Throughout history, art has played an integral role to capture, record, and communicate

events, activities, traditions, and even belief systems of various groups of people. Even
Paleolithic societies have found ways to record events despite the unavailability or
limited access to various tools. In essence, art has been an instrument to reflect the
things and events that transpired in the past so that the future generations can have a
glimpse of that past. With the advent of technological advancements, societies have
improved the ways and means through which art can be communicative tool. If an
artwork is an avenue for an artist to express narratives through symbols, then if follows
that the artist is the author of the work. But during the twentieth century, issues on
ownership and authorship have emerged promarily because of the value ascribed to the
viewer of the work.
Soulmaking: Making and Deriving Meaning from Art
          In order for humans to make sense of language and derive meanings from words,
semantics and grammatical rules are important elements to be considered. Aside from
this, contex and symbolisms are also considered to interpret and analyze either verval
or written works: When it comes to art, in order for people to make sense of the work, it
would require understanding the visual elements where art was grounded on, especially
the principles of design. It is important to note that the audience of the artwork must
have a certain level of awareness to the style, form, and content of the said work.
Without such understanding, it would be difficult to appriciate the visual arts in its
fullness and entirety.
          Style refers to the distinctive handling of elements and media associated with the
work of an individual artist, a school, a movement, or a specific cuture or time period
(Fitchner-Rathus, 2013). Throughout history, there have been developments in art
styles that depict different and varied methods of expression. Artworks also have a
certain form. This form is what the audience sees-a finished product put harmoniously
(or not) according to the different principles of design. In essense, form is the totality of
the artwork, which includes the textures, colors, and shapes utilized by the artist. The
content of an artwork includes the not only its form but also its subject matter and
underlying meanings or themes (Fitchner-Rathus, 2013). The perceiver of the artwork
must take into consideration the totality of elements, underlying themes and motifs, and
composition.
Improvisation
          Improvisation can be defined as doing something without prior preparation. There
is a decision to act upon something that may not necessarily be planned. Within the
present context, improvation has become an integral part of the arts. Some would say
that it is a reaction agains the stiffness in the arts during the twentieth century. There is
a call for liberation from monotory taht aims to rekindle the creative spirits of people in
the arts.
          For some artists, infusing spontaneity and improvation adds up to the totality of
the work of art. The unexpectedness of the changes brought about by improvasation
makes the artwork to have a distinctive quality that creates its individuality and identity.
Some artists subscribe to the idea of allowing chances in the process of producing the
work. For example, artists would want to capture the gloom brought about by an
approaching storm or the beauty of a meteor shower at night. Since they do not
necessarily have absolute control over natural phenomena, their reliance on chances
may not necessarily produce their expected outcome. Artists allowing their subjects do
improvision may have totally different result as well.
          When an artists makes his work, he has already an idea of the elements that will
be included in his work. As begins to craft his work, he may have deviated from his
original plan. So in essence, improvisation is evident in the process of making the
painting. During the 1960s, art improvisation has taken from in the galleries aroud New
York City. Performance art, dance, and visual arts were combined to create new forms
of artworks usuing a new medium. These performances were known as the
“happenings” which later on paved the way for meodern body art and performance art.
One of central figures in the improvisation movement was Geaorge Mathieu. He started
the “action painting” wherein the process is seen real-time. In scenario, the process is
more important than the finished product.
Appropriation
          If, for example, an artist created a painting and displayed it in a museum, who do
you think owns the artwork: the artist or his intended audience? During the twentieth
century, people started raising the question whether or not tha act of deriving meaning
gives the ownership of the viewer rather than the artist himself. This notion paved the
way for the emergence of appropriation artists who seem to promote the idea that the
authorship relies on the viewer. If this is the case, then approriation artists can take as
mush as he wants from an existing artwork.
          Appropriation of arthas been a common practice throughout history. In the past, if
an apprentice painter needs to hone his skills in his craft, he would be allowed to use
his master’s work to copy. It is as if the apprentice is trying to explore his personal
application of techniques to something he is more familiar with. However, there are
some people who go to the extreme by believing that copying the exact artwork of an
artist and attributing it to his own. This could pose a problem especially with authorship.
The problem arises when the approriation artist would get bits and pieces from other
works and incorporate these elements into their own, their voices and perspectives of
the other artists get lost with that of the appropriation artist. There seems to be a very
thin demarcation line between appropriation art and forgery. Tradionally, forgery can be
classified into two forms: outright copies of existing works and pastiches, which are
works that bring together elements from a work and infusing them to a new work. But in
contemporary times, forgery can be in the form of creating an approximate of what an
artist would do by prediction. This can be done by observing the techniques and style
the artist employed and even the focal points highlighted in his previous and existing
works.
