Culture of the Copy Complete

For Week 8

These last few weeks of the terms we will be considering how things are categorized, collected, curated, and what all that has to do with making meaning.

For Tuesday 5/19, we will read and discuss "Collecting -- so normal, so paradoxical," by Matthiaas Winzen, taken from the book Deep Storage. Find it in the course reader after POL chapter 5.

Along with the reading, find a collection that you like, either your own, that of someone you know, or by going to a museum or historical center. If you are stumped, check out the Museum of Online Museums. Think about what appeals to you about the collection you have chosen and write a post with an image or two on your blog.

We will share these in class on Tuesday 5/19.

Jeff Koons' String of Puppies

Jeff Koons' sculpture (top left) from the photograph by photographer Art Rogers (bottom left) engendered a copyright suit, Rogers v. Koons. The court held against Koons, finding that "an artist who reproduced a photograph as a three-dimensional sculpture for sale as high-priced art could not claim parody as a defense for copyright infringement, when the photograph itself was not the target of his parody." According to the holding, Koons was not commenting on Rogers' work specifically, and so his copying of that work did not fall under the fair use exception.

See resource list at right for a link to the Creative Commons website.

Sherrie Levine

Fountain (after Marcel Duchamp: A.P.)
Sherrie Levine
1991 bronze



I try to make art which celebrates doubt and uncertainty. Which provokes answers but doesn't give them. Which withholds absolute meaning by incorporating parasite meanings. Which suspends meaning while perpetually dispatching you toward interpretation, urging you beyond dogmatism, beyond doctrine, beyond ideology, beyond authority.--Sherrie Levine

Since the early 1980s, Sherrie Levine has made a career out of re-using--or appropriating--famous works of art, often by making new versions of them and placing them in different contexts. Throughout her career, Levine has created art based on works by prominent male artists from the early 20th century in order to underscore the relative absence of women in the art world at that time. Her sources have included Walker Evans' photographs and Constantin Brancusi's sculptures. Levine's piece, entitled Fountain (after Marcel Duchamp: A. P.), is inspired by Marcel Duchamp's Fountain (1917).

When Levine's Fountain is compared with Duchamp's sculpture, it is apparent that it is not an exact copy. Most notably, Duchamp's piece was an actual urinal, turned upside-down and unaltered except for his signature. He believed he could transform such mass-produced, everyday objects into artworks merely by proclaiming them so, and called them "readymades." In contrast, Levine's sculpture is a contemporary urinal cast in the sculptor's traditional precious metal, bronze. Polished to a brilliant shine, this piece is no longer a common, store-bought item; it has been transformed by the artist into a unique object. (Text from Walker Art Center)

See the resource list at right for a link to aftersherrielevine.com.

Week 7: Stenciling T-shirts & Image Assignment

Here's one site with instructions for spray paint stenciling on T-shirts and another and one more. Maybe this one is the clearest. Read all the tips about washing the shirt, ventilation, etc.

Here is a general site about iron-on transfers.

See Culture of the Copy post below for project instructions. For extra credit, make 2 t-shirts: one to keep and one to trade with a classmate!

Bring your source image and ideas for it's alteration to class on Tuesday. Also read the last half of POL Chapter 5 for discussion.

Week Six Reconfigured

Due to low attendance and the fact that few people did the assigned reading for Tuesday's class, on Thursday 5/7, we will tackle pp. 183-203, "Visual Technologies, Image Reproduction and the Copy" (the first half of POL Chapter 5 in the course reader). Again, as you read, you should be summarizing the main points, noting unfamiliar concepts and vocab, noting what surprised or confused you, and formulating a question for class discussion. The last takes some thought but is worth the practice: figuring out how to ask good questions is a valuable art in itself.

The additional assignment for Thursday is to bring in images for the "Copy Cat" project: a well-known art work or cultural icon (pop or not) that you will copy and modify as a two-sided stenciled T-shirt.