Rhetoric of the Image by Roland Barthes

This is a well-known essay by one of the leading lights of Semiotics. I read more than the chapter in the reader to include the section on connoted image, downloaded from the internet.

Just as a reminder, the key concepts of Semiotics are:

• Signifier - the something that stands for something else;
• Signified - the idea of the thing the signifier stands for;
• Sign - the combination of the two (conventionally s/S)

So, the signifier DOG signifies furry quadruped with wet nose (Howells and Negreiros, 2012).

Barthes uses form, concept, signification to represent respectively: signifier, signified, sign.

Barthes says images have been viewed as weak in respect of meaning.  He disagrees, using advertising as an example as it is frank in his words, in other words, open as to its signification intentions. 

The three messages

Panzani advertisment:

Panzani advertisment accessed from http://solostudio.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/panzani-barthes-ad.jpg

Probably unique as the advert is less well known for the product than the Barthesian analysis.

Barthes identifies three classes of message within the image:

1. The linguistic message

He sees two kinds of linguistic messages at work: a denoted (or literal) message comprising of the caption and the labels on the produce, and a connoted (or symbolic) message – the word ‘Panzani’ connotes Italianicity. But, although he sees connotation and denotation, because it has only one sign - articulated language - he views linguistic as one message.

2. The coded iconic message (symbolic) = connoted

Barthes identifies four signs representing the symbolic message or connoted image from the non-linguistic part of the image

• The half-open bag signifies return from market
• tomatoes and peppers signify Italianicity
• the collection of objects signifies a total culinary service ("as though Panzani furnished everything for a carefully balanced dish").
• the overall composition is reminiscent of, and therefore signifies, the notion of a still life.

Barthes adds there might a fifth sign: that this is an advertisement which arises from the placing of the image within the magazine and the emphasis on the labels. But this last information eludes signification as the advertising nature of the image is essentially functional. (He later adds that there could be others still, such as the bag representing the 'miraculous draft of fish').

3. The non coded iconic message (literal) = denoted

There is no ambiguity intended or real about the pepper as a pepper or a tomato as a tomato. The signifier and a signified are essentially the same – this is a message without a code. There is no transformation. May be viewed as literal message as opposed to previous symbolic message.

The linguistic message

 

Almost all images, in all contexts, are accompanied by some sort of linguistic message. This seems to have two possible functions:

1. Anchorage – images are prone to multiple meanings and interpretations. They exhibit polysemy - a 'floating chain of signifieds, the reader is able to choose some and ignore others'. Anchorage is used to fix the the floating chain so as to "counter the terror of uncertain signs" and occurs when text is used to focus on one of these meanings, or at least to eliminate any unwanted signifieds. In ideological sense, it may also direct the reader through the signifieds and use dispatching to a meaning chosen in advance. Acts in repressive way
2. Relay – the text adds meaning and both text and image work together to convey intended meaning e.g. a comic strip or film.

The denoted image

We can’t really remove the connotations of an image and thus behold a purely literal, denoted image. If we could we would be comprehending the image at what Barthes calls the ‘first degree of intelligibility’, the point at which we see more than shapes. colour and form, but instead see a tomato. This would be a message without a code and crucially, Barthes identifies photography as the only medium with this characteristic – drawing, on the other hand, is coded at three levels:

1. it requires a set of ‘rule-governed transpositions’, there is no essential nature of the pictorial copy;
2. Drawing requires that significant and insignificant matters are distinguished. Photography cannot intervene within the object except by trickery. There is no drawing without style;
3. Drawing requires an apprenticeship

In photography, the relationship of signifier to signifieds is recording rather then transformation. 

He identifies the specific characteristic of the ‘pure’ photograph as being an object that is here-now in the present, but which connects to something that undisputably existed in the past.

The role of the denoted image in the overall image structure/meaning is one of naturalizing the symbolic message – supporting and contextualizing the connoted elements, making them innocent, a sort of being there element.

