Minimalism, Appropriation and the Public Domain

I concluded my art tour with the Jim Shaw exhibition. I am often asked what I think is good appropriation of copyrighted or trademarked work. Well, if you want to know the answer in person head over to the New Museum and see for yourself. You may have to spend time thinking and, god-forbid, doing a little reading, but I can guarantee that not only will you not be disappointed, you will leave with a better understanding of how appropriation in visual art is supposed to work.

Jim Shaw at the New Museum (November 2015)

I’ll leave you with Shaw’s use of a Howard Johnson motel, which many of you will recall if you ever traveled with your parents on hot summer days and stopped off for what was, for some of us, a luxurious suite with ample maple syrup and a water hole to cannonball. Note the subtle use of the architectural facade that when turned side-ways becomes not only a beautiful formalist gesture, but a conceptual one as well (does this drawing not remind you of some kind of ’60s schematic as they are found in school textbooks?). Together with the kids’ faces pointing (viewing) at the HJs (in anger, pleasure, disgust), the menu of food items absorb new meanings and potential uses. The Howard Johnson’s is but a trigger effect transformed by the kids’ faces which, emblematically, become the focus of the work and not the other way around. Appropriation.

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