User:Stevenarntson/The Commons/Collage

Today in class we'll talk about materials and ideas in terms of questions surrounding "the commons"--what are the materials one can use in artwork, and what materials are excluded? We'll look at a number of artists who use a variety of kinds of materials; some of whom have gotten into trouble over their choices.

collage
Collage in Western art came from the concerns of an art movement known as cubism, which was created by Pablo Picasso and George Braque in the early 1900s.
 * Les Demoiselles D’Avignon
 * Three Musicians
 * Guitar, Sheet Music, and Wine Glass

juxtaposition
"What goes next to what" is one of the primary modes in which collage functions aesthetically.
 * The Interaction of Color by Josef Albers. (text. cover image.)
 * Koyaanisqatsi by Godfrey Reggio.

control

 * "Accident In Art" by Richard Hovey.
 * William S. Burroughs's "cutup" technique is a method of willfully introducing random events into an artwork, in the hope of creating some productive accidents. Burroughs and his collaborators experimented with writing, audio, and filmic versions of the technique.

freedom
Artist Kurt Schwitters described a desire for "Freedom from All Fetters"--a wish that an artist might use any material that presented itself, whether it were paint or a paint can; canvas or cardboard. Many artists took up this call in the decades that followed, using an amazing variety of kinds of materials in their work.
 * Robert Rauschenberg's Bed and Monogram are what he called "combines."
 * Musician John Cage used a wide variety of unusual objects in his music. Here's his "Water Walk"

appropriation
Appropriation is another word for stealing, more or less--when an artist borrows from the work of another artist without asking permission. There are many issues relating to ownership of cultural products. Earlier this quarter, we watched a short film called The Amen Break by Nate Harrison that described, in miniature, a number of interesting issues. Two good resources for news and information are the Stanford Copyright and Fair Use Center and Copyright Website.
 * Wizard People, Dear Reader is a project by comic book artist Brad Neely. Some people have put two and two together on this youtube video.
 * Danger Mouse's The Grey Album is another famous example of appropriation.
 * Generally, Illegal-Art.org is an excellent resource for such work.

public domain
Nobody owns it if it's in the public domain, but is it in the public domain, or not?
 * Public Domain Day
 * Happy Birthday!
 * Digital Copyright Slider
 * Copyright Term Extension Act
 * You Tomb, maintained by MIT.

fair use
Fair Use laws determine if your unpermissioned borrowings from another artist's work are legitimate or not. There are 4 questions generally asked, but each is a gray area--there are no hard and fast rules in fair use law. Fair Use is as robust as our society decides to make it.


 * An excellent summary of these factors is provided here by the Stanford University Library.
 * World Fair Use Day is on January 12.
 * DJ Drama's Lawsuit

copyleft
There are a number of reforms right now trying to define more nuanced application of copyright--places between "all rights reserved" and "public domain."
 * Creative Commons
 * Electronic Frontier Foundation
 * My Online Resources page contains other interesting links.
 * Here's a talk by Lawrence Lessig, founder of Creative Commons.