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In a broader sense Appropriation Art is when artists consciously and with strategic consideration copy the works of other artists, whereby the act of copying and the result itself should be understood as art (otherwise one speaks of plagiarism or forgery).
Strategies include "borrowing, stealing, appropriating, inheriting, assimilating... being influenced, inspired, dependent, hunted, possessed, quoting, rewriting, reworking, redesigning... revision, re-evaluation, variation, version, Interpretation, imitation, approach, improvisation, supplement, increase, prequel... pastiche, paraphrase, parody, piracy, forgery, homage, mimicry, travesty, Shan-Zhai, echo, allusion, intertextuality and karaoke.
In a more general sense, it can be any art that deals with found aesthetic material, e.g. advertising photography, press photography, archive images, films, videos, etc. These can be exact, detailed copies; however, manipulations of size, color, material and medium of the original are usually made in the copy.
This appropriation can take place with critical intention or as homage. Works usually deal with abstract characteristics of artworks and the art market itself. They problematize fundamental categories of the art world such as authorship, originality, creativity, intellectual property, signature, market value, museum space (so-called white cube), history, gender, subject, identity and difference. In doing so, this controversial art form focuses on paradoxes and self-contradictions and makes them visible and aesthetically perceptible.
As the German term "Aneignungskunst" suggests, is an art form that deals with the copying of already existing works of art. From this meaning derives another term, "iterativism", which etymologically refers to the Latin word for repetition, iteratio.
The development of appropriation as an art goes back to the early 20th century and finds its roots, for example, in the Readymades of Marcel Duchamp, Pablo Picasso, Giorgio de Chirico, and Pop Art.
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