This essay discusses the appropriation of artworks. The photo which was originally taken by Susan reveals the important moment in the history of Nicaragua but was later adopted by artist Garnett to express another artistic feeling without citing the sources. Therefore Susan sued Garnett for his “stealing” of her work and claimed that although everyone can have their own comprehension of artworks, people need to have the awareness of ownership.
Personally, I strongly consider ownership as a critical issue. Indeed, an artwork can have different dimensions of meanings and can be expressed through multiple ways, lots of artists may argue that if the ownership of artwork is over-regarded, it might limit the recreation of this artwork and therefore limit the creativity of various artists. However, in my opinion, the recreation of previously-existed artworks actually limits the creations in total. As Oswald once said: “Although people, in general, are making more noise than ever before, fewer people are making more of the total noise.” This sentence is referring to the “plagiarism” in music, especially recordings where musicians take the original music and make a few adjustments and label it as a new track. Oswald explains that we need to increase the amount of music in total, not creating new music by changing the old ones. Art is the same, I think that by protecting the ownership of original works, we can also inspire new artworks.