The Rhetoric of the image (continued the article beyond the reader by download of article)

Analyzing the connotations of the image is a challenging task fraught with a number of difficulties. One of these is that each image can connote multiple meanings, we saw four earlier and there are probably more. Which ones are taken, depends on the viewer. A meaning is derived from a lexicon, which is a body of knowledge within the viewer. One lexia mobilizes different lexicons. So meaning is constructed not solely by the creator, but also by the consumer, and the intersection of his/her lexicon(s) with the signs contained in the image. Barthes refers to the collection of lexicon within a person, as his/her idiolect.

A further difficulty with analyzing the connoted signifieds is that there is no apt language for expressing or articulating them. The common domain of signifieds of connotation is an ideology.

Barthes calls the signifiers within a particular medium (or ‘substance’) the connotators. So, the connotators within an image are all the visual elements that can be used to connote signifieds. The entire set of such connotators is the rhetoric, so the rhetoric of the image is all the visual elements within an image that can be employed as signifiers. Barthes contends there is a single rhetorical form, comon to dream,literature an image. Rhetoric of the image is specific insofar as subject to physical constraints of vision but also 'general' in respect of the way figures are formal relations of the elements. He stresses that not all the visual elements are connotators (they are scattered traits) so there always remain purely denoted elements within the frame.

Reference:

Howells and Negreiros (2012) Visual Culture. Revised 2^nd ed. Cambridge: Polity Press

Reflections on Chapter 2

Six weeks on from receiving Feedback from Assignment 1, I have just completed Assignment 2. I had a break for a week or so when walking and completing blog thereafter, but last 3-4 weeks have been intensive. The course manual sets aside just 5 hours for Chapter 2; I spent around 20 hours on the assignment alone. What you forget is how much time is required to research and read articles that don't add anything to the subject in hand and are never included in the Learning log or Reading. Referencing too is very time-consuming to do properly.

I knew a little about Berger and Benjamin, but the rest of the reading was all new. The assignment was challenging as had never heard of appropriation art, and only two of the artists that wrote about. But feel reasonably confident that beginning to understand (if not always agree with) what UVC is about and how it enriches my learning and understanding as relevant to photography in particular.

Two themes have started to become apparent to me while working through this chapter. Some points are relevant specifically to this chapter, others are more fundamental and will be revisited as progress through course.

1) Contemporary relevance

Some of what I have read in this Chapter was relevant when the articles were written but I would argue that they have lost much of their relevance now. Debord for example was a leader of the Marxist and anti establishment Situationist International movement. That period has had its day. Much the same applies to Hebdige's article. It is difficult not to be moved by his raw intervention on behalf of the academic black and white periodical Ten-8 as opposed to The Face, perceived by Hebdige as an icon of paganism and postmodernism. But Hebdige too was a creature of his period: a Marxist writing at the peak of Thatcherism, not long after she had inflicted a heavy defeat on Michael Foot, one of the last Messiahs of strongly left leaning politics, in the 1983 election. I read his article and thought at the end that he lacks empathy with the young, with the aspirational, with frivolity, with fun. Like Debord, Hebdige lives in a serious world, where people think a lot about their relationships with one another and with the wider world, where they worry about inequality and social injustice. Those who do not are being manipulated in subtle and iniquitous ways by the media powerhouses around them, the contemporary proxies for the capitalist landlords and industrialists of earlier times.

I simplify and exaggerate, but, I guess, it is slightly up to those who believe that these writers and their theories have relevance today to make the case and, so far, I have not seen much of that. They have more relevance as academic discourse than as insight into the way we view our world today. To be brutally frank, the writings simply achieved nothing tangibly long lasting.

But there is another way of looking at this: that actually the authors had a point, indeed their arguments were so persuasive that their conclusions are just accepted as a given nowadays. Take the idea that visual media manipulates the viewer as set out and analysed by Berger in respect of what may be termed high art, and many others in respect of advertising and related media. Extend this to include Bourdieu and his openly class based 'social definition of photography', a pursuit he observes is essentially for the working classes and is therefore classed only as 'legitimizable', a second class citizen in his hierarchy of cultural legitimacy.

