[R]estraint not shown by the appropriationist Sturdevant, who evidently felt that Joseph Beuys “Fat Chair”—a chair covered in vegetable fat that Beuys made in 1963—should be one step closer to a dinner set. So she copied it. Which is what she does, building her work on a theoretical foundation of mumbo-jumbo from Michel Foucault, Martin Heidegger, Friedrich Nietschze, and several other philosophers whose first language was not English. According to the helpful curator recordings that accompany the exhibit, “Sturdevant replays the process by which artworks first come into being, and in so doing returns the replica to a state of originality.” In journalism we call this plagiarism, but then again, most journalists can’t defend themselves by quoting Foucault. Appropriation is for artists only, apparently; everyone else has to come up with their own ideas.

¶ 4:42 PM