Creative Commons

This dissertation was written as part of the MA in Art, Law and Arts Management at the International Hellenic University. It is a fact that during the last years there is a dramatic dissemination of contemporary art cutting across the conventional art forms. As long as the controversial issue of contemporary art and the inextricable widespread of Appropriation Art has already occupied many eminent intellectuals and brilliant scholars of the 20th century, I was really excited and deeply curious to study this topic in depth. Under that prism, my primary orientation was to focus on the fertile combination of the historical positions, theories and practices, aiming to feature the basic aspects and cir-cumstances that govern the genre of “appropriation art”, setting chronologically its evolution, connecting it with theories of philosophical aesthetics and art market terms. My secondary goal was to underline the interconnection of appropriation practices with the implementation of Intellectual property issues, especially under the Copyright Law. In order to fulfill substantially the purpose of my paper, I intend to present comprehen-sively a series of fussily selected appropriation art material, hoping to introduce the readers into the core of Appropriation Art, emphasizing on practices from the real art world. Additionally, the construction of the paper’s legal pillar requires the elaboration of the legal instruments that provide the lawful “vehicle” for the use of copyright protected works, mounting from the International Law, to Regional and National Law. Apart from the theoretical basis, I will try to demonstrate contiguous case law, in order to illuminate the applied rules according to Copyright Law. My primary objective is related to the presentation of a holistic perception of Appropriation Art, following basically the qualitative method with an emphasis on the case study, embellishing with the individual observation and participatory experience. Keywords: contemporary art, appropriation art, copyright law, fair use, legal challenges.