easily confused with terms such as inspiration or influence. As well, in certain cases, when an artist appropriates something from another artist, it may be misinterpreted as intellectual theft or plagiarism.
One of the earliest manifestations of appropriation in an art context involved objects not appropriated from other artists but from nature. During the Tang dynasty (618-907 CE), various types of rocks, most commonly limestone, were collected by prominent Chinese thinkers. These rocks were displayed on rosewood pedestals specifically carved and placed for contemplation in both private and public spaces. They became famously known as "scholar's rocks."
In this case, the appropriation is alleged because the appropriated object undergoes a conceptual and ontological transformation. When the object "belonged" to nature, it was just a rock embodying the concept of a rock, fulfilling its functions within its geological and ecological system. However, when appropriated by the scholar, the rock is transformed into an object of contemplation, a vehicle for aesthetic pleasure.
Another significant aspect to note is that the Chinese scholars did not modify the rocks in any way. Their creative act merely involved noticing, selecting, and relocating the rock. This act of transformation through selection would later become an important aspect of the discussion surrounding appropriation.
Aside from nature, other early instances of appropriation involved artists incorporating elements from other cultures. In the nineteenth century, two notable examples emerged. These movements, both curiously named Impressionism (one in the visual arts, the other in music), originated from the appropriation of formal aspects of foreign cultures, and were led by painter Claude Monet and pianist and composer Claude Debussy.
In his paintings, Monet drew inspiration from Japanese aesthetics, particularly their use of composition, perspective, and color. This played a crucial role in shaping Impressionism's departure from academic realism.
Similarly, in music, Debussy found inspiration in the Javanese gamelan orchestra, integrating its unconventional scales and tonalities into his compositions. In doing so, he initiated a fundamental break from the dominant functional harmony of Western classical music, paving the way for new approaches in the twentieth century.
Throughout art history, artists have also appropriated one another's subject matter and formal elements of their works, such as the way that Édouard Manet's Olympia (1863) borrows the composition of Titian's Venus of Urbino (1538), and van Gogh's Noon - Rest from Work (after Millet) (1890) borrows and transforms Jean-François Millet's Noonday Rest (1866).
The extent to which these forms of artistic borrowing constitute appropriation - particularly in cross-cultural contexts - is the subject of ongoing scholarly debate. However, it is more common to examine such practices through the framework of cultural appropriation, which, despite having appropriation in its name, focuses more on the power dynamics involved in the adoption and adaptation of artistic and cultural elements from one tradition by another.
Appropriation in the Twentieth Century
The roots of appropriation in contemporary art can be traced back to the early 20th century when artists began cutting, pasting, and re-contextualizing fragments of the real world into their work.
The spark came from Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque during the birth of Cubism. Around 1912, Picasso created Still Life with Chair Caning, incorporating a piece of printed oilcloth that imitated a cane-woven chair seat, and framed it with an actual rope. Instead of representing a chair, he used a physical fragment of the world itself, asserting that meaning could come from selection and juxtaposition, not just skilled illusion. Braque soon followed with his papier collé (pasted paper) works, gluing bits of wallpaper, newspaper, and wood-grain paper directly onto the canvas. These moves were radical because they brought everyday materials into high art, collapsing the boundary between painting and reality.
Inspired by the Cubist collages, Dada artists in the 1910s-20s like Hannah Höch, Kurt Schwitters, and Raoul Hausmann expanded collage into photomontage by combining mass-media images to create biting political critiques.
In 1917, a few years after the emergence of the collages, artist Marcel Duchamp presented a mass-produced urinal as a work of art, which he coined as the first of his "readymades." The piece, titled Fountain emphasized the act of appropriation in an unorthodox manner and was submitted to an art exhibition at the Grand Central Palace in New York as a sculpture. He had not designed or altered the object in any way - he had simply selected it. His gesture shifted the emphasis from making to choosing, a key foundation of appropriation. Fountain has become the most defining example of the genre in modern art.
Duchamp's concept of the readymade, featuring ordinary objects elevated to the status of art through recontextualization, became a defining strategy of twentieth-century art. In such cases, appropriation occurs not at the level of form, which remains unchanged, but at the level of content, which is entirely redefined. This privileging of conceptual transformation over material alteration played a crucial role in the emergence of conceptual art.
