Appropriation art: When copying becomes a manifesto
Picture the scene: New York, 1981. In a gallery in the Lower East Side, a young woman exhibits a series of black-and-white photographs. The images show American farmers during the Great Depression, their faces hollowed by poverty, their gazes lost in the lens. Nothing new, it seems—except these phot
By Artedusa
••9 min read
Appropriation art: when copying becomes a manifesto
Picture the scene: New York, 1981. In a gallery in the Lower East Side, a young woman exhibits a series of black-and-white photographs. The images show American farmers during the Great Depression, their faces hollowed by poverty, their gazes lost in the lens. Nothing new, it seems—except these photographs are not hers. Sherrie Levine simply rephotographed works by Walker Evans, one of the masters of documentary photography. The scandal erupts. How dare she appropriate another’s work like this? Yet on closer inspection, something feels off. These images are not mere copies. They carry within them a deeper question: who truly owns an image? And what if the act of copying was more revolutionary than that of creating?
This is the question that drove appropriation art in the 1980s, a movement where artists like Levine and Mike Bidlo transformed the act of copying into a form of resistance. Their work did not merely reproduce—it deconstructed, interrogated, and sometimes even provoked. In a world where art was still dominated by the myth of the creative genius, they dared to ask: what if the original did not exist?
Copying as a political act
To understand the audacity of Levine and Bidlo, we must return to the roots of appropriation art. In the 1970s, as the art world remained under the grip of modernist dogmas—originality, authenticity, the artist’s hand—a new generation of New York artists began seizing existing images to subvert them. This was not creative laziness, but a response to a very specific socio-political context.
1980s America was marked by the rise of neoliberalism, the growing power of mass media, and a culture of frenzied consumption. Images circulated faster than ever, endlessly reproduced in magazines, on television, in advertising. In this whirlwind of representations, the very idea of originality seemed to be becoming obsolete. Why create something new when everything had already been done? Why claim authenticity when images were already copies of themselves?
It was in this climate that Levine released her After Walker Evans in 1981. By rephotographing Evans’s images, she did not merely reproduce pictures of rural poverty. She highlighted a paradox: these photographs, commissioned by the U.S. government to illustrate New Deal programs, were already tools of propaganda. By reframing them in an art gallery, Levine revealed their dual nature—both historical documents and aesthetic objects. But above all, she posed a fundamental question: if an image can be endlessly reproduced, who truly owns it?
Sherrie Levine: the thief who killed the author
Sherrie Levine never hid her admiration for post-structuralist theorists. In the 1960s and 1970s, thinkers like Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault had already challenged the idea of the author. Barthes, in The Death of the Author (1967), argued that the meaning of a text did not lie in its creator’s intention, but in the reader’s interpretation. Levine applied this idea to visual art.
Her After Walker Evans is not a simple copy. It is a conceptual performance. By rephotographing Evans’s images, she erases the boundary between the original and the reproduction. The grain of the photograph, the quality of the print—everything is calculated to imitate the original, but with one crucial difference: Levine does not claim to create something new. Instead, she exposes the illusion of originality.
Take Allie Mae Burroughs, one of Evans’s most famous portraits. In Levine’s version, the face of this poor Alabama woman, marked by years of crisis, appears almost identical. Yet something has changed. Burroughs’s gaze, which in the original seemed directed at the photographer, becomes in Levine’s copy a gaze toward us, the viewers. As if Levine were saying: "You think you’re seeing an image of poverty? In reality, you’re seeing just another representation, a copy of a copy."
This gesture was all the more subversive because it was part of a feminist approach. By appropriating the work of a male photographer, Levine challenged the male domination of art history. She did not merely copy—she claimed the right to rewrite history.
Mike Bidlo: the forger who painted like a master
While Levine worked with photography, Mike Bidlo chose painting. And not just any painting: he spent years meticulously recreating the masterpieces of modern art. In 1984, he exhibited Not Picasso: Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, a perfect replica of Picasso’s 1907 painting. But where Picasso had revolutionized art with this work, Bidlo turned it into a mere copy.
Yet Bidlo was not a forger in the traditional sense. He did not seek to deceive collectors. On the contrary, he signed his canvases "Not Picasso," "Not Pollock," "Not Warhol," as if to underscore the absurdity of the notion of the original. His work was a performance in itself: he spent months, sometimes years, painstakingly reproducing famous works, even imitating the cracks in the original paint.
