Art: Copycats and creative borrowers

Among writers, copying someone else's work is called plagiarism, and is considered dishonorable. In art, however, stealing ideas is called "appropriation," and is considered legitimate, even clever.

Sherrie Levine excepted, artist "appropriators" usually physically or conceptually recast their borrowings to make them seem fresh or more current. Artists have been doing this for centuries, but in modern terms it might have been Marcel Duchamp, with his mustachioed Mona Lisa, who created the model for artists working today.

"Exposed," an exhibition at the Delaware Art Museum, offers various examples of how artists such as Richard Prince, Andy Warhol, Glenn Ligon, and Robert Rauschenberg have exploited the tactic of appropriation.

Some, like Rauschenberg, incorporate existing images into larger compositions. Others, like Robert Colescott and James Valerio, pay homage in their own language to famous works from art history - paintings by Paul Cezanne and Edouard Manet, respectively.

The most celebrated image in the show is probably Warhol's portfolio of screenprints depicting Mao Tse-tung. Warhol posterized the formal photographic portrait from Mao's Little Red Book and printed it in a number of gaudy color combinations, thus making it his own.

The core of the show, which is drawn primarily from the museum's collection, is Richard Prince, who in some works represents the most blatant form of image piracy. In his Cowboy series, he simply reproduced Marlboro cigarette advertisements.

He also painted scaled-up, aestheticized versions of the covers of paperback novels with titles like Navy Nurse and Runaway Nurse.

Heather Bennett similarly restages fashion photographs with herself as the model. Ellen Gallagher has transformed altered advertisements from magazines that cater to an African American readership into a suite of prints.

The viewer can draw several conclusions from this show. The first is that appropriation comes in a broad range of applications, some legitimate in terms of how the source material is transformed and some basically just copying. The second is that popular culture, especially advertising, plays a major role.

To illuminate this point, the exhibition includes numerous examples of original source materials, including comic books, paper dolls, book covers, and even French currency. This allows viewers to examine to what degree the works in the exhibition have transmuted sources.

The bottom line is the question of what constitutes originality in art. Is there a clear demarcation between innovation and copying and, if so, how does one define it?

Levine, the queen of artistic plagiarists, has spent her career addressing this issue, by copying other art and presenting it as being "recontextualized." It's a pity that she's absent from this distinguished company of borrowers and scavengers.

The words of Eakins. You've seen the paintings of Thomas Eakins; now hear his voice. Not literally - audio recording didn't exist when young Eakins was studying art in Paris in the 1860s.

Yet he did write dozens of letters to family and friends in Philadelphia during those years that recreate his personality with remarkable fidelity. You might not be hearing him speak, but you are meeting the man.

Many of these letters are part of the Charles Bregler collection of Eakins material at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where Eakins studied before sailing off to France in October 1866.

Except for one home visit in late 1868, he remained in France, with an important side trip to Spain, until June 1870.

William Innes Homer, emeritus professor of art history at the University of Delaware and a noted Eakins scholar, has combined the Bregler letters with some from other collections into a book that will be published by Princeton University Press on Sept. 16.

Homer has edited the letters and provided clarifying commentary, context, and, where necessary, translations. Eakins wrote in French and Italian as well as English, often eloquently but with occasional spelling lapses, especially of proper names.

To his father and mother, he sent long, detailed letters, the antithesis of today's pidgin-like texting. He often rambled on for pages about events that might seem banal or beneath notice to today's reader, such as his account of buying a hat, complete with illustrations.

Yet we must remember that he was only in his early 20s, a long way from the parents and three sisters with whom he was close. He needed to reassure them that he was secure in his situation, progressing with his studies at the prestigious Ecole des Beaux-Arts while maintaining a strong psychological bulwark against homesickness.

Readers shouldn't expect lengthy disquisitions about art and aesthetics; rather, Eakins fills his pages with more routine matters, such as observations on French customs, on the routine in the studio of painter Jean-Léon Gérome, with whom he was studying, and with accounts of trips out of Paris.

He reports going to Versailles, for example, but doesn't mention what he saw there.

He does describe to an aunt how French women dress, and observes that they always appear to be very clean. He natters on at length in several letters about ice skating, and he also communicates his dislike of England and everything English.

In a letter to close friend William Sartain, brother of a woman some thought Eakins would wed, he opines that he would marry "only to have children," an ironic comment in retrospect because, while he did eventually marry, he was childless.

The longer he lived in Paris, the more philosophical he became, and his opinions on art and his career began to crystallize. Thus in a letter to his father, Benjamin, who was supporting his study, he defended studying with the academic painter Gérome as a superb role model. Yet as we know, as a mature artist Eakins the realist represented the antithesis of Gerome the storyteller.

The Paris Letters of Thomas Eakins is the first of a planned two-volume compendium of his epistolary output. It's never sensational or florid. Sometimes it's a bit opaque, but Homer helps us navigate those patches.

Rather, it's an engaging accretion of incidental detail about the formative years of a young artist who developed into one of America's most impressive painters. Homer might have provided a bit more of an introduction to the Paris years for readers unfamiliar with the artist, but otherwise Eakins fans should find this book enchanting.

"Exposed" continues at the Delaware Art Museum, 2301 Kentmere Parkway, Wilmington, through Oct. 4. Hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays and noon to 4 Sundays. Admission is $12 general, $10 for visitors 60 and older, and $6 for students with valid ID and visitors ages 7 through 18. Information: 302-571-9590 or www.delart.org.

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The Philadelphia Museum of Art will present "An Afternoon With Thomas Eakins" on Sept. 20 from 2 to 5 p.m. The event will include a dramatic reading of letters from William Innes Homer's book by Christian Johnson of the American Historical Theatre of Philadelphia, a gallery tour by curator Kathleen Foster and a reception. Tickets are $25 (including museum admission), $10 for members, and can be purchased at the museum, by calling 215-235-7469 or online at www.philamuseum.org.

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