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Reappropriation/Re-use in the Arts: Overview

The re-use or reappropriation in film, the graphic arts, literature and music is a great tradition; each definition with its own theory and impetus. This guide is intended for practitioners and scholars to study the forms of reappropriation in the arts.

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(ten points if you can name the famous film this still was "reappropriated" from).

What is Re-Use in the Arts?

The concept of re-use, recombining, fragmental quotation, mash-up, transformative use or reappropriation in the arts has a long and varied history.  What are the distinctions between the various forms of re-use?  Discovering the varieties is  essential to one's own use of reappropriation in art.  Consider these examples.

 

  

Andy Warhol.  Jackie, 1964. Seriograph.                                                                                                                                             Elliot Erwin/Life Magazine, Kenedy funeral, 1963

 

 

Herkles and bull amphora.  Boston Museum of Fine Arts.