Identity Crisis: Authenticity, Attribution and Appropriation
January 15, 2011 - March 27, 2011
Identity Crisis explores issues relating to the artistic use of other artists’ styles and images. Historically popular artists had followers, imitators and forgers, while more recent artists openly adopt well-known images and styles to comment on originality, authorship, and culture. This exhibition presents old master and nineteenth-century works from The Heckscher Museum Permanent Collection, providing a framework for connoisseurship issues, such as authenticity and attribution. Artists to be considered include Giovanni Antonio Canale (called Canaletto), Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Jean-Desire-Gustave Courbet, and George Inness, among others.
Contemporary appropriation artists add a new dimension to the use of adopted images, as seen in the work of such artists as Mike Bidlo, David Bierk, George Deem, Audrey Flack, Kathleen Gilje, Paul Giovanopoulos, Deborah Kass, Jiri Kolar, Sherrie Levine, Carlo Mariani, Yasumasa Morimura, Vik Muniz, Richard Pettibone, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol and others, providing an instructive and stimulating counter point to the issues raised by the historical works in the show.
