{"id":7111,"date":"2016-04-22T15:52:38","date_gmt":"2016-04-22T15:52:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artjournalstg.wpenginepowered.com\/?p=7111"},"modified":"2019-11-21T22:15:22","modified_gmt":"2019-11-21T22:15:22","slug":"response-to-natilee-harrens-knights-heritage-karl-haendel-and-the-legacy-of-appropriation-episode-two-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/?p=7111","title":{"rendered":"Response to Natilee Harren’s “Knight’s Heritage: Karl Haendel and the Legacy of Appropriation, Episode Two, 2012”"},"content":{"rendered":"

To read “Knight\u2019s Heritage: Karl Haendel and the Legacy of Appropriation, Episode Two, 2012” by Natilee Harren, click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Penelope<\/a>
Penelope Umbrico, Sunset Portraits<\/em>, 2011,<\/strong> images from Flickr (artwork \u00a9 Penelope Umbrico)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The filmmaker Kirby Ferguson recently noted, \u201cMost of us have no problem copying, as long as we\u2019re the ones doing it.\u201d1<\/a><\/sup> In the second installment of her essay, Natilee Harren details an episode in which the appropriation artist Karl Haendel seemingly finds himself as the subject of appropriation\u2014by none other than the acclaimed postmodernist Robert Longo. This scenario raises issues regarding the ethical conduct between artists operating in the same cultural sector. Recognizing Haendel and Longo both as authors within the specialized world of contemporary art is crucial, for it challenges the implicit hierarchy of authorial modes that has formed the basis of so much appropriation art until the present. From Andy Warhol to Jeff Koons to Richard Prince to Penelope Umbrico\u2019s more recent sunset imagery, artists have often justified their appropriations by claiming to endow otherwise disposable mass-media products with new meanings that function as metacommentary on the state of the image. While amateurs and other non-artists only produce \u201ctypes,\u201d artists create meaning. Thus, while Harren writes that \u201cin the wake of the general acceptance of appropriative gestures the distinction between popular and fine seems increasingly arbitrary and artificial,\u201d the reality is that how an artist positions him- or herself discursively is a matter of great strategic importance.<\/p>\n

There are exceptions to the authorial hierarchy I describe. Famously, Sherrie Levine appropriated photographic images by Edward Weston, which also pitted artist against artist (Levine discontinued the work after receiving a cease-and-desist letter from the Weston estate). More recently, and in a similar critical vein, the artist Lauren Clay borrowed forms from the sculptor David Smith. After being threatened with copyright litigation, Clay eventually settled with Smith\u2019s estate.2<\/a><\/sup> The experience of being appropriated by another artist, then, can test the acceptable limits of the seemingly innocuous act of copying. To his credit, Haendel tried to engage Longo in conversation about their mutual use of the knight image. Such an attempt signals a willingness to understand Longo\u2019s work as less of a \u201cwink, I caught you,\u201d as Harren writes, than as an example of the ideal, dialogical exchange between like-minded authors. Yet central questions remain: Who was the photographer who originally took the knight image? How does he or she participate in such an exchange, if at all?<\/p>\n

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Nate Harrison<\/strong> is an artist and writer working at the intersection of intellectual property, cultural production, and the formation of creative processes in modern media. His work has been exhibited at the American Museum of Natural History, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Los Angeles County Museum of Art;and Kunstverein, Hamburg, among others. Harrison has several publications current and forthcoming, and has lectured at a variety of institutions, including Experience Music Project, Seattle; Art and Law Program, New York; and SOMA Summer, Mexico City. From 2004\u20132008 he codirected the Los Angeles project space ESTHETICS AS A SECOND LANGUAGE. Harrison received the 2011 Videonale Prize and the 2013 Hannah Arendt Prize in Critical Theory and Creative Research. Harrison earned his doctorate from the University of California, San Diego with his dissertation \u201cAppropriation Art and United States Intellectual Property Since 1976.\u201d He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Michigan and a Master of Fine Arts from California Institute of the Arts. Harrison serves on the faculty at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and lives in Brooklyn, New York.<\/p>\n

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  1. See Ferguson\u2019s film, Everything Is a Remix<\/em> (2011\u201312), at http:\/\/everythingisaremix.info\/watch-the-series\/, as of March 1, 2016. ↩<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n
  2. See Brian Boucher, \u201cDavid Smith Estate Settles Copyright Tiff,\u201d Art in America<\/em>, October 15, 2013, at http:\/\/www.artinamericamagazine.com\/news-features\/news\/david-smith-estate-settles-copyright-tiff-\/, as of March 1, 2016. ↩<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    By Nate Harrison
    \nNate Harrison responds to “Episode Two, 2012,” the second part of Natilee Harren’s essay, “Knight’s Heritage: Karl Haendel and the Legacy of Appropriation.” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":7112,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"kia_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-texts",""],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7111\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}