From Readymade to 'Meta²'

From Readymade to ‘Meta²’ Metareference in Appropriation Art Katharina Bantleon Throughout the history of art, artworks have made reference to preceding works of art. These instances of art hinting at, or invoking other art are inherently self- referential. However, against the backdrop of conceptual notions induced by Marcel Duchamp in the 1910s, the second half of the 20th century saw an undis- putable increase in strategic, open, undisguised ‘borrowing’ and reworking of existing artworks and visual culture at large which is commonly referred to as ‘appropriation’. This contribution discusses appropriationist modes of artistic pro- duction which are inherently and metareferentially concerned with questions pertaining to the general nature of ‘art’, authorship and originality as an indicator of an ongoing metareferential turn in the visual arts. 1. Introduction In view of the fact that – virtually since their beginnings – the visual arts have applied a variety of modes by which artworks establish ref- erences to their antecedents, the generalizing remark that all art is es- sentially ‘about’ art has practically become commonplace (cf., for in- stance, Lipman/Marshall 1978: 6f., Steinberg 1978: 8, Kloss 1985: 27, Silk 1995: 10). There are a plethora of terms designating various prac- tices of alluding to, or directly quoting, pre-existing art; among them, to mention but a few, are referencing, emulating, paraphrasing, borrowing, reusing, reworking, acquiring, copying, duplicating, reproduc- ing, replicating, confiscating, purloining, plagiarizing or even stealing. The reasons and motives for applying such strategies are likewise manifold, ranging from, for example, the art student’s aim to learn and practise certain styles or techniques, via the dissemination of original artworks through reproductive printmaking in the tradition of Renais- sance engravers and print artists, to paying homage to, or humorously and/or critically commenting on, the work of fellow artists. All such instances of art hinting at or invoking other art are inherently self-referential. However, for the better part of history, artists cautiously and subtly blended existing imagery into new designs and 306 Katharina Bantleon inventions of their own – almost as though they were weaving old threads into new tapestries – and it inevitably required the expert or connoisseur to detect them. One could classify such adumbrated reference as cases in which images self-referentially ‘point to’ certain his- torical referents (cf. Wolf 2009: 17). Notably since the mid-twentieth century, however, “[r]ather than camouflage a borrowed element in the total composition, and so obliterate any reference to its originator, the contemporary artist [has] boldly use[d] the most recognizable quo- tations” (Lipman/Marshall 1978: 7). Especially since the 1980s, this development in strategic borrowing has been commonly referred to as ‘appropriation’, a term which has, moreover, become eponymous with the artistic movement of appropriation art or appropriationism that commenced in the 1970s, peaked in the 1980s1 and has started to de- velop a ‘neo-phase’ since the turn of the millennium in both the visual arts and literature. Since artefacts in themselves merely have the potential to unfold a metareferential dimension, the actualization of which can only be ef- fectuated in the recipient (cf. Wolf 2009: 25), it is especially note- worthy that in intentionally making their sources recognizable as such, contemporary artists “deliberately encourage[...] the viewer to partici- pate in discovering the genesis of the [respective] work” (Lipman/ Marshall 1978: 7). This, in part, accounts for appropriation’s predispo- sition towards eliciting a medium awareness in the recipient, which has been pointed out by Tricia Collins and Richard Milazzo in the following terms: Appropriation is a media-relative phenomenon. [...] It is a strategy reflexive to the media, and, more generally, grounded in the process of mediation itself, and it is an attempt to deal specifically with the problem of the media dialectically through the critique of representation. That is, it tries to combat the media through the use of the media’s own images and instruments – through their own representational means and content. In this regard, it is an utterly self-reflexive activity […]. (1989: 37f.) It thus stands to reason that one ought to perceive appropriation – that is, the artistic mode or practice of taking up existing referents from the realm of visual culture in readily recognizable parts or in their entirety 1 For clarity’s and brevity’s sake, I will refer to this movement as ‘1980s appropriationism’ or ‘1980s appropriation art’ in the following although it actually started to emerge at the end of the 1970s. .

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