Oliver Wasow. Framed Nutting. (2007) Digital photograph, dimensions variable.
UPDATE 3/20/12: Watch the full panel online in iTunesU : "Joy Garnett Panel":
http://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/joy-garnett-panel/id424611105?i=111884189
WATCH an excerpt of Rob Storr's talk on vimeo.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Panel: The Case For Appropriation, moderated by Joy Garnett
with: Virginia Rutledge, Robert Storr, and Oliver Wasow
Thursday, February 16, 2012
7-8:30pm
School of Visual Arts Theatre
333 West 23rd Street
Appropriation art made its name during the nineteen eighties in New York. Drawing on earlier traditions of collage and montage up through Pop Art, appropriation artists subverted, re-photographed, and re-purposed topical material, paving the way for contemporary approaches to art-making now further enabled by digital technology.
However, fueled by the ongoing backlash against digital culture, common forms of visual quotation, appropriation in particular, have come increasingly under attack. Copyright infringement lawsuits, many of them meritless, have been on the rise, including those brought by artists against fellow artists. The freedom to tinker, comment, reference or borrow -- the way art progresses over time -- is continually being challenged.
As issues of appropriation enter the broader public and legal debate, artists, historians, curators and those who are part of the visual arts community need to explain why appropriation and other forms of visual referencing are important elements in the making of meaningful art. We need to be able to defend these practices in clear language, in and beyond the courtroom. We need to make the case for appropriation.
Three panelists -- art historian and attorney Virginia Rutledge, critic and curator Robert Storr, and artist Oliver Wasow -- will join artist and NEWSgrist blogger Joy Garnett in a dialogue about the creative methods and ideas associated with appropriation art today.
Panelists
Virginia Rutledge is an art historian and attorney. Previously an exhibition associate at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, a litigator at Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP, and the Vice President and General Counsel of the nonprofit Creative Commons, she is now in private practice focusing on art, intellectual property, and related transactions and ventures, both commercial and nonprofit. Virginia has chaired the Art Law Committee of the New York City Bar Association and was the curator of the 2011 Texas Biennial, a collaborative project involving over 60 contemporary visual arts organizations across the state.
Robert Storr is an artist, critic, curator and in 2006 was appointed Professor of Painting and Dean of the School of Art at Yale University. He was curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, from 1990 to 2002. In 2002 Mr. Storr was named the first Rosalie Solow Professor of Modern Art at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. Mr. Storr has also taught at CUNY, the Bard Center for Curatorial Studies, Rhode Island School of Design, Tyler School of Art, New York Studio School, and Harvard University. He lectures frequently in this country and abroad. He has been a contributing editor at Art in America since 1981 and writes frequently for Artforum, Parkett, Art Press (Paris), and Frieze (London). He has also written numerous catalogs, articles, and books. Among his many honors he has received a Penny McCall Foundation Grant for painting, a Norton Family Foundation Curator Grant, and honorary doctorates from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Maine College of Art and Lyme Academy. His awards include the American Chapter of the International Association of Art Critics, a special AICA award for Distinguished Contribution to the Field of Art Criticism, an ICI Agnes Gund Curatorial Award, and the Lawrence A. Fleischman Award for Scholarly Excellence in the Field of American Art History from the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art. In 2000 the French Ministry of Culture presented him with the medal of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres. He is currently Consulting Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and in 2007 was chosen commissioner of the 2007 Venice Biennale, the first American invited to assume that position.
Oliver Wasow is an artist working with photography and other related media. He has had numerous one-person exhibitions, and his work has been written up and reviewed widely. He has participated in a number of major museum shows, such as “Image World” at the Whitney Museum of Art, and “Utopia/Post Utopia” at Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art. His work will be included in the forthcoming exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop,” to open in October 2012. He is the recipient of two grants from the New York State Council on the Arts, and a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award. In addition to his career as an artist, Mr. Wasow has also been involved in the art world in a curatorial capacity. From 1983 to 1987 he was the owner and director of The Cash/Newhouse Gallery in New York’s East Village, and he has organized a number of independent exhibitions, including “Moscow, Vienna, New York” at Vienna’s Kunsthalle, and most recently, “Artist Unknown,” an exhibition of thousands of vernacular images culled from the Internet at the Center for Art and Culture in Hollywood, Florida, (October 29, 2011 – January 29, 2012).
Moderator
Joy Garnett is a painter, writer and blogger in Brooklyn, NY. Her work has been associated with appropriation art since the controversy surrounding her 2003 painting “Molotov,” which reinvigorated the discussion regarding issues of authorship and fair use in the visual arts. She has delivered numerous lectures on this subject at colleges and universities, including Columbia University, The New York Institute of Humanities at NYU, Taubman College of Architecture & Urban Planning in Detroit, the European College of Liberal Arts Berlin, and Roger Williams University School of Architecture, Art & Historic Preservation, Bristol, Rhode Island. Her recent writings include "Analogue Natives" appearing in the 25th anniversary issue of M/E/A/N/I/N/G, edited by Mira Schor and Susan Bee (2012), and "On the American Apocalyptic Sublime," in Virilio Now: Current Perspectives in Virilio Studies, edited by John Armitage (Polity, 2011). For over a decade, Garnett has edited NEWSgrist, http://newsgrist.typepad.com, a blog that focuses on the politics of art and culture in the digital age. She is a recipient of grants from Anonymous Was a Woman, the Wellcome Trust, and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. She has been a columnist and contributor to Artnet magazine, and has served since 2005 as the Arts Editor of the contemporary media journal Cultural Politics, published by Duke University Press. Ms. Garnett is represented by Winkleman Gallery, New York.
