The Performance
This blog is for my performance piece "Who's Art Is It Anyway?", where I'm attempting to turn art in on itself. So many times in fact that the final piece becomes a by-product and the process itself becomes the performance.
Performance art, and indeed art of all disciplines, has practitioners who try to navigate and push beyond the grey area that exists between what is considered 'art' and what isn't. If we look beyond, we see a point where art, science, technology and many of life's processes merge and overlap.
Our modern era, defined by the phrase "Possession is ninth tenths of the law", our creative industries hire armies of lawyers to define and protect artistic and intellectual rights. This structure is what enables practitioners to protect their income, their careers and ultimately the amount of time they can afford to devote to their art.
So, who's art is it anyway? Celebrities own their image rights, and make their own existence a commodity. They style their hair, they paint their faces, they walk as their own art, yet a photographer will frame a shot, capture a moment in time for their own art.
Warhol famously used images of celebrities (and soup cans!) in a repetitous way, transforming them into mere textures and patterns. He 'sampled' other art genres, just like a hip-hop producer might sample a drumloop from a James Brown record. 
After reading about The Factory (Warhol's New York studio) I was fascinated by the fact that many pieces attributed to Warhol were made by other artists under his direction, pieces which Warhol himself never even laid a finger on.
In a further twist, modern day maverick artist Banksy created the Warholesque "Kate Moss". Elli Varnavides of Sotheby's said "I believe Kate Moss was happy about Banksy using her image in an iconic way." She wasn't too bothered about him keeping the £50k+ he received at auction for it either!
Performance art, and indeed art of all disciplines, has practitioners who try to navigate and push beyond the grey area that exists between what is considered 'art' and what isn't. If we look beyond, we see a point where art, science, technology and many of life's processes merge and overlap.
Our modern era, defined by the phrase "Possession is ninth tenths of the law", our creative industries hire armies of lawyers to define and protect artistic and intellectual rights. This structure is what enables practitioners to protect their income, their careers and ultimately the amount of time they can afford to devote to their art.
So, who's art is it anyway? Celebrities own their image rights, and make their own existence a commodity. They style their hair, they paint their faces, they walk as their own art, yet a photographer will frame a shot, capture a moment in time for their own art.
Warhol famously used images of celebrities (and soup cans!) in a repetitous way, transforming them into mere textures and patterns. He 'sampled' other art genres, just like a hip-hop producer might sample a drumloop from a James Brown record. After reading about The Factory (Warhol's New York studio) I was fascinated by the fact that many pieces attributed to Warhol were made by other artists under his direction, pieces which Warhol himself never even laid a finger on.In a further twist, modern day maverick artist Banksy created the Warholesque "Kate Moss". Elli Varnavides of Sotheby's said "I believe Kate Moss was happy about Banksy using her image in an iconic way." She wasn't too bothered about him keeping the £50k+ he received at auction for it either!