          The intensions of appropriation artist are often questioned since issues of
plagiarism or forgery sometimes arise. Some would argue that the reason behind the
appropriation is that they want the audience to recognize the images they copied. There
is a hope on the part of the artist for the viewers to see the original work in a new
perspective. That appropraition would bring about a new context to the original work.
One of the most famous works of appropriation would have to be Andy Warhol’s
Campbell’s Soup Cans”(1962). Warhol copied the original labels of the soup can but
cans is something new for the audience. Just like any product, the brand is integral to
Campbell’s identity. As an artist, Warhol decided to isolate the image of the product.
This attempt could in turn stimulate product recognition. A common viewer would
associate the Campbell soup with the portraits of the soup cans. This association would
bring about a certain kind of craving for the sid product. In a way, it is a subtle form of
aadvertising that would entice the consumer to buy and patronize the product.
Appropriation refers to the act of borrowing or reusing existing elements within a new
work. Post-modern appropriation artists, including Barbara Kruger, are keen to deny the
notion of ‘originality’. They believe that in borrowing existing imagery or elements of
imagery, they are re-contextualising or appropriating the original imagery, allowing the
viewer to renegotiate the meaning of the original in a different, more relevant, or more
current context.
In separating images from the original context of their own media, we allow them to take
on new and varied meanings. The process and nature of appropriation has considered
by anthropologists as part of the study of cultural change and cross-cultural contact.
Images and elements of culture that have been appropriated commonly involve famous
and recognisable works of art, well known literature, and easily accessible images from
the media.
The first artist to successfully demonstrate forms of appropriation within his or her work
is widely considered to be Marcel Duchamp. He devised the concept of the
‘readymade’, which essentially involved an item being chosen by the artist, signed by
the artist and repositioned into a gallery context.
The concepts of originality and of authorship are central to the debate of appropriation
in contemporary art. We shall discuss these in depth in order to contextualise the works
we will investigate later in this essay. To properly examine the concept it is also
necessary to consider the work of the artists associated with appropriation with regards
to their motivations, reasoning, and the effect of their work.
The term ‘author’ refers to one who originates or gives existence to a piece of work.
Authorship then, determines a responsibility for what is created by that author. The
practice of appropriation is often thought to support the point of view that authorship in
art is an outmoded or misguided concept. Perhaps the most famous supporter of this
notion was Roland Barthes. His 1966 work ‘The Death of the Author’ argued that we
should not look to the creator of a literary or artistic work when attempting to interpret
the meaning inherent within. “The explanation of a work is always sought in the man or
woman who created it… (but) it is language which speaks; not the author.”  With
appropriated works, the viewer is less likely to consider the role of the author or artist in
constructing interpretations and opinions of the work if they are aware of the work from
which it was appropriated.
Modern art includes artistic work produced during the period extending roughly from
the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the styles and philosophy of the art produced
during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the traditions of the past
have been thrown aside in a spirit of experimentation. Modern artists experimented with
new ways of seeing and with fresh ideas about the nature of materials and functions of
art. A tendency away from the narrative, which was characteristic for the traditional arts,
toward abstraction is characteristic of much modern art. More recent artistic production
is often called contemporary art or postmodern art.
Modern art begins with the heritage of painters like Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cézanne,
Paul Gauguin, Georges Seurat and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec all of whom were
essential for the development of modern art. At the beginning of the 20th century Henri
Matisse and several other young artists including the pre-cubists Georges Braque,
André Derain, Raoul Dufy, Jean Metzinger and Maurice de Vlaminck revolutionized the
Paris art world with "wild", multi-colored, expressive landscapes and figure paintings
that the critics called Fauvism. Matisse's two versions of The Dance signified a key point
in his career and in the development of modern painting. It reflected Matisse's incipient
fascination with primitive art: the intense warm color of the figures against the cool blue-
green background and the rhythmical succession of the dancing nudes convey the
feelings of emotional liberation and hedonism.
Contemporary art is the art of today, produced in the second half of the 20th century or
in the 21st century. Contemporary artists work in a globally influenced, culturally
diverse, and technologically advancing world. Their art is a dynamic combination of
materials, methods, concepts, and subjects that continue the challenging of boundaries
that was already well underway in the 20th century. Diverse and eclectic, contemporary
art as a whole is distinguished by the very lack of a uniform, organizing principle,
ideology, or "-ism". Contemporary art is part of a cultural dialogue that concerns larger
contextual frameworks such as personal and cultural identity, family, community, and
nationality.
In vernacular English, modern and contemporary are synonyms, resulting in some
conflation of the terms modern art and contemporary art by non-specialists