Origin of Art Appropriation as a Concept
In the 60s, Pop Art became a pivotal bridge in the history of appropriation as it transformed the Cubist and Dada practice of collage and readymades into a full-scale embrace of mass-media imagery. Andy Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans (1962) repeated a supermarket label literally, and Roy Lichtenstein's blown-up comic panel paintings meticulously copied the Ben-Day dots from cheap newspaper printing. In both pieces, copying became the art.
Skepticism began to surface over the use of appropriation of art as a concept. Warhol's use of silkscreen blurred the line between artist's hand and factory production, questioning originality. Though rarely litigated at the time, Pop's direct use of trademarks and copyrighted imagery foreshadowed later debates over fair use.
This would lay crucial groundwork for the explicit "appropriation art" of the 1970s and '80s, created most famously by the Pictures Generation, a collective of artists that included Sherrie Levine, Richard Prince, Barbara Kruger, Cindy Sherman, Troy Brauntuch, Jack Goldstein, Robert Longo, and Philip Smith. For these artists, borrowing became an explicit strategy, and instead of merely celebrating mass culture, they re-used existing photography, quotation, and text overlays in their work.
In 1977, the year that The Pictures Generation first exhibition was held at The Artist's Space in New York, curated by Douglas Crimp, appropriation as a concept became the subject of intense cultural debate.
In the essay he wrote for the exhibition, Crimp explored the unique process uniting these artists, framing it within the concept of representation, writing that "The work of the five artists in this exhibition, and that of many other young artists as well, seems to be largely free of references to the conventions of modernist art, and instead turn to those of other art forms more directly concerned with representation - film and photography, most particularly - and even to the most debased of our cultural conventions - television and picture newspapers." The exhibition sparked heated dialogue, and Crimp's notion of representation was met with considerable confusion and criticism. Amid this discourse, the idea of representation would gradually evolve into what we now recognize as appropriation.
Appropriation has continued to be a central element of much late modernist and contemporary art. Pop artists on both sides of the Atlantic continue to appropriate imagery and objects from popular culture and advertising in their critiques of consumer culture. More recently, Street and Graffiti artists, such as Shepard Fairey and Banksy also often appropriate recognizable figures/characters and other imagery from pop culture. Contemporary artists whose work is concerned with issues of identity use appropriation to convey powerful messages, such as Hank Willis Thomas whose 2003 Branded series features images of Black bodies edited to appear branded with corporate logos (such as the Nike swoosh logo), in order to comment on how, as he puts it, Black people have gone "from slaves being branded as a sign of ownership, to black bodies today being branded as a way to make money." Meanwhile, Kehinde Wiley paints regal portraits of African Americans, blending the style and compositions of Old Master paintings with patterns typical of African fabrics, in order to elevate the Black subject to a position historically reserved for only white people.
Concepts and Styles
Readymade and the Found Object
The understanding of appropriation in art relies on the nuanced interconnection of several key concepts. The readymade approach and the concept of Found Objects are the foundational building blocks that have shaped many forms of appropriation throughout art history.
The readymade approach, first articulated by Marcel Duchamp introduced a new paradigm for artmaking. Duchamp and his contemporaries, in The Blind Man publication, defined a readymade as an artwork created from manufactured objects. The creativity in such works, they argued, resides not in the making of the object itself but in the artist's decision to select and re-contextualize the object, which becomes the crux of the process.
In contrast, the found object is a concept that involves taking an object and subjecting it to a conceptual transformation within an artwork. A found object is not necessarily a manufactured item - it can be anything that has not been specifically curated for use in a traditional artwork. For example, the aforementioned scholar's rocks may be interpreted as found objects, in the same way that a leaf may be incorporated into a collage as a found object. However, employing a tincture extracted from such a rock or leaf would not meet the criteria, as the tincture is a processed or altered material created for a specific artistic purpose. The key distinction here lies in the object's original intent and its subsequent re-contextualization within an artistic framework.
The legacy of the readymade unfolds most vividly in contemporary appropriation, where the "object" of selection may be a mass-produced commodity, a mass-circulated photograph, or even a meme. By extending Duchamp's premise from hardware to image culture, artists reveal how meaning resides less in fabrication than in framing - how a shift of context, authorship, or audience can turn the ordinary into a charged critique of originality and ownership.
Recontextualization
In the realm of art, recontextualization and appropriation are often used interchangeably, but a closer examination reveals distinct differences between the two concepts. In broad terms, appropriation can be understood as taking possession of something, while recontextualization involves altering its place or context.
