Repertoire and artistic property

Parasitical Appropriation Art. Limitations of a semiotic reading of Appropriation Art

Andrew Bracey

Encountering appropriated reflections

Figure 1 is a photograph of the conceptual artists’ group Art & Language’s Untitled Painting (1965), a critique of Modernist painting evident through the title and conceptual positioning. The mirror-as-painting removes the artist’s control over what is depicted, instead representing the viewer and their environment through reflection. However, as the artists observe, the work is among the most popular in the Tate Gallery’s collection, largely because it is “good for selfies”.¹

Figure 2 is an image from Reflected Self-Portraits (2024), an ongoing series of approximately 850 photographs that appropriate the reflective surfaces of artworks to create a self-portrait. This image was made by directing a phone camera at Untitled Painting, simultaneously documenting myself and a detail of Art & Language’s piece. While the photographs have been taken since 2007, it was not until 2024 that Reflected Self-Portraits was consolidated as a practice research project presented in physical exhibitions, on Instagram (@reflectedselfportrait) and the Research Catalogue.² The process of producing these images is deliberately reductive. I move through galleries with a ‘magpie’ attention to reflective surfaces, selecting works solely based on whether their material properties can generate an image of my reflection. The encounter is brief and pragmatic: if the surface records my presence, I photograph it. Other interpretative or art-historical qualities are set aside in favour of this single material condition.

I am not motivated to create good photographs of artworks, many are ‘noisy,’ blurry, and fuzzy. In this sense, Reflected Self-Portraits corresponds to artist Hito Steyerl’s notion of the “poor image,” as “a copy in motion. Its quality is bad, its resolution substandard. As it accelerates, it deteriorates.”³ This introduces a digital materiality in which a Benjaminian aura shifts from the permanence of the original artwork to the transience of the digital copy, subject to circulation, fragmentation and exploitation. Steyerl’s idea is particularly relevant given the project’s Instagram platform, where images operate beyond my control; released from the fixity of the original artwork, the photographs are open to distribution, reuse and further appropriation. This mode of working also produces a particular form of bodily encounter. In order to register my reflection, I adopt positions not typically associated with viewing artworks (stretching, crouching, leaning, or standing at oblique angles) so that the camera aligns with the reflective surface. The resulting image is therefore not only a record of the artwork, but a record of a specific physical negotiation between body, object and device.

This text serves a dual purpose. Firstly, Reflected Self-Portraits is used as a practice-led lens through which to interrogate received theoretical framings of appropriation art. Secondly, by foregrounding the artist-maker’s perspective, the project exposes limitations in postmodern and semiotic interpretations (particularly those shaped by October journal discourse) by attending to material, affective, and tacit motivations neglected in dominant accounts. The critical framework referred to here is closely tied to the Pictures exhibition (Artists Space, New York, 1977), curated by art historian Douglas Crimp, and his subsequent 1979 essay in October, which together defined what is now termed the “Pictures Generation”. This loose grouping of artists, including Sherrie Levine, Cindy Sherman, Robert Longo, Richard Prince, and Louise Lawler, engaged with pre-existing images drawn from mass media, advertising, and art history in order to question notions of originality, authorship, and representation. Central to Crimp’s account is the idea that artworks operate as “structures of signification,”⁴ in which images are understood not as autonomous originals but as part of a stratified field of references, where “underneath each picture there is always another picture.”⁵ Influenced by poststructuralist semiotics, this framework prioritized the circulation and reinterpretation of signs over material or authorial concerns, establishing a postmodern paradigm that has profoundly shaped the interpretation of appropriation art.⁶

Reflected Self-Portraits as Parasitic Appropriation Art

Through cropping, recontextualization, captioning, or repetition, Pictures artists challenged assumptions of originality, authorship, and ownership. As Crimp suggests, these practices produce images that are estranged from their prior functions and repositioned within new discursive contexts. Rephotography, central to appropriation art, has been framed as an effort to produce images operating primarily at the level of signs. This semiotic framework is exemplified in Levine’s appropriations, which foreground layers of citation and borrowing rather than singular authorship. For example, in Untitled, after Edward Weston (1980), Levine exposes authorship as contingent rather than originary, a position art historian Rosalind Krauss describes as opening the image to “a long line of claimants”.⁷ By conceptually focusing on what Krauss describes as an “act of theft,”⁸ Levine suggests that Weston used familiar tropes in his photographic compositions, such as the cut-off torso traceable to ancient sculpture, which continues into her rephotographs. Such readings align closely with the Pictures Generation’s challenge to modernist originality.

