Andy Warhol was an innovator in the world of Pop Art, blurring the line between commercial art and fine art, between artist-as-creator and artist-as-appropriator. Claes Oldenburg is an innovator in the world of Pop Art, blurring the line between everyday objects as objects and everyday objects as art. In both cases, the implication of artistic ownership is one of freedom: freedom to represent, freedom to appropriate, freedom to modify, freedom to mass produce.

In the spirit of artistic freedom and appropriation, and in homage to a recent image posted by cogdog on his trip through the midwest, I present an appropriation of an image by Laszlo Ilyes (laszlo-photo) (cc by 2.0 found on Flickr at http://flic.kr/p/EEbET). I choose this particular image because the letters in FREE were almost plain white, to see if that would have any particular effect with the Warholizing process. And because it was Creative Commons licensed for use and modification.

Here is Laszlo’s original photo of Oldenburg’s creation:

Laszlo Ilyes’ photo of Claes Oldenburg’s art

And here is my appropriation, Warholization (using the services of LunaPic http://www.lunapic.com, and alteration (flipping the center image using Gimp).

Art is Free