'good artists borrow, great artists steal' - St Marylebone School

‘good artists borrow, great artists steal’
- Picasso
What did Picasso mean by this, and how can you use this mantra to
enhance your work?

Development - Appropriation
To appropriate something involves taking
possession of it. In the visual arts, the term
appropriation often refers to the use of
borrowed elements in the creation of new
work.
The borrowed elements may include images,
forms or styles from art history or from
popular culture, or materials and techniques
from non-art contexts.
Since the 1980s the term has also referred
more specifically to quoting the work of
another artist to create a new work. The new
work does not actually alter the original per se;
the new work uses the original to create a new
work. In most cases the original remains
accessible as the original, without change.

Picasso
Here, Picasso has appropriated (borrowed, and made his own) the form and subject of
Velasquez’s ‘Las Menias’ to create a new work .

Picasso borrowed from this image more than
once to create new works.

The Chapman Brothers
In 2003, Mark & Dinos Chapman famously bought and then altered a set of Los Caprichos, - a series of etchings
by Goya. Working on top of the original prints (there are several in circulation) they ‘vandalised’ the original
work, by painting on top of it. In doing this, they literally ‘appropriated’ the work of Goya and made it their
own, placing the original in a different context and creating something new.

The Chapman Brothers

The Chapman Brothers

The Chapman Brothers appropriated the
work of Goya more than once… and in a
number of different ways.
Great Deeds Against The Dead
by Jake and Dinos Chapman
(1994)
Goya Disasters of War, 1810 - 20

The Chapman Brothers didn’t only
‘appropriate’ from Goya, they have
also worked on top of a number of
Victorian portraits, ‘defacing’ the
original sitter, by giving them a new
and ghostly disguise.
They also worked into a number of
Hitler’s original drawings for the exhibition
‘If Hitler was a hippie, how happy would he be?’

Other examples of ‘appropriation’ in work by the Chapman Brothers

Richard Prince
In 2005, a Richard Prince photograph of a Marlboro cigarettes advertisement
was auctioned for over $1.2 million - a world record. He photographed the
Marlboro ad without permission removing the identifying marks. In a 1977
essay, Prince proclaimed that he was "practicing without a license" – referring
to his practice of stealing other people's pictures and publishing them as his
own.

Richard Prince

Graham Dolphin Graham Dolphin's work appropriates objects
and icons of the fashion and music industries,
reforming them into assemblages that reveal
the obsessions and formulas underwriting the
temporal world of mass culture.
Text works include: every lyric from the Beatles
back catalogue hand written over the iconic
cover of the White Album. In another text
work, Dolphin takes every word from a single
issue of Vogue and scripts them onto a single
page, which has the same dimensions of the
magazine. Film works include: gathering 1,500
images of Kate Moss merged into 60 seconds
and footage of 100 Fashion Shows shown in a
mere 100 seconds.
These compulsive actions transform and
disrupt the surface aspirations of popular
culture and the glamour industry.

Dolphin's drawings compile every 'product'
(shoes, cosmetics, etc.) traced over each
other onto a single page.
Graham Dolphin

Graham Dolphin
The BOUDICCA Animate Editions are the product of a unique
collaboration between Graham Dolphin and the luxury avantgarde
fashion house.
Dolphin uses the medium of etching to create a series of fine
graphic impressions, which explore the aesthetics of the
BOUDICCA Autumn/Winter collection, Animate.
Edition 1 brings together every item from the collection and reconfigures
the garments into an intensely layered composition.
Edition 2 takes one item from the collection, The Pleated
Shoulder Jacket '(Vent Jacket)', and gathers then explodes all the
different fabrications that have gone into the garment, creating
a deeply transformative representation.
EDITION 1: BOUDICCA ANIMATE COLLECTED (2005)

Graham Dolphin
The series includes two Editions of the
etchings with additional artwork by
BOUDICCA, and a sound art Edition reworking
every piece of music that went into
the New York show launching the collection.

Dolphin’s text works include: every lyric from
the Beatles back catalogue hand written over
the iconic cover of the White Album, every
word from a single issue of Vogue scripted onto
a single page, (which has the same dimensions
of the magazine).
His Film works include: gathering 1,500 images
of Kate Moss merged into 60 seconds and
footage of 100 Fashion Shows shown in a mere
100 seconds.
Graham Dolphin

These compulsive actions appropriate,
transform and disrupt the surface aspirations
of popular culture and the glamour industry.
Graham Dolphin

Fumie Sasabuchi
Sasabuchi's work tends to draw attention
away from the selling purpose of the
advertisements by turning the models into
displays of human anatomy, or by drawing
complex tatoos on children.