It seems a very natural response to say: " Well, of course the way we view a painting is affected by whether we view it as an image in a contemporary living room on a screen or whether we see it in a gallery alongside similar works of art"; and it is a given that photography is a pursuit of the masses. We all do it and many of us do it in the hope of being published, of having our work viewed and purchased on stock libraries (the largest has 30,000 images submitted every day, of which 50% are accepted. That is equivalent to nearly 5.5m image additions every year for just one relatively 'serious' photographic site, a tiny fraction, one guesses, of the total added on social media).

In a sense, then, events have shown that Berger and Bourdieu had it right. Whether this means they have relevance or were pointing out what is now accepted as uncontroversial truth is a moot point.

2) Isolationism

These articles and arguments are set out in isolation of one another. Debord's 'spectacles', Bourdieu's 'spheres' etc., set our arguments about the way we see things, and/or the ways we are manipulated by the visual media, but they all have their own terminology, their own isolationist arguments, and there is little space set aside within their cases to see how their views link and overlap with those of others. One can argue that it is the role of those who review, comment on, and synthesize afterwards, to do that; these writers are the original thinkers, and the rest of us read, digest, analyze and classify the original works. Moreover, none of these works claims to be a cosmologist style 'entire theory of visual culture', they theorize about what they see, how they perceive the visual world and our place in it.

They are writing at a point in time and surely therefore we should expect them to offer views of the visual world that are relevant to the world in which they live. Papers are not written with the deliberate aim of being relevant in 10, 20, 100, 1000 years time. Their authors observe and theorize about the world as it is not as it might be in the future. The logical consequence of this is that the theories and observations can be relevant only insofar as the world is now as it was when they were writing.

Some of the writing in this section (Berger, for example) and some of the artwork (Fischli and Weiss, Brown, Lucas, and perhaps Sturtevant, for example) is directly or indirectly anti high culture, sometimes subtle, sometimes confrontational. This is in tune with much of social science Zeitgeist in the period: a need to break free of perceived reactionary constraints, a need to empathise with the wider world that manifests itself almost in a guilt complex that the ordinary man or woman cannot engage in arts because the institutional norms of high culture raise barriers to engagement. But perhaps the world has moved on. There is a realisation that a) most people actually don't care that they cannot indulge in high culture, and b) if they do, it is actually a lot more accessible than it used to be by virtue of modern media - the aura has been removed (note 1).

I shall return to these during this course. Some of the arguments are not properly or fully enunciated and I am aware that I have not read widely or deeply - there is a risk of drawing conclusions too readily; a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. What is most important is to revisit and refine the arguments in the light of further reading and research and to retain an open mind.

Have looked ahead to Chapter 3 and very enthusiastic about what is to come. Have read fair bit on Barthes already and think his ideas remain very relevant, particularly to advertising. Have a good idea of advert for Assignment 3 already.

Note 1: The riposte to this is that I am simply accepting the fate of the repressed - falling into Marx’s trap of false consciousness, becoming habitualised. Or perhaps Barthes would say I am perpetuating a myth. But one could counter that by saying that merely accepting these writings without criticism is itself 'false consciousness' . This is too big a debate to take on now, will return in due course.

Assignment 2: The displaced image

In this assignment we are asked to explore the ways in which artists use the work of others in their own work and how this may affect the understanding of meaning.

Specifically, the assignment requires us to:

• Find three examples of work in which the work of others is incorporated;
• Find three examples of work that appropriates, copies or references everyday objects and reuses them as works of fine art

Firstly, it is useful to understand what is meant by 'appropriation'. I define it as the 'substantial adoption of another artist's work with appropriate reference to the original'. To be clear, it is not forgery. Irvin (2005) makes this distinction:

"The crucial difference is seen to lie in the fact that artists bear ultimate responsibility for whatever objectives they choose to pursue through their work, whereas the forger’s central objectives are determined by the nature of the activity of forgery." 

In short: one is art, the other theft. Artists can be prone to both. Sturtevant (see below) made an exact copy of Jasper Johns's The Flag but was very clear what she was doing, in contrast to a certain Brian Ramnarine, who has recently pleaded guilty to faking a bronze version of the same work using a mould he had kept illicitly (Jones, 2014). 

