J.5.1 Eva and Franco Mattes: digital meme culture and practices of reappropriation

• Nathalie Dietschy, Université de Lausanne

Since the 1990s and the advent of the World Wide Web and digital technologies, reappropriation in its multiple forms has become an increasingly common practice in contemporary art, opening up to new artistic approaches of "postproduction" (Bourriaud, 2004), manipulation (Grenier, 2014), or more generally recycling (Roque, Cheles, 2013). The gesture of copying is one of the approaches explored and particularly questioned within the reproduction techniques made possible by the computer and the digital nature of objects (Gronlund, 2016). The Italian artist duo Eva and Franco Mattes (1976 –), among the pioneers of internet art in the 1990s, has widely explored replication approaches, using hacking procedures in their early projects and appropriationist strategies in their most recent works. One motif is regularly interpreted in their works, that of the cat, a reference to "lolcat" (Lavoie, 2020) and "meme" culture (Shifman, 2014) which, under the guise of humor, are not without critical content (Jost, 2022). This paper proposes to reflect upon Eva and Franco Mattes' practice of reappropriation, ranging from the heritage of the Pictures Generation to the digital cultures of sharing and circulation of images (Gunthert, 2015). I aim to show that the artists' approach is part of the free culture of the internet (Lessig, 2008), of digital images (in particular internet memes), which are duplicated and propagated in the flow of the internet, as well as in the field of contemporary art and its processes of reappropriation.

This paper is part of the SNF (Swiss National Science Foundation) research project that will be submitted for evaluation in 2023, on the various forms of reappropriation of the late 20^th and early 21^st century in still and moving images, under the direction of Nathalie Dietschy, Art History Department and Valentine Robert, History and Aesthetics of Cinema Department, at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland.

Bourriaud Nicolas, Postproduction. La culture comme scénario : comment l’art reprogramme le monde contemporain, Paris, Les Presses du Réel, 2004.
Grenier Catherine, « La manipulation des images dans l’art contemporain », Paris, Éditions du Regard, 2014.
Gronlund Melissa, Contemporary Art and Digital Culture, London, Routledge, 2016.
Gunthert André, « L’Image partagée ». La photographie numérique, Paris, Textuel, 2015.
Jost François, « Est-ce que tu mèmes ? De la parodie à la pandémie numérique », Paris, CNRS Éditions, 2022.
Lavoie Vincent, « Trop mignon ! Mythologies du cute », Paris, PUF, 2020.
Lessig Lawrence, Remix : Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy, London, Bloomsbury Academic, 2008.
Roque Georges, Cheles Luciano (dir.), « L’image recyclée », Pau, Presses de l’Université de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour, 2013.
Shifman Limor, Memes in Digital Culture, Cambridge: MA, MIT Press, 2014.

keywords: meme, internet art, post-internet art, digital remix, appropriation

J.5.2 After Originality: Serkan Özkaya and the Creative Act

Maxwell Hyett, Western University

In a series of letters dated from the mid 1990s to early 2000s, titled Dear Sir or Madam, Serkan Özkaya addressed major art institutions asking permission to perform interventions with key art historical works in their collections. These interventions included flipping the Mona Lisa upside down and re-wrapping the Reichstag. One particularly vitriol response came from the MoMA after Özkaya proposed to create the illusion of a green dollar sign painted onto Piet Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie. In this last case, Özkaya’s project is not only appropriative of an artwork, but also a second artist’s method (Alexander Brener). Arguably failing to be realized, thwarted by a lack of institutional support, Özkaya’s artwork becomes an interesting departure point for considering the status of the creative act in contemporary art, after appropriation.

Appropriation art infamously challenged notions of the creative act through its strategies of borrowing, taking, stealing, and recontextualization. And this is only a practical realization of a problem that has haunted art theory for much longer. Erwin Panofsky described this problem as a “dialectical antinomy” that oscillated between two views throughout history: the artist is an inventor or the artist is an imitator. Rerouting Panofsky’s view through Alexander Nagel and Christopher S. Wood’s Anachronistic Renaissance, this paper will consider an art historical perspective after appropriation in which ‘invention’ has been replaced by ‘performance’ and ‘imitation’ by ‘substitution’, in other words, after originality.

keywords: Serkan Özkaya, creative act, appropriation, originality, anachronism

J.5.3 Appropriating Formalism

• Emily Dickson, Western University

While the art historical method of Formalism (canonically taught as a methodology popularly employed form ~1850-1950) became outmoded in scholarly thought largely due to the types of questions that something like Appropriation raised against it, in a contemporary context it is not readily apparent, nor likely justifiable, that Formalism and appropriation remain incommensurable. As such, this paper seeks to question what congruencies, and which feedback loops, exist between appropriative and formal means. For this session, I am interested in proposing a paper which interrogates formalist appropriation along two key valences: first along that of the vernacular/everyday of appropriated works in practice—specifically vis-à-vis the many appropriations of Jean-François Millet’s The Angelus—and second along that of the theoretical, where the overlaps between a non-determined neo-Formalism, and a theory of private appropriation, are interrogated.

While Appropriation as an art historical and theoretical discourse and practice had a given set of concerns from 1970-1990, the continuing (arguably accelerating) private acts of appropriation, i.e. the purchasing of reproductions for the home, raise a unique set of concerns for both Appropriationist and Formalist fields. To what extent is the form “carried over” in the appropriated act? What is the significance of this passage for formal integrity? What is the significance of the appropriative object, and act, to and for the private owner of the appropriated piece? This paper seeks to interrogate these questions by charting how the many appropriations of The Angelus function (bookends, decorative plates, full-sized needlework, and painted reproductions here reign supreme), and further by exploring one personal element and ongoing creative work—that of the uncanny similitude between The Angelus painting and a photograph of my grandparents, which raises in one more way these same questions of appropriation, formal passage, and form. This presentation, further, draws upon my dissertation research which interrogates Formalist art history and theory, in order to explore and propose an appropriate Formalism of and for the day.

keywords: formalism, appropriation, Jean-François Millet, The Angelus