How Borrowing Ideas Can Offer a Fresh Perspective Through the Changing Context of Time

Joanna Fiduccia of the PBS Digital Studios series “The Art Assignment” explains through example how using the same ideas (sampling) from a past artist can actually offer a fresh perspective through the changing context of time.

Art, while sometimes confounding and often contested, helps us see that the context of pictures is absolutely integral to their meaning it reminds us that pictures don’t just have histories they exist in history. A copy no matter how perfect is never really the same as the original since its context is always shifting and since we exist in history, our perspective is always shifting too. When artists copy, we recognize that they’re making fresh meanings through their interaction with signs and symbols and bits of information already out in the world