"Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein currently has a show on at the Tate Modern. While the public is intimately familiar with his work, what they may be unaware of is that many of his images were directly “appropriated” from comic artists like Irv Novick, Russ Heath, Jack Kirby, John Romita and Joe Kubert, who received no fee or credit.
Is this an act of brilliant recontexturalisation? The elevation of commercial “low” art to “high” art? Art world snobbery? Artistic licence? Gallery shortsightedness? Cultural annexation? Or something else entirely?"
IMAGE DUPLICATOR brings together real comic-book artists and other “commercial artists” – illustrators, designers, cartoonists – to ask these kinds of questions and share their views, via their work. Each artist was asked to “re-reappropriate” one of the comic images Lichtenstein used: to go back to the source material and twist it into something interesting and original, and in the process to comment on the act of appropriation.
Money raised from selling prints and originals will be donated to the Hero Initiative, which helps down-on-their-luck comic book veterans.
(Above art by Jason Atomic)
“I’ve spoken out in the past about my dislike, on both aesthetic and ethical grounds, of the “appropriation” of comic strip images by “pop art”. The feeling amongst the comics community is pretty much unanimous: we feel patronised, and we feel that several of our revered elders have been, frankly, robbed."
"To us, their creativity and skilled labour has been discounted by considering their work as being merely, in the jargon of the art world, “found”, and they have received no credit or recompense for what amounts to celebrated and expensive copies of their creations." ~said Dave Gibbons. (Check out THIS Facebook album for the rest of the quote).
The show at Orbital Comics Gallery is curated by Rian Hughes and Jason Atomic, and launches May 16th and exhibits thru May 31st. Prints of WHAAT? will be available as a signed and numbered edition up to 16th May. Dave Gibbons will also be signing copies at the IMAGE DUPLICATOR launch night at Orbital Comics. After this date, the print is still available in an unsigned, unnumbered edition, but the numbered and signed version will be no longer available. All prints will be shipped and dispatched week commencing 20th May. For print sales and enquires, please email blam@print-process.com. Go direct here to purchase prints from print-process.com.
