Everybody steals from everybody, including artists.  That is the main point of “The ecstasy of influence: A plagiarism” by Jonathan Lethem.  This happens in music, in fine arts, in literature--in all forms of art.  Sometimes the artist steals without meaning to.  Sometime the artist makes something totally different out of what he has stolen.  Some forms of art, like blues and jazz, are based on stealing.  But the product is always somehow different.

                Sometimes, the context changes (like Koons said).  That is true with collages, and that is why collage has been called “the art form of the 20^th Century,” as the author notes. Surrealists are expert at using something in a different way.  But even just framing something in a particular way can change it.  An artist should be able to use the world.  We are taught not to plagiarize, pirate music, or violate copyrights, but the community loses a potential source for art, when this is enforced too strictly. 

And you can’t take art back.  An audience can’t control its imagination, and why would an artist want to?  Most artists are influenced raher than totally unique.  Why should they be hypocrites about that?  Art is a gift, it’s something that happens to you.  It’s not just a commodity (although it can exist within a market system where you do get paid for art).  Art is like the public commons, something that belongs to everyone and no one.  We should feel free to use it for the public good.

Don’t worry about originality.  You are putting it all together in your own way, even if you did not make it all.  You couldn’t separate out what is not yours anyway, because art becomes part of the culture.  Really, everything we think and say we picked up somewhere else.  Art is no different.

Of course, I may have just plagiarized the author’s article.  But he certainly can’t complain.