The appropriation can range from making exact copies as Sturtevant has done (we shall come to her work later) to appropriation from popular culture (again, examples later). It raises questions over authorship, not least whether authorship is relevant. Barthes wrote that the "the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the author" (quoted in Irvin, ibid). Foucault considered that the concept of authorship is a tyrannical one that restricts the free thinking of readers (quoted in Irvin, ibid). Appropriation in art can therefore be viewed as rather more than the musical analogy of artists making cover versions of original songs.

The selection of works reviewed here is a mixture of sculpture and painting. I have included a range of artists whose work has been appropriated from Rembrandt to Duchamp. The annotations maybe seen as a collective on this link or individually by clicking the title of each piece. Some further conclusions, particularly about contemporary meaning, are included in the Learning Log.


La Fortune by Sherrie Levine

Sherrie Levine is one of the best known recent appropriation artists. She explicitly appropriates from the  male dominated activity, partly as a reflection of the gender imbalance in art, partly "[in] homage to artists who, gender aside, have inspired her" (Stein, 2009). Levine mainly uses different media from the that of the original, often photography, but in this case, sculpture. Whilst Levine's photographic work is often indistinguishable from the original, thus challenging to the extreme how close a work of art can be to the original and still be afforded the epithet 'art', La Fortune is a three dimensional sculpture of Man Ray's 1938 original painting and therefore evidently a separate work with its own clear artistic credentials. 

Her sculpture reflects more or exactly the position of the balls on the table as in the Man Ray original, and the detail of the table's construction, particularly the legs (albeit she uses a more natural green for the baize). The significant differences are that Levine uses only the tangible part of Man Ray's original - the surrealistic coloured clouds are excluded - and alters the perspective. Perhaps she wishes to major on the masculinity of billiards, a game (some would argue a sport) steeped in history that foreshadowed the more popular pool and snooker, both of which retain a strong male emphasis. She may have seen a contrast between the perceived masculinity of billiards, and female curvature implied in the shape of the legs (Walker Art Center, 2009). 

Levine's message is simpler and more direct; she seeks to eliminate the dreamy, the surrealistic, the implied concept of 'shooting to the sky' in the original, and focus more on the practical, perhaps pointing out that Man Rays' choice of subject (as opposed to background) was influenced by his masculinity. By focussing on the table only and by sculpting it, Levine provides an antidote to the imaginary side of Man Ray's work. Best known for his photographic work, Man Ray once said of his paintings:

"I paint what cannot be photographed, that which comes from the imagination or from dreams" (Man Ray, 1970s)

Levine strips out the imaginary dreamlike element of the painting, and reconstructs the tangible part, leaving us with an altogether starker work of art.



Bicycle Wheel by Sturtevant

Elaine Sturtevant (or simply 'Sturtevant') rose to fame in the 1960s and 1970s as the 'Queen of Copycat' (Searle, 2013). When asked why she copied so many works, she claimed in this interview that she had become embedded in the 1960s popular schools of abstract expressionism and pop art. They were "so surfaced" she says; she wished to explore their "understructure", without making explicit what she means by those terms. 

Sturtevant was adroit at spotting and copying artists before they became famous - from a 'distance' to use her own term - such as Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol and Claus Oldenburg. Most were at least tolerant, though Oldenburg threatened to kill Sturtevant when she copied his shop installation The Store.

It is said that Sturtevant's copies are meant to ask what relevance a piece of artwork from the past has to the present. The statement that Sturtevant "divorces an artwork from its visual image to investigate its conceptual meaning and value" appears on so many web pages such that one cannot with certainty attribute it. Perhaps as well, as the statement is vacuous. Is it really possible to divorce a visual artwork from its visual image? 

This well-known Sturtevant piece is based on a 1913 work by Marcel Duchamp that was lost and recreated in 1951. The annotations and images on set out the history and highlight Sturtevant's remarkable ability to reproduce such an exact replica from memory. There is skill here, but in aid of what? Sturtevant claims:

"The brutal truth of the work is that it is not copy. The push and shove of the work is the leap from image to concept. The dynamics of the work is that it throws out representation. It is this leap that severs a work from its original time and place of making." (Sturtevant, 1974)


This leaves us no wiser, albeit it links with the idea of exploring "understructure". Sturtevant has a skill in reproduction that does not necessarily sit easily with the art world - why not produce something original? - and maybe seeks to inflate the importance of that skill by attributing some alternative meaning to a reproduction. There is hardly any more meaning attributable to an exact sculptural copy of a work than to a photographic representation; indeed if there is, why not make 2, 10, 20 , 100, 000s of copies and have multiple meanings? 

