{"id":7115,"date":"2016-04-22T15:52:51","date_gmt":"2016-04-22T15:52:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artjournalstg.wpenginepowered.com\/?p=7115"},"modified":"2019-11-21T22:16:38","modified_gmt":"2019-11-21T22:16:38","slug":"knights-heritage-karl-haendel-and-the-legacy-of-appropriation-episode-two-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/?p=7115","title":{"rendered":"Knight\u2019s Heritage: Karl Haendel and the Legacy of Appropriation, Episode Two, 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Karl<\/a>
Karl Haendel, Knight #2<\/em>, 2010,<\/strong> pencil on paper, 103 x 74 in. (261.6 x 187.9 cm) (artwork \u00a9 Karl Haendel)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Click here to read the first part of this series, “Knight’s Heritage: Karl Haendel and the Legacy of Appropriation, Episode One, 2000.”<\/a><\/p>\n

Episode Two, 2012<\/strong><\/p>\n

Since the rise of appropriation in American art of the 1980s, the strategy has become so commonplace as to evade continued examination as a unique vein of artistic practice. At the same time, recurrent intellectual property battles around appropriative gestures in contemporary art have threatened its viability, giving rise to College Art Association\u2019s important report published in February 2015, the<\/em> Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Arts<\/a>. This three-part essay on the work of Karl Haendel, an LA-based artist best known for his arrangements of meticulously rendered drawings of found photographic imagery, connects three moments in his early career related to issues of artistic and cultural heritage and power. The first two episodes directly involve knights. Taking Haendel\u2019s work as a point of departure and considering the digital turn, the essay as a whole examines how the operations, effects, and reception of appropriation have changed in recent decades and discovers what may be the strategy\u2019s longest-lasting politics of signification. “Episode One”<\/a> considered Haendel\u2019s early project of reconstructing works by the minimalist sculptor Anne Truitt, including<\/em> Knight\u2019s Heritage (1963). This second text examines Haendel\u2019s confrontation with another artist of an older generation, the early postmodernist Robert Longo.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Anne<\/a>
Anne Truitt\u2019s Knight\u2019s Heritage<\/em>, 1963,<\/strong> acrylic on wood, 60-3\/8 x 60-3\/8 x 12 in. (153.4 x 153.4 x 30.5 cm), installation view, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 2012 (artwork \u00a9 Estate of Anne Truitt; photograph by Karl Haendel)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In late 2012, Karl Haendel entered a room in The National Gallery in Washington, DC, and before him stood Knight\u2019s Heritage<\/em>. The<\/span> Knight\u2019s Heritage<\/em>. Here was the original sculpture Anne Truitt created in 1963, the very sculpture Haendel had labored so hard to reconstruct eleven years ago<\/a> without ever seeing the original in person\u2014until now. Haendel knew that sculpture so well, knew every inch of it (or so he thought). It was like running into an old, long-lost friend, maybe even a lover\u2014or better yet, meeting a relative in person for the first time after knowing them only through pictures and stories. Haendel recalls the experience as deeply emotional, surreal, odd, strange, and wonderful. He felt a strong desire to put his arms around the sculpture and embrace it. In a sense he had already seen the work before, but of course not really. Knight\u2019s Heritage<\/em> was deeply familiar and at the same time not familiar at all. It was an uncanny experience.<\/p>\n

\"Robert<\/a>
Robert Longo, Untitled (Adam and Eve)<\/em>, 2012,<\/strong> installation view, Metro Pictures booth, Art Basel Miami Beach, 2012 (artwork \u00a9 Robert Longo; photograph by Aram Moshayedi)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That same season would be marked by another set of uncanny encounters, experienced not by Haendel but by friends and colleagues who were attending Art Basel Miami Beach in December 2012. During the opening days of the fair, Haendel, who did not attend, received a series of e-mails and texts from people who claimed to have seen a drawing of his, but it was not credited to Karl Haendel. These messages of confusion were accompanied by evidentiary images that seemed to show that Haendel himself was now the subject of an act of copying, and the copier was none other than the artist Robert Longo. For on the wall of the Metro Pictures booth was a diptych composed of a life-size drawing in black charcoal of a knight in armor mounted next to a black charcoal drawing of the same size portraying a swimsuited female pinup wearing a hibiscus flower in her hair. The work was identified as Untitled (Adam and Eve)<\/em>, 2012, by Longo.<\/p>\n