This historiographical thesis charts an aspect of the complex transition from pop to later appropriation art associated with the 1980s by examining forerunners of appropriation in the period from the emergence of pop's logic of serial repetition to the beginnings of 'pictures' in the mid- to late 1970s and their places in the relevant art-historical narratives. In view ofthe fact that the principal genealogies of appropriation have been conceptualist ones, this thesis reappraises the role of pop by considering readyrnade imagery, image.multiplication and the participatory aspects of Andy Warhol's Factory production in particular as enabling conditions for early appropriators Elaine Sturtevant and Richard Pettibone, who applied pop's serial logic to pop imagery itself and who marked out its divergent implications in the process. While I interpret Pettibone's pursuit of pop's simulacral aspects as a form of nostalgic prolonging related to photorealism and liken his small-scale, carefully crafted copies to souvenirs, I conceive of Sturtevant's performative practice of repetition as a way of abbreviating processes of production and of her works as conceptualist catalysts. If carrying forward pop's logic of serial repetition in neither case amounted to a systematic critique of modernist originality, the fictitious artist Hank: Herron, who was the subject of a hoax review in an anthology of conceptual art and who could appear modelled on Sturtevant specifically, entered the stage readily theorized in a way that anticipated the poststructuralist discourse of the copy and thus signalled a point of transition in the narratives. I propose that Sturtevant's practice of repetition still had a critical edge and show how its recent rediscovery was ironically channelled through a European reception context in which the initial closeness of her practice to pop did not compromise its perceived critical import. If the notion of 'appropriation' is commonly associated with the 'pictures generation' and if the deconstructive capacity of 'pictures' has been secured in the literature by way of reference to a conceptualist lineage conceived predominantly in terms of institutional critique, this thesis broadens the narratives by inserting precedents starting from pop.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:567919 |
| Date | January 2010 |
| Creators | Schaar, Elisa Frederica |
| Publisher | University of Oxford |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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