There is an alternative suggestion. Perhaps Sturtevant is wrily pointing put that there is not a huge amount of skill in producing these works. "If I can copy them,  then what is so clever about them?"; "Are they really art?" In Benjamin's terms, is the aura removed? But then again, the original artists had the idea, she did not. Moreover in this case, Duchamp was openly challenging the art world to deny his sculpture the epithet 'art' (MOMA, 2011) so does Sturtevant's intervention by copying the work add anything to the argument?

Going further, consider Berger's points that the meaning of art changes depending on where we view the work (Berger, 1972 p19) and how we see it (ibid, p26). In the first place, once the uniqueness of an art work is lost by virtue of being reproduced, then "its meaning multiplies and fragments into many meanings" (ibid, p19). In the second, the reproduction medium (Berger specifically refers to film but the argument is generic) "leads the spectator, through the painting, to the film-maker's own conclusions" (ibid, p26). 

Applying this to Sturtevant, there is indeed a loss of uniqueness to the original work but her medium is to use an exact copy, moreover placed in an environment that is very similar to that of the original (she does not place her Bicycle Wheel on the side of the road, say). In a sense, then, her work questions Berger (albeit preceding his thesis). If we accept that the meaning a work of art is influenced by being seen in a different environment with a different medium, can we say further that meaning is influenced to the same degree (or even at all)  by an exact replica viewed in a very similar gallery context as the original? Sturtevant claims it is but is unclear as to how. Logically, meaning changes the further the copy is from the original both in reproductive and contextual terms.


Death Disco by Glenn Brown

Glenn Brown  borrows from a variety of artists and genres; he alters positions, colours, proportions and sizes. He is controversial - some view his work as plagiarism, some deny it is art - reference this tweet in respect of his reproductions of scientific book illustrations (Mellow, 2014):

Just so wrong. cc @FlyingTrilobite RT @scalzi: Yeah, this is complete bullshit. It’s not art, it’s tracing. http://t.co/h8LuCqzcMv
— Karen James (@kejames) January 9, 2014

 Brown defends himself thus:

"People may think that a single painting stimulates me to make a 'copy', but I never make a direct quotation. I start with a vague idea of the kind of painting I want to make, and I do small sketches of it. These will more or less determine the size of the painting, the colour, the type of background, etc, but at that point I still don’t know what the subject matter will be, or which artist will inspire the work. Then I spend some time looking through books and catalogues to find a painting that fits my idea as closely as possible. I look at hundreds of images to find a reproduction I can transform by stretching, pulling or turning it upside down so it fits into my practice.” Quoted in Steiner, Rochelle (2004).

The approach is evident in this work, based on Rembrandt's original Saskia as Flora. Brown debeautifies the subject by elongation, and using gawdy colours. Flora was a goddess of flowers - one of many fertility goddesses. Whilst the flowers are retained in the hat, the concept of Flora as the fertility goddess is lost by the elongation and the omission of what Rembrandt may have intended as the fullness of pregnancy as Flora holds her gown outwards. 

The message this painting gives is that Brown is perverting the original; replacing beauty and the essential happiness, even godliness, of Rembrandt's original with an image of an almost human, dressed in non complementary colours ("blue and green should never be seen"). The fertility, if not the flowers, has been stripped out. It is close to shocking, lurid and exaggerated. It challenges the view of Rembrandt's portrait as a painting of happiness and beauty, substituting a darker more abstract image.


