Is Appropriation Art Outmoded?

Martha Schwendener, over at the Village Voice, has some interesting thoughts on the Sherrie Levine retrospective at the Whitney as well as the relevance of current appropriation practices.

Appropriation rose out of this desire to have it both ways, to keep what you loved—or at least knew intimately—and still make art. It was a great solution. But it was born in the 1970s, following the burnout of the ’60s, and it has run aground in recent years. Not only have artists like Levine, Jeff Koons, and Richard Prince been dragged through the legal system for their cultural borrowing, but the postmodern irony and cynicism on which Appropriation was founded also feel outmoded in the Occupy Age.