What makes a work of art original? And why, over the course of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, did artists increasingly turn to pre-existing objects to produce art? How can an earlier form be endowed with new meaning, and what is the political charge of such a transformation? This seminar will examine the modern and postmodern turn to appropriation through a number of guises, from collage and the ready-made to found footage and new media art, looking both at still and moving images. In addition to looking closely at specific case studies, we will read a wide variety of theoretical and historiographic texts from the 1910s onwards. 

This course fulfills the following Major requirements: Geographical areas (E) and Chronological period (III).