When applied to art, appropriation highlights the artist's deliberate selection and redefinition of an object, while recontextualization describes the shift of that object into a new setting that alters its meaning and function. Appropriation centers on the artist's engagement with the object itself; recontextualization focuses on the transformation produced by its new context, revealing a subtle but important distinction between these intertwined practices.
To provide a concrete example, we can once again consider Duchamp's Fountain. In the context of appropriation, the focus is on Duchamp's relationship with the urinal - his intentions and artistic propositions. Meanwhile, the word recontextualization emphasizes the urinal's new placement and the meaning it acquires within an art setting.
Collage and Assemblage Art
The collage technique involves the arrangement of clippings from magazines, newspapers, ribbons, painted paper, photographs, and various found objects, all of which are adhered to a surface such as paper or canvas, forming a cohesive composition. While the origins of collage can be traced back to tenth-century Japan, it experienced a resurgence in the early twentieth century, notably through the work of Cubists like Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. In this context, collage emerged as a key element of the avant-garde movement, signifying a break from traditional artistic methods and embracing innovative, experimental techniques.
Following the Cubists, collage techniques became more inventive in their use of materials. Although Braque had already incorporated wood into some of his works, it was not until the 1940s that wood collage became more experimental, with Dadaists like Hannah Hoch and Kurt Schwitters emerging as some of its major exponents. The Dadaists refined the technique into what they termed photomontage, assembling not only magazine clippings, paint, and wood but also sheet music, photographs, and various other forms of media.
Many of the topics and images chosen for these collages, though they may seem outdated today, were highly relevant at the time. This heterogeneity of elements had a profound impact. Its aesthetic inconsistency, the questions it raised regarding originality, and its inherently disharmonious results made collage the ideal medium for expressing Dada's iconoclastic ambitions. Later, British Pop artists like Eduardo Paolozzi and Richard Hamilton also favored collage in their work, using elements from advertisements and consumer goods (like food wrappers).
While collage art is two-dimensional, Assemblage Art, which began to emerge in the 1910s, is three-dimensional, with artists like Duchamp, Joseph Cornell, Louise Nevelson, and Nam June Paik arranging found objects into new compositions. It often overlaps with appropriation because artists build their works from already-made objects whose original identities remain visible. By selecting and combining discarded materials, packaging, or household goods, they are not only constructing a new composition but also re-framing the cultural meaning of those objects. Kurt Schwitters pioneered this with his Merz collages (1919-40s), using tram tickets, newspaper scraps, and broken wood to turn everyday detritus into poetic constructions. Robert Rauschenberg's 1950s Combines (such as Monogram, 1955-59, with its famous angora goat encircled by a tire) fused painting and sculpture while directly incorporating found furniture, textiles, and street debris. Later, Betye Saar used vintage photographs, advertising signs, and household artifacts in works like The Liberation of Aunt Jemima (1972) to appropriate racist imagery and charge it with new political force.
Recycled Art
When the concepts of readymades, found objects, recontextualization, and collage intersect, they give rise to the practice of Recycled Art. As the name suggests, this technique involves the collection of discarded or used objects, which are then repurposed as key materials for new artworks, often sculptures. Beyond the typical recontextualization and transformation of meaning inherent in these works, recycled art also inevitably engages with pressing environmental and consumerist concerns.
These ecological messages are embedded in the materials themselves, yet some artists highlight them more directly. In 2016, for instance, Catherine Sarah transformed sewage water into luxury soaps to protest the inadequate sewage systems of the Philippines and their vulnerability to typhoons and natural disasters. Likewise, Aida Sulova photographed towering piles of garbage to draw attention to Kyrgyzstan's waste-management challenges.
All forms of appropriated art, including recycled art, often evolve into social and political activism. This is because the very act of transforming the meaning of something that was conventionally accepted as something else is inherently subversive. In the case of recycled art, the process of turning waste into something meaningful inherently sparks important discussions and holds significant potential for activism.
However, a key distinction from the conceptual movement and Duchamp's disregard for retinal art (art intended merely to please the eye) is that most artists working with recycled materials exhibit a genuine concern for form. Indeed, many of these artworks present alternative perspectives on how materials previously considered waste can be repurposed to achieve the same elevated aesthetic goals as traditional artworks.
The most commonly reclaimed materials in recycled art are cloth and metal, both of which are also widely recycled at an industrial level. However, artists have explored a vast range of materials, including cigarette boxes (Bobby Puleo), furniture (Chiharu Shiota), and computer components (Susan Stockwell).