Appropriation in painting
The Painting of Modern Life, an exhibition
featured at the Hayward Gallery in London,
(2007) explored the use and translation
(appropriation) of photographic imagery in
modern art.
Beginning in the 1960s when artists such as
Warhol, Richter and Artschwager, began
making paintings that translated photographic
images taken from newspapers and
advertisements, the exhibition illustrated how
photography has influenced not just the
content but also the technique of painting.
Andy Warhol, Big Electric Chair, 1967.

Elizabeth Peyton
In most the paintings explored in
this exhibition, photography played
a major part, often as a direct
source material. Some are painted
versions of snatched tabloid
moments rendered in paint, such as
Elizabeth Peyton’s depiction of
Prince Harry at an Arsenal match,
one of the first images to emerge of
the Princes after Diana died.
Elizabeth Peyton, Arsenal (Prince Harry), 1997,

Gerhard Richter
Gerhard Richter’s Woman with Umbrella, a
moving portrait of a distressed woman, is in
fact based on a photograph of a grieving Jackie
Kennedy but could easily be any ordinary
passer-by.
With its basis often in found imagery, Richter’s
work presents a world that is recognisable yet
blurred and slightly out of reach.
“I did not take it [photography] as a subsititute
for reality but as a crutch to help me get to
reality,” a quote by him on the gallery wall
explains.
Gerhard Richter, Woman with Umbrella, 1964,

Liu Xiaodong
Liu Xiaodong’s “A Transsexual
Getting Down Stairs” (2001)
brings to mind both the
changing state of present-day
China as well as Marcel
Duchamp’s “Nude Descending
a Staircase.” Such references
interweave photography and
art history in ways that work
for most of us on a
subconscious level born of an
education in modern art.
Liu Xiaodong “A
Transsexual Getting
Down Stairs” (2001)
Nude descending a staircase no2 1912 by
Marcel Duchamp

Music is not exempt from appropriation either.
In their music video for their song Lemon, U2
pay tribute to the photographer Muybridge.
Groups such as the Nouelle Vague made their
name by covering (appropriating) songs and
remaking them their own distinctive style.

Rappers & DJs sample and remix
other people’s work – appropriating
the elements they find interesting
in other people’s work and turning
them into something new…
… painters and poets
do the same!
Artists – of all varieties are
constantly referencing each
others work in their own,
remixing and refashioning them
to build new ideas from the
foundations of those which
have gone before them.
What will you do?!

Pop Art
Pop Art was one of the most revolutionary art
movements of the 20th century. In the 1950s,
a group of artists in Great Britain and the USA,
rather than despising popular culture, gladly
embraced both its imagery and its methods,
using photographs, advertisements, posters,
cartoons and everyday objects to form the
basis of their art. Their audacity at first
scandalized the Establishment, but by the mid-
1960s their work dominated the world art
scene and names such as Andy Warhol, Roy
Lichtenstein and Robert Rauschenberg were
familiar to many.

Film, art, music, photography,
fashion…
They all look to (and steal) from
each other, you can’t detach
yourself from the world – and
the influences – around you.

Skin & Bones
This exhibition at Somerset House highlighted parallels
between practice in fashion and architecture, showing
how both architects and fashion designers have inspired
one another

Fashion & Architecture
It is often mentioned that
fashion is closely related to
art, but some think the
interconnection between
fashion and architecture is
sometimes even stronger.
Here are five examples from
the spring-collections of
2008 and five famous,
exceptional buildings from
the 20th and 21st century.
Alexander McQueen & Sydney Opera House (by Jørn Utzon)

Balenciaga & Guggenheim-Museum Bilbao (by Frank O. Gehry)

Emilio Pucci & Finca Güell in Barcelona (by Antoni Gaudí)

Akris & Holocaust Memorial Berlin (by Peter Eisenman)

Anne Klein & Unité d’Habitation in Marseille (by Le Corbusier)

‘good artists borrow, great artists steal’
- Picasso

Artist appropriation:
project development and artist development writing
• Take inspiration from your artists and steal – don’t just
borrow from their works and ideas.
• Write about and illustrate the ideas, motifs,
techniques etc you find inspiring in your artists’ work
and explain how you’re going to incorporate these
into your work in your artist development writing.
• Ensure you take the concept a step further – there’s no
point in copying something – do something different
with it – take it somewhere else – DEVELOP your ideas
– steal them and make them yours by embedding them
into your work.