Sixteen Jackies by Andy Warhol

“The more you look at the same exact thing, the more the meaning goes away and the better and emptier you feel.”–Andy Warhol, 1975

This typically perverse view of  one of last century's most well known artists is very relevant to this famous work comprising a 4 x 4 collage of images of Jackie Kennedy taken from Life magazine pre and post the assassination of her husband. Warhol's interests in the mass media, celebrities, and in death are demonstrated in this work, which he saw as something of an antidote to the sadness and negativity surrounding the President's death: 

"....it didn't bother me that much that [Kennedy] was dead. What bothered me was the way the television and radio were programming everybody to feel so sad. It seemed like no matter how hard you tried, you couldn't get away from the thing." (Warhol and Hackett, 1980)

Warhol's reaction is to reduce the emotion surrounding the event by the use of repetition and rhythmn in his image, albeit a deliberately imprecise use (the images are not exactly the same on each row, and there is an element of carelessness about the presentation). His intention, as the opening quote infers, is to suggest meaning goes away by the use of repetition. Warhol and other pop artists used repetition in many images, as both a reflection of and a response to the mass consumerism of post war society. Is he saying here that you can have your goods in mass produced indentikits, perhaps you should see your news in the same way, and if so, why get all het up about some bad news? Is his subtle use of differentiation actually a reaction against this uniformity? Warhol was often cryptic or silent as to the meanings he attributed to his work; it is up to the viewer to draw his or her own conclusions. What seems clear is the message that the stunned sorrow of Jackie Kennedy after the event is a flip side of the smiles and joy a few hours and minutes before the assassination.


Empty Room by Peter Fischli and David Weiss

Fischli and Weiss came together in late 1970s, since when they have specialised in works  using everyday objects. They use diverse media from film and photography to clay; some of their work appears basic, even clumsy (Andrews, 2005). At face value, they challenge the notion that defining a work as art requires that it:

"...is done so superlatively well that we all but forget to ask what the work is supposed to be, for the sheer admiration of the way it is done" (Gombrich 1974, p477).

Empty Room (1995-96) was commissioned especially for the Walker exhibition in Minneapolis. The work comprises around 150 polyurethane sculpted pieces mimicking an installation. It is a work of an installation in an installation; quite possibly this is the irony that the authors intend. It is a tease on three levels: is it a piece of art work at all?; is it art?; why empty room?

As Claire (2010) drily points out, the only clue that this is a genuine work of art rather than just workmen's tools and paraphernalia is that there is a plaque outside. At face value, the installation can hardly constitute art. Claire continues:

"But even accepting that this collection of in-progress construction equipment is an intentional piece of art still leaves doubt as to its value as art. Just another one of those readymade art pieces that involve absolutely no work."

But once one realises this is a trompe l'œil - that one's eye is being deceived by the clever sculpting - the work takes on more meaning; it passes the Gombrich test for a start. The artists are daring us to dismiss the work as art firstly by believing we have accidentally stumbled on the workmen's den, secondly by not realising there is real effort and skill in this work; it is more than just lumping a few props into an empty room and defying us to say it is art. 

The third tease - empty room - follows on. We ask ourselves why call something an empty room when evidently it is not. But that emptiness at a tangible level only; at first sight, if you miss the plaque and/or believe the props are genuine, then you may believe the room is empty of artistic content. You then realise that Fischli and Weiss have surreptitiously hidden their artistic flair not only in the work itself but also in its title. 

There is resonance here with Benjamin's article in my reading notes. His thesis that the aura surrounding art is removed by virtue of mechanical reproduction is reflected here by Fischli and Weiss, with a twist: they are not reproducing works of art but reproducing everyday objects in a way that is subtly artistic.


Beyond the Pleasure Principle by Sarah Lucas
  
While completing this assignment, the announcement was made that Sarah Lucas was to be Britain's representative at 2015 Venice Biennale (BBC News, 2014) and it seemed appropriate to include one of her works.

Lucas is a contemporary of arguably the better known Tracey Emin and shares with her a punchy, bawdily humorous style. She is renowned for using everyday objects as sexual allusions in unsubtle ways, as in this work. She claims that she used pieces of furniture as stand in for body parts because "they were cheap, discarded and easily available." (Lucas, 2000). She points out that we imbue furniture with bodily significance by using phrases such as 'chair legs', so it is not such a leap of faith to imagine the pieces as human body parts.

