![]() Beyonce’s husband, hip-hop mogul Jay-Z, knows more than a little about this. In the music business, sampling has been around for decades. It’s a method that the field proudly stands behind, and in addition to Warhol and Duchamp, those who have practiced it include many prominent names in modern painting and sculpture. If it seems a stretch to liken any aspect of Beyonce’s output with that of esteemed visual artists, there is a concept that links them all: appropriation, the art world’s term for using borrowed material to create new work. His reasoning? He had devised “a new thought” for it. ![]() Andy Warhol cashed in on Campbell’s soup, Marcel Duchamp plunked a urinal on a pedestal and called it his own creation. ![]() Helpfully, there’s a split screen clip on YouTube that exhibits a few brief scenes from the R&B singer’s video alongside nearly identical moments from two of de Keersmaeker’s experimental works, “Achterland,” from 1994 and a 1997 film of a piece called “Rosas danst Rosas.”īut though the scoldings throughout the blogosphere are compelling - Beyonce has been bawled out for being a copycat and for lacking imagination and respect and so on - much of art history says that the recording artist and dancer has done nothing out of the ordinary.Įxisting material has formed the core of countless artworks, including those now enshrined as masterstrokes. But by virtue of her enormous celebrity, Beyonce has attracted wide attention to one of the world’s most common creative strategies: the art of stealing.īeyonce’s appropriation of moves and staging from Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker in her new music video “Countdown,” released last month, has sparked an Internet uproar. Granted, the pop star has done nothing radical or unusual. And it is Beyonce who is pushing the boundaries. This time, the mass market is leading the avant garde.
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