Reflected Self-Portraits can also be understood as an act of re-signification, insofar as the appropriated artwork becomes a mediated surface through which a new relationship emerges between viewer, artwork and photographic act.⁹ However, the intervention here is materially and temporally fleeting; the reflected presence does not overwrite the host work but briefly inhabits it for the camera, producing a shifting relation between the subject (self-portrait) and the signified (the artwork). Each photograph functions as both a self-portrait and a fragmentary document of another work. The image is neither a full reproduction nor a purely subjective gesture, but a partial overlap in which the artwork’s surface conditions determine the form the self-portrait can take. The resulting image is contingent: distorted, fragmented, or incomplete depending on the material qualities of the host object. For example, Levine’s Papua New Guinea Figure (2014), originally presented as a bronze sculpture commenting on the commodification of non-Western objects,¹⁰ appears in the Reflected Self-Portraits series with little relation to Levine’s stated intentions. The photograph records a partial, spatial encounter, which complicates an established reading of appropriation art, as the work does not seek to extract or critique meaning from the appropriated artwork, but instead emerges from a contingent encounter with its material properties, particularly reflectivity, which generates the image. In this sense, the photographs operate less as signs to be decoded and more as traces of a situated encounter, where the appropriated artwork actively conditions what can be seen and recorded.

The artistic act in Reflected Self-Portraits can be understood as parasitic, in a metaphorical sense as an uninvited guest that operates within an existing system at the expense of others. While biological parasitism implies harm to the host, philosopher Michel Serres reframes the parasite as a disruptive but productive force; an agent of interruption, reconfiguring and transforming existing systems. In this expanded sense, parasitism encompasses a range of interactions from exploitation to mutualism. This framing allows Reflected Self-Portraits to be understood as operating through recontextualization rather than deflationary criticism. While Pictures artists similarly disrupted notions of authenticity and authorship, the near-exclusive critical focus on semiotics (largely driven by October) narrowed the interpretive field, sidelining materiality and experiential motivations. Rather than functioning as a parasitic act of appropriation, Reflected Self-Portraits demonstrates how meaning can arise through proximity, contingency, and material responsiveness.

Conditions for and limitations of Parasitic Appropriation Art

Pictures Generation appropriation marked a necessary shift in the theorization of art, reinforcing a break from the problematics of modernism. However, the postmodern framing that accompanied it has continued to shape interpretations of appropriation art in limiting ways. Sarah Evans argues that October writers were less concerned with the artworks themselves than with the emergence of postmodern theory, focusing on models of signification rather than the practices they described.¹¹ This emphasis contributed to an interpretive framework that, as AnnMarie Perl suggests, held significant authority within the art world, making alternative readings difficult to sustain.¹² Curator Lisa Phillips observes that critical discourse often “insulate[d] the art, to keep its interpretation on a more theoretical level than the artists intended”¹³ and therefore, overlooking other dimensions. Phillips continues by pointing out what was missed out by the focus on postmodern theories for appropriation art’s framing: “Overlooked were expressions of fears, desires, and obsessions, not to mention the experience of visual pleasure. The limitations of the theoretical terms became increasingly apparent as the work developed in unexpected ways.”¹⁴ Appropriation art, in this sense, has always exceeded the terms used to define it.

Revisiting the Pictures exhibition reinforces this point. Reflecting on its 2001 restaging, again at Artists Space, curator Scott Rothkopf noted the works were “rough and quirky, betraying a hand often presumed to be purposefully absent from ‘Pictures’ art.”¹⁵ Encountering the works directly, he questions the extent to which Crimp’s critical claims had overlooked their tactile and visual specificity.¹⁶ Artists associated with the Pictures Generation repeatedly complicated this framing. Levine, for example, expressed frustration with what she termed “mindless appropriation,”¹⁷ noting that her work was often read not as photographs or material objects but as “position papers.”¹⁸ Such responses suggest a desire among artists for engagement with medium and form alongside critical interpretation.

Lawler likewise emphasizes the role of intuition and process, noting that excessive clarity risks rendering work programmatic.¹⁹ Her reflections highlight a tension between making and interpretation, in which the experiential and affective dimensions of practice resist full articulation within theoretical frameworks.²⁰ Crimp acknowledges that while Lawler’s work can be understood as institutional critique, an interpretation that “may be true and accurate,”²¹ it does not capture something crucial. He identifies an emotional impact that is “much more difficult to speak about,”²² emphasizing the importance of the creative process itself. Taken together, these artists’ perspectives suggest that the postmodern framing of appropriation art, while historically significant, narrowed the terms of engagement by prioritizing semiotic critique over material, affective, and experiential dimensions. These elements were not absent from the work but were often marginalized within its critical reception.

Taken together, these artists’ perspectives suggest that the postmodern framing of appropriation art, while historically significant, narrowed the terms of engagement by prioritising semiotic critique over material, affective, and experiential dimensions.

