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December 13, 2007
Another attempt at a photographic reworking of abstract expressionism and street graffiti on decaying walls.
Gary Sauer-Thompson, graffiti wall, near Hindley Street, Adelaide 2007
I guess it's an appropriation. To appropriate something involves taking possession of it. In the visual arts, the term appropriation often refers to the use of borrowed elements in the creation of new work. But what sort? Dada and Surrealism established the idea of "appropriation" early in the century, a tool for innovation used in other mediums, including the visual arts.
The brief postmodern era, beginning in 1972, saw artists appropriated to enlarge historical ideas, imagery, and, especially, authorship, from the history of modern photography and art. Postmodernist discourse was, in part, conceived as a self-referential echo that mirrored the modernist past and reconfirmed the culmination of modernism.
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