Wow - what a great discussion for the students to have - even throw in
this article about Richard Prince:
If the Copy Is an Artwork, Then What's the Original?
By RANDY KENNEDY
Published: December 6, 2007
Correction Appended
Since the late 1970s, when Richard Prince became known as a pioneer of
appropriation art - photographing other photographs, usually from
magazine ads, then enlarging and exhibiting them in galleries - the
question has always hovered just outside the frames: What do the
photographers who took the original pictures think of these pictures of
their pictures, apotheosized into art but without their names anywhere
in sight?
So What's the Original? Recently a successful commercial photographer
from Chicago named Jim Krantz was in New York and paid a quick visit to
the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, where Mr. Prince is having a
well-regarded 30-year retrospective that continues through Jan. 9. But
even before Mr. Krantz entered the museum's spiral, he was stopped short
by an image on a poster outside advertising the show, a rough-hewn
close-up of a cowboy's hat and outstretched arm.
Mr. Krantz knew it quite well. He had shot it in the late 1990s on a
ranch in the small town of Albany, Tex., for a Marlboro advertisement.
"Like anyone who knows his work," Mr. Krantz said of his picture in a
telephone interview, "it's like seeing yourself in a mirror." He did not
investigate much further to see if any other photos hanging in the
museum might be his own, but said of his visit that day, "When I left, I
didn't know if I should be proud, or if I looked like an idiot."
Drawing from real life is wonderful - but we use photographs for our
proportional grid self-portraits - and copying other artwork didn't seem
to hurt van Gogh (and more) - I would be interested to hear what the
students think -
ellen