Many artists associated with the Pictures Generation produced texts to accompany their works, often stating their intentions for appropriation were clear. While often presented as aligned with the “death of the author”,²³ these explanatory texts nevertheless guided viewers and critics towards specific theoretical positions, sometimes at the expense of other material and experiential qualities. Art historian Isabelle Graw critiques an instrumentalized framing of appropriation art, arguing that it narrows interpretation, noting that this “model of appropriating, parasitic behaviour replaced the model of the strong subject that creates something new using its resources.”²⁴

Interviews with Pictures artists indicate a wider range of motivations than the postmodern theoretical framing developed by Crimp, Krauss, Craig Owens, and others.²⁵ Anthony Grudin notes that the egalitarian politics of the Pictures Generation prompted a critical backlash intended to contain appropriation art by insisting on its critique of institutions, media, and sign systems.²⁶ In this sense, postmodern theory did not simply situate appropriation art practices but functioned to discipline and delimit them. This critical control was reinforced curatorially, particularly through the centrality of text panels, which aligned the work with postmodern theoretical frameworks for public interpretation. What emerged was “a kind of self-congratulatory feedback loop”²⁷ in which theory operated as inspiration and the benchmark for interpretation, resulting in practices that “grew subordinate to the theory that purported to explain it.”²⁸

Within this context, affective or enthusiastic engagement with appropriated material was treated with suspicion. Reflecting on this period, Graw recalls that artists who appeared to be subjectively invested in their appropriated material were perceived as having “joined the enemy camp,”²⁹ since allowing the appropriated object any agency risked “falling back on modernist premises, and this, as already indicated, was to be avoided at all costs.”³⁰ This rhetoric reflects the critical climate of the 1970s and 1980s, in which a scepticism of modernist stances fostered an oppositional dialectic. While such resistance was historically understandable, it encouraged a dualistic framing that excluded positive attention to materiality, medium or enthusiasm towards the appropriated object as these were seen to be synonymous with modernism. Philosopher Peter Osborne’s analysis of October further clarifies this position, noting Anglo-American receptions of French theory fostered a dismissal of formal and material concerns in favour of ideological readings.³¹ Within this framework, formalism itself becomes a pejorative term rather than a site of inquiry.

The work does not seek to decode or critique the source image, but to generate a new one through a materially contingent interaction with it. Meaning emerges not from what is read into the artwork, but from what occurs in the moment of making.

As suggested above, Serres’s theoretical reworking of parasitism offers a way beyond this impasse. Rather than treating the parasite solely as a destructive figure, Serres reimagines it as a figure that interrupts established systems, capable of generating new possibilities.³² In The Parasite, unequal exchanges are shown not only to exploit but also to generate unforeseen forms of interaction.³³ Significantly, in The Natural Contract, Serres extends the metaphor by suggesting that unchecked exploitation endangers both host and parasite. He considers how the parasite can become a former parasite, forming a more balanced, even mutualist symbolic relationship with the host.³⁴ This metaphor of transformation is useful in anticipating a shift in positioning towards mutualist appropriation art.

The ‘parasitical’ condition identified in this article lies less in the act of appropriation itself than in the interpretive framework that has come to dominate it. By privileging certain readings over others, this framework has constrained the ways in which appropriation art can be understood. At the same time, the persistence of these alternative positions within artists’ own accounts suggests that appropriation has always involved a more complex set of motivations than those captured by postmodern theory alone. It is this broader field of practice, encompassing material engagement, affect, and tacit knowledge, that informs my own use of appropriation. In Reflected Self-Portraits, this expanded field is enacted through a practice that prioritizes encounter over interpretation. The work does not seek to decode or critique the source image, but to generate a new one through a materially contingent interaction with it. Meaning emerges not from what is read into the artwork, but from what occurs in the moment of making.

Turn of the appropriated screw

An expected art historical reading of Reflected Self-Portraits might focus on the prominence of my reflected image in other artists’ artworks, interpreting this as the ‘birth of the reader.’ By positioning myself within the reflective surfaces of artworks, the work could be aligned within conceptual positions that critique authorship and destabilize fixed meaning through shifting positions of creator and observer. However, postmodern theoretical concerns are not my primary motivation for working with appropriated material in this work. I remain a ‘mere’ reflection in other artists’ works, rather than authorial insertion. The work is driven instead by attention to reflective materials and their surfaces, distortions and capacities for recording images. My reflection appears because it is the most immediate and readily available means of registering these material encounters. This approach aligns with what I term ‘making-looking’ as a form of attention oriented towards producing images rather than interpreting them.³⁵ The act of looking is guided not by a search for meaning, but by a search for the conditions under which something can be made. In this case, that condition is the capacity of a surface to return an image.