Borrowed Identity
Appropriation of identity is one of the most powerful - and complex - branches of appropriation art. Instead of borrowing a pre-existing image (like Sherrie Levine photographing a Walker Evans photo), artists like Cindy Sherman borrow roles, personas, and visual codes of identity itself. In the late 1970s and 80s, some artists began treating identity as something constructed and therefore able to be "quoted," much like an object or image. In Sherman's Untitled Film Stills (1977-80), she photographed herself in the guises of anonymous female archetypes such as a film noir heroine, ingenue, and career woman thus appropriating Hollywood's stock characters and visual tropes, revealing how femininity is scripted by the media.
Appropriation of identity extends the logic of appropriation from things to selves, revealing that identity, like a photograph or a brand logo, is a cultural product that can be performed, used, and deconstructed.
Later Developments - After Appropriation Art
Appropriation, in its current conceptual form, is a relatively recent topic of discussion within artistic circles. Most of the techniques and concepts examined here have undergone little to no significant change in contemporary art, with the primary difference being their translation into the digital space. For instance, traditional collage has been replaced by digital equivalents such as digital photomontage, digital collages, and so-called 3D collages. Additionally, emerging technologies have facilitated these techniques while introducing new methods of appropriation.
Alongside these digital techniques, internet culture and social media have expanded the possibilities of appropriation in art. One example is the distinct system of expression that has emerged, built around a communicative device known as the meme, which functions as an appropriated image recontextualized through short phrases or text. These repurposed images convey complex messages or lessons that would be difficult or less effective to communicate through words alone. Another is the blatant borrowing of social media imagery, swiped from personal Facebook pages or Instagram feeds. In 2014, Richard Prince's New Portraits series became the most talked about example when he took a screenshot of model Emily Ratajkowski's Instagram post, added only a cryptic comment of his own, and printed it on canvas without asking permission. He sold the work for around six figures, sparking a debate over copyright, consent, and ownership of images shared on social media. Ratajkowski later answered back with her own NFT artwork, Buying Myself Back (2021), to reclaim some control over her image and highlight the very issues Prince had exposed.
An artist who has brought the practice of identity appropriation into the internet age is Amalia Ulman who is known for blending performance, photography, and social media to question how identity and authenticity are constructed online. Her breakout project Excellences & Perfections (2014) unfolded entirely on Instagram, where she staged a fictional persona full of glamorous selfies, romantic drama, and cosmetic surgery hints without revealing it was intended as an artwork until the end. By appropriating the aesthetics of influencer culture and blurring fact with fiction, Ulman exposed how social platforms shape desire, femininity, and self-presentation.
A major recent hot topic about plagiarism and appropriation centers on generative AI. These artificial intelligence systems are trained on vast collections of copyrighted artwork, and their outputs sometimes mimic the training material so closely that they even reproduce artists' signatures or visible watermarks. While in previous cases of appropriation, there is generally a clear understanding of what material is being appropriated and how, with AI, the process can be opaque. Unless there is a case of overfitting (when an AI reproduces aspects of its training data almost verbatim instead of creating something entirely new), or the artist recognizes their own work, it is impossible to know which elements from which artworks are being appropriated. This stands in stark contrast to historical examples, where there is at least an effort to name or point to the source of the appropriation. Even if the AI prompter intends to give credit to the sources of their product, the datasets involved are so vast that it is nearly impossible to track the material origins of the artwork.
Similarly, it is difficult to assess how the appropriated material is being recontextualized, when it isn't evident what is being recontextualized. Even more concerning is the fact that the true vision of the creator may remain ambiguous, since their involvement is often limited to drafting a prompt that may or may not be made available to the public.
Useful Resources on Appropriation Art
- Appropriation (Whitechapel: Documents of Contemporary Art)Our PickBy Reiko Tomii
- Cultural Appropriation and the Arts (New Directions in Aesthetics)By James O. Young
- Cutting Across Media: Appropriation Art, Interventionist Collage, and Copyright LawBy Davis Schneiderman and Kembrew McLeod
- Art, Media Design, and Postproduction: Open Guidelines on Appropriation and RemixBy Eduardo Navas
- Reuse Value: Spolia and Appropriation in Art and Architecture from Constantine to Sherrie LevineOur PickBy Richard Brilliant and Dale Kinney