Beyond the Pleasure Principle was the title of a 1920 essay by Sigmund Freud (Manchester, 2002) and there are strong Freudian messages in Lucas's work, albeit presented in a more direct fashion. There is no hidden symbolism. When asked about this, Lucas is clear that this is an intentional method to engender more engagement:

"...I think the directness gives people the way in. I like to be direct, partly because its audacious and honest, both of which I like and also because I think it makes the work more accessible on more levels, to more people." (Lucas, ibid).

Lucas adds that she was not necessarily trying to make any social or cultural observation form the work. Disarmingly for those who seek deep meaning in art work, she says: "I was just trying to do something very immediate from mass produced materials". She had no money, the props were cheap and she could do something with them. But at a minimum the accessibility and directness of Lucas's approach seem to be meaning that challenges people's innate embarrassment and reservation about sex. 



References:

Andrews (2005) Peter Fischli and David Weiss. In Bits & Pieces Put Together to Present a Semblance of a Whole: Walker Art Center Collections, edited by Joan Rothfuss and Elizabeth Carpenter. Minneapolis, MN: Walker Art Center. Accessed 14 March 2014

BBC News (2014) Sarah Lucas to represent UK at 2015 Venice Biennale Available from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-26665203 Accessed 23 March 2014

Berger (1972) Ways of Seeing Penguin Books London 

Claire (2010) The Walker's "Empty Room" Available from 

http://cva-oad-spring2010.blogspot.co.uk/2010/02/walkers-empty-room.html. Accessed 15 March 2014

Gombrich (1974) The Story of Art 12th edition Phaidon Press London.

Irvin (2005) Appropriation and Authorship in Contemporary Art Available from http://www.ou.edu/ouphil/faculty/irvin/Appropriation.pdf. Accessed 14 March 2014

Jones (2004) Dawn of the dead Available from http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2004/sep/16/1 Accessed 24 March 2014

Jones (2014) Why do we only hear about Jasper Johns when he gets ripped off?

Available from http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2014/jan/31/jasper-johns-flag-rip-off-art. Accessed 14 March 2014

Lucas (2000) Interview with James Putnam Available from http://www.freud.org.uk/exhibitions/10019/the-pleasure-principle/ Accessed 23 March 2014

Man Ray (1970s) Undated interview, circa 1970s; published in Man Ray: Photographer, 1981. 

Manchester (2002) Beyond the Pleasure Principle Available from http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/lucas-beyond-the-pleasure-principle-t07820/text-summary
Accessed 23 March 2014

Mellow (2014) How Plagiarized Art Sells for Millions Available from http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/symbiartic/2014/01/09/how-plagiarized-art-sells-for-millions/ Accessed 24 March 2014

MOMA (2011) Marcel Duchamp Bicycle Wheel Gallery Text. Available from http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=81631 Accessed 19 March 2014  

Searle (2013) Elaine Sturtevant: queen of copycats Available from http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/jul/01/elaine-sturtevant-queen-copycats  Accessed 19 March 2014

Stein (2009) One on One: Janet Bishop on Sherrie Levine Available from http://openspace.sfmoma.org/2009/06/janet-bishop-sherrie-levine. Accessed 15 March 2014

Steiner, Rochelle (2004) Glenn Brown. London: Serpentine Gallery. p. 95

Sturtevant (2004) Shifting Mental Structures Lecture delivered at Frankfurt Museum für Moderne Kuns. Available from http://www.leedsinspired.co.uk/events/sturtevant-duchamp-bicycle-wheel-1969-1973 Accessed 19 March 2014

Walker Art Center (2009) Extended label for Sherrie Levine, La Fortune (after Man Ray: 3), from the exhibition Event Horizon, November 21, 2009 to August 26, 2012.

Available from http://www.artsconnected.org/resource/110616/sherrie-levine-la-fortune-after-man-ray-3-1990. Accessed 15 March 2014

Warhol and Hackett (1980) PoPism: The Warhol '60s (New York and London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), p. 36. Quoted on http://www.artsconnected.org/resource/90643/andy-warhol-16-jackies-1964 Accessed 15 March 2014