The ‘parasitical’ condition identified in this article lies less in the act of appropriation itself than in the interpretive framework that has come to dominate it.

My approach differs from dominant readings of appropriation art because I encounter artworks from the position of an artist-maker rather than a theorist or art historian. The distinction I draw between parasitical and mutualist appropriation art corresponds to the difference between propositional knowledge (knowing that) and tacit knowledge (knowing how). Artist Dom Heffer argues that artistic values are increasingly under threat in a culture that favours symbolic identification. Drawing on Franco “Bifo” Berardi, he describes how society suffers “from over-signification, a saturation of signs, leading to what he calls ‘semiotic inflation’ – suggesting that the proliferation of the signified creates less meaning, not more.”³⁶ This diagnosis resonates strongly with my experience of appropriation art specifically, where an overemphasis on semiotics overshadows speculative and material qualities that artists value. As media theorist Arjen Mulder suggests, the question shifts from what an artwork signifies, to what it enables through the active agency of the artwork, asking what actions it enables and what forms of encounter it produces.³⁷ These qualities are not easily articulated verbally, yet they are central to how artworks are made, encountered and understood through practice. Reflected Self-Portraits is the outcome not of interpreting an artwork, but of interacting with it.

As an artist, I prioritize tacit knowledge over propositional articulation. Philosopher Paul K. Moser defines propositional knowledge as justified true belief.³⁸ While such knowledge is culturally privileged, it overlooks the value and role of tacit knowledge, which is acquired through embodied practice and participation.³⁹ Polymath Michael Polanyi argues that tacit knowledge is inseparable from the knower, making it intrinsic to all knowledge.⁴⁰ The personal and subjective aspects of practice, often viewed with suspicion in theoretical discourse, are not obstacles to understanding but conditions of it. In this respect, postmodern theorization of appropriation art has tended to prioritize propositional reading over tacit engagement, reinforcing a parasitic framework that limits how artworks are encountered and valued.

A way forward: Two-way influence for Appropriation Art

Reflected Self-Portraits proposes a model of appropriation grounded in reciprocal influence. Rather than a one-sided relationship between two agents (the appropriating artist and the appropriated work), the project suggests a more complex interaction, where mutual influence emerges as a priority, producing a shifting and contingent exchange rather than a fixed hierarchy. This challenges interpretations in which the contemporary artist is positioned as the primary agent, recontextualizing passive source material. As art historian Michael Baxandall suggests, accounts of influence often privilege the interpreting subject,⁴¹ which risks overlooking how the encountered artwork actively shapes the conditions of response. Poet T. S. Eliot similarly proposes that the present reshapes the past as much as it is shaped by it.⁴² As art historian and curator Verena Gamper points out, this “leaves aside the possibility that the material appropriated may in turn actively impact the appropriators by affecting, infecting and forcing them to respond.”⁴³ In this sense, appropriation becomes a dialogical process, in which the artwork is not inert but participates in the production of meaning.

This reciprocal model is echoed in artists’ own accounts. Lawler describes art as “a collaboration with what came before you and what comes after you.”⁴⁴ These positions point toward a conception of influence as asynchronous, relational, and bidirectional. From this perspective, the metaphor of parasitism can be extended beyond a logic of extraction toward one of transformation towards both the appropriated material and appropriation artworks. The parasite need not be understood as purely exploitative, but as a figure capable of generating new relations. Appropriation art can shift from a model of dominance toward one of mutual implication, in which appropriated material, artworks, viewers and artists are altered through the encounter.⁴⁵ In Reflected Self-Portraits, this reciprocity operates at the level of material encounter: the artwork conditions the image that can be made, while the act of photographing repositions the work within a new, transient visual economy.

Within this framework, parasitical appropriation art can be understood as a historically specific mode of theoretical interpretation that privileged semiotic critique. While this framework remains productive, it does not exhaust the possibilities of appropriation. Practices such as Reflected Self‑Portraits suggest that material, affective, and tacit engagements are equally constitutive of how meaning is produced. Attending to these dimensions does not reject postmodern readings but expands them. By foregrounding the perspectives of artists and the conditions of making, appropriation can be understood not only as a critique of images and institutions, but as an embodied and relational practice. In this sense, the value of Reflected Self‑Portraits lies not in opposing existing interpretations but in demonstrating how alternative forms of engagement, rooted in material encounter, intuition and making, can coexist with and extend established accounts of appropriation art.

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Andrew Bracey

is an artist, researcher and senior lecturer in Fine Art at the University of Lincoln. He is fascinated by the slippages between the original/reproduction, artist/curator, painter/painting. His current PhD by Practice is grappling with the overlooked importance of the maker-artist in appropriation art.

ABracey@lincoln.ac.uk

Footnotes