The article is an extensive analysis of the postmodern phenomenon of appropriation art in its
practical and theoretical context. It focuses on the historical period of the late 1970s and 1980s
and the New York Scene of American artists, collectively called the Pictures Generation. It was
a moment when artistic practice merged with an insightful critical refl ection inspired by diverse sources
such as Walter Benjamin’s theory of allegory, Roland Barthes’s analysis of myth and the idea of „the death of the author” as well as Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction. In the fi rst part of the
article I analyze the photographic work of four major female artists – Sherrie Levine, Louise Lawler,
Cindy Sherman and Barbara Kruger – in terms of the strategies of appropriation they employed.
It sets ground for the second part of the article – a detailed „anatomy” of critical discourse and
theoretical and historical premises for the emergence or appropriation art with a special focus on
the allegory and allegorical procedures discussed in seminal articles by Craig Owens and Benjamin
H. Buchloh. It also highlights the relationship between appropriation and the Barthesian
understanding of the myth. In the third part I discuss critical reconsiderations of appropriation in
terms of subjectivity and its political value. The fi nal section consists of analyses of selected works
of appropriation, deconstructing „American myth” in order to demonstrate the above-mentioned
political/critical dimension of appropriation. In conclusion, I propose to think about postmodern
appropriation not only as an important phenomenon of the past but a still operative, even if at times
aporetic, project which sets major coordinates for contemporary art.
Photo League, Weegee et Cindy Sherman à New York