Collection: Appropriation Art

Publications, catalogues, and printed matter connected to appropriation art — work that takes existing images, objects, texts, and systems as its primary material.

The objects here document a practice that has moved through multiple legal, institutional, and critical frames: from Pictures Generation strategies of the late 1970s and 1980s, through the contested territories of copyright, authorship, and originality that appropriation continues to occupy. Sherrie Levine, Richard Prince, Barbara Kruger, Mike Bidlo, and their adjacencies appear here as artists whose relationship to the found image has generated both significant work and significant dispute.

Catalogue as evidence. Publication as secondary site. The printed record of appropriation is itself a form of redistribution.

Browse the collection at The New Rare.