Take his Not Warhol (1985), a series in which he recreated Warhol’s famous Marilyns. Where Warhol used silkscreen to mass-produce his images, Bidlo painted them by hand. The result? Works that are indistinguishable from the originals, yet carry a biting irony. Warhol had already appropriated Marilyn Monroe’s image, an icon of popular culture. By copying Warhol, Bidlo took the logic one step further: what if even appropriation could be appropriated?
What makes Bidlo’s work so fascinating is its physical dimension. Unlike Levine, who worked with photographic reproductions, Bidlo painted every detail by hand. His Not Pollock (1990), for example, are replicas of Pollock’s famous drippings, executed with almost manic precision. In doing so, Bidlo did not merely question originality—he also interrogated the value of artistic labor. If an artist can reproduce a Pollock in a few months, what remains of the "master’s hand"?
The trial of originality
Appropriation art did not just divide critics—it also sparked legal battles. In 1981, Walker Evans’s family threatened Levine with copyright infringement lawsuits. The question was simple: could one appropriate a protected work in the name of art? Levine ultimately won her case, but the affair revealed a fundamental tension in contemporary art.
On one side were those who saw appropriation as a form of plagiarism. Robert Hughes, the renowned art critic, called Levine’s work "outright theft." On the other, theorists like Douglas Crimp saw it as a necessary critique of capitalism and the commodification of art. For them, appropriation was not an end in itself, but a means of exposing the power structures underlying artistic creation.
This tension remains relevant today. In 2014, Richard Prince was sued for using Instagram photos without permission. In 2018, a painting generated by artificial intelligence sold at auction for over $400,000. Each time, the same question resurfaces: who owns an image? And what if art is merely a matter of context?
When the copy becomes a work of art
One of the paradoxes of appropriation art is that the copies sometimes end up being worth more than the originals. In 2014, a complete set of After Walker Evans sold for $1.2 million at Christie’s. How can this be explained?
First, there is the aura of scandal. Levine’s and Bidlo’s works carry within them the story of their creation—the lawsuits, the debates, the controversies. They are not mere copies, but manifestos. Then there is rarity. Levine produced only a limited number of prints, and Bidlo recreated only a select few works. Finally, there is the conceptual dimension. These works do not merely imitate—they interrogate.
Take Fountain (After Marcel Duchamp) (1991), another of Levine’s works. She recreated Duchamp’s famous urinal, but in bronze. The original, a mass-produced object, was already a provocation. Levine’s version, however, is a unique, signed, and numbered sculpture. By transforming a ready-made into a traditional art object, she pushes Duchamp’s logic to its extreme: what if even provocation could be reproduced?
The legacy of appropriation: from art to the digital age
Today, appropriation is no longer a marginal movement—it is everywhere. From memes to deepfakes, from NFTs to remix culture, our world is obsessed with copying, reusing, and reappropriating. Artists like Yasumasa Morimura, who inserts himself into famous paintings, or Hank Willis Thomas, who subverts advertisements to expose their stereotypes, are the direct heirs of Levine and Bidlo.
Even artificial intelligence fits into this tradition. In 2022, an artwork generated by an algorithm won an art competition. The judges had not realized it was an artificial creation. The reaction was immediate: some saw it as a revolution, others as a betrayal. But at its core, this controversy echoes the debates of the 1980s. Who is the author of a work created by a machine? And what if art is merely a matter of context?
What if the original did not exist?
In 1917, Marcel Duchamp exhibited a urinal under the title Fountain and signed it "R. Mutt." No one then knew that this gesture would change the history of art. Sixty years later, Sherrie Levine and Mike Bidlo took up this idea and pushed it further. Their work reminds us of a simple, yet unsettling truth: in a world saturated with images, the original may be nothing more than an illusion.
Today, as we are overwhelmed by digital reproductions, this question is more relevant than ever. Every time you scroll through your Instagram feed, watch an advertisement, or share a meme, you are participating in this great copying machine. And if appropriation art teaches us one thing, it is that the copy is not the enemy of creation—it may be its purest form.
So the next time you see a work that strangely resembles another, do not ask yourself if it is a copy. Ask yourself instead: what if it is a revolution?
Appropriation art: When copying becomes a manifesto | Art History
