Appropriation Art

I heard the bit on appropriation art today on Q, and I'm confused. This bit focussed on a current exhibit at the Guggenheim on Richard Prince's work, which Jim Krantz claims is too much like his work. Jian Ghomeshi talked to Krantz and as well as an art professor about this issue.

Ghomeshi asked the art professor if he were to go into a gallery today photograph a few things and present them as his own - as appropriation artists have done through the years, would that be art. She replied no, it wouldn't, and seemed to offer a "been there, done that" rationale for why not.

But isn't art supposed to about creating something that's timeless? If it could be art 100 years ago (or 30 or so to go back to the beginning of Richard Prince's career), it should still be art now. That is, a "been there, done that" argument should not be relevant to the evaluation of something as art.

Following this reasoning, either going out and photographing art in a gallery (i.e., engaging in the rephotographing process) this weekend is art now just as Richard Prince's work has been over the last 30 years, or it's not. I don't think there's a defensible middle ground here. And on that basis, it seems that appropriation artists are more akin to copycats than they are to creators.

It's not that we can't look on objects/images produced with non-artistic intentions (or at least not entirely artistic intentions) as art. We can, and certainly there are objects/images that have great artistic value. I can think of some recent exhibits at the Winnipeg Art Gallery that fall into this category, where in one case images from old Eaton's catalogues and the related (non-catalogue) work of those who produced the catalogues were displayed and another case where commercial glassware was displayed.

In both instances - the catalogue images and the glassware - items were produced for non-artistic reasons. Yet I'm willing to call the products art.

I also think I have to disagree that truth isn't an issue here. If I see one of the images that Mr. Krantz originally photographed and Mr. Prince has rephotographed, how am I to know whose work it is? And given that the image seems to have been created twice, is there a definitive answer to that question? Isn't that an important question? I think it is, but that the rephotographing makes any answer ambiguous.

And that's not good.