I.

During her college years, Chang Jui-Pin majored in Ink Painting. After she got married, moved abroad, and had children, Chang stopped painting for a while to enjoy her life as a wife and focus on being a mother. However, the only consistency in life is change. And, due to many turns of events, Chang once again began to paint. But, this time, she chose to work with oils.

One day in 2006, Chang had a dream. “In it, I saw a bunch of small people with their heads covered with buckets descending from the heavens. With clubs in their hands, they danced around me. I was scared. Panicking, I took a bucket and placed it over my head. Suddenly, a miracle happened. The bucket hid the emotions on my face from the outside world, nor could I see the dangers that lay beyond the bucket. I was no longer scared. I picked up a club. Feeling brave, I joined the dancing bucket men in their travels around the world.” This dream led to Chang’s creation of her first painting featuring the bucket men, The Bucket Men and Apple. According to her, the apple within the work represents “love,” and all subsequent paintings thereafter depict the bucket men’s quest for love. The artist’s wish that both the apple and love be conveyed by her works led to the gradual creation of The Bucket Men series.

The image of the “bucket men” is that of small people wearing striped blue shirts, green pants, black shoes and socks, and white gloves, and holding wooden clubs with one hand. Obviously, the club is a weapon, explaining their antagonistic appearance. Yet, such aggression is the foundation of unwavering authority. In Chang’s works, the “bucket men” always hold their clubs high in the air, and pillage or engage in aggressive actions. This is especially true when they are featured as a group. They seem like a mob that only brings insane and mindless violence with it. However, if a club was held by an aristocrat or dictator, it would resemble undisputed authority, placing a new value on an invisible controlling force that lurks throughout society. The name, “bucket men,” comes from the fact that their heads are covered with a black bucket, which acts as armor to defend against attacks. However, rather than saying the bucket serves as protection, it is more a means for self-deceit. How does one see reality when their eyes are closed? Is it that by not seeing, one believes the reality no longer exist? The presence of the buckets expresses a resistance to communicate with the outside world, and makes one oblivious to responsibility. In other words, the bucket symbolizes a yearning and assurance for a blind form of freedom. With buckets on their heads, the bucket men are not brave. Instead, they lack self-esteem and courage. It is only with the bucket, which provides self-consolation and an illusion of protection, that they are able to be brave in their counter-attacks.

II.

Chang’s Bucket Men series started off as oil paintings, and later developed into “newspapers painting” and “sticker art.” All three art forms have roots in Appropriation Art.

In economic terms, “appropriation” is a process by which previously public property becomes the property of a person or organization. In terms of art, it can be understood as the borrowing and use of public information in the creation of a new artwork. Since artists have their own perspectives, the underlying messages behind their worlds also vary, thus leading to differences in their selection of public information. The scope of public information is vast. Any famous historic photograph or iconic ready-made image is a symbol that can be used. What such symbols all have in common are their ubiquity and levels of recognition. Furthermore, they do not stem from personal emotions, and must resonate with the pulse of society. Their creation does not stem from the imagination of an artist. In the context of art, “appropriation” does not mean “appropriation,” as in stealing or taking one’s property. This is because “public property” has to be misappropriated, in this case public information. For “appropriation” to serve a meaningful purpose, the public information must be considered publicly significant or “common.”

If one traces the epochal significance of such creative techniques, one would arrive at post-modernism, which appeared in the mid-twentieth century. It stands in contrast to modernism’s emphasis on simplicity, which destroys all divine authority and originality of an image. This is a kind of fragmentation akin to the extraction of meaning behind an image. At the same time, it is also related to the rise of the cyber-society in the twenty-first century. This is a century in which it is normal for people to be bombarded with information (audiovisual data from television and the Internet). Most of the time, this large volume of information is just constituted by fragments of an overall context, which eliminates the need for them to be relevant with one another. This kind of visual experience is latent, yet has far-reaching effects. It dictates and distorts people’s viewing habits, which has been developed into a creative technique used by artists of this current era. Therefore, Appropriation Art is a departure from the long traditions in art history, and acts as objective depictions of mimic representation. It is also a rejection of subjective emotions or mirror expressions. An artist using these two techniques for his or her creative methods is both a creator and consumer. Available public information is consumed, then elicited, extracted, recombined, and transposed by the artist to give the images new meanings.

Artworks are expressions of an artist, and meaning is decided by the context just like the use of language. Furthermore, the context is determined by the environment and setting. Words are the tools of language used on a daily basis, and their meanings are defined by how they are used. Therefore, words must have their meaning to exist within language. In other words, the meaning behind words is defined by their usage. A word can hold different meanings depending on how it is used. Words and their interdependence form a context based on their association with one another, while the context leads to an overall situation that dictates the meaning behind each word. By taking fragments of public information, Appropriation Art extracts information from their normal language situation. By doing so, a sense of strangeness is endowed upon the information. On the other hand, it also serves as a trace of existing language situations and an indication of facticity. Artists take these fragments with dual characters and transform, collage, and rearrange them, sometimes even adding their own symbols. Based on an existing language situation, a new situation is created that conveys a new meaning.

If the world in which daily life takes place is called the “life world,” then artworks, museums, galleries, artists, art critics, collectors, etc. collectively comprise the realm known as the “art world.” While daily language and its language situation belong to the life world, the language of art manifests itself in the art world. The art world differs from the life world in that the language of art differs from the daily language used in normal situations. The notion of “appropriation” transcends both realms, spanning from the life world to the art world and vice-versa. In the meantime, within today’s life and art worlds, a new art world of the future will dawn upon us that transcends both worlds once again. Duchamp’s creative technique of using ready mades is basically the process of taking objects of the life world and bringing them to the art world. The work of public heritage by Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa (1502), was appropriated by Duchamp. He used a language situation that belongs to the Renaissance of Western art to endow it with a sense of strangeness and reality. When LHOOQ, featuring a bearded Mona Lisa, was debuted, Duchamp effectively created a new language situation that belonged to the art world and endowed the painting with new meaning.

Every fragment that is extracted from its original context is a symbol as well as a “signifier”: a “signified” signification. This “signifier” obeys the principles of differences and are a symbolic representation. On the other hand, “signified” refers to the content or subject of the symbol (refer to Saussure’s work on philology and Roland Barthes’s work on mythology). If ready made objects of the life world belong to the first sequence of symbols, then appropriation art, which transcends the life world with its use of fragmented information, are a signification of the second sequence. Symbols of the life world and first sequence become signifiers of the art world and the second sequence. Barthes’ theories on mythologies can be used to express Appropriation Art, which is shown by the following table:

【Source has been altered by the author: Mythologies, Roland Barthes, translated by Xu Qiang-Qiang and Xu Qi-Ling, Taipei City: LAUREATE Book Co., Ltd., 1997, page 175.】

The use of “appropriation” in art creation has established a form of “mythology” that belongs to the realm of art. “Appropriation” as a means to create art is a practice used by artists from both the West and East. E.g. Cindy Sherman’s History Portraits series that is comprised of famous portraits of historical figures but with the portrait faces replaced with that of the artist; Wang Qing-Song’s Night Revels of Lao Li is a parody of a famous Chinese Tang Dynasty painting, Han Xizai Evening Banquet. Instead of featuring historical people, it featured Li Xian-Ting, a professional curator of current times. Both images evoke the downcast emotion felt by scholars for their willing spirits but inabilities to execute. Based on the superimposed layers of symbol → signifier → signified → signification, Appropriation Art creates its system of mythology. When used by artists, this system transforms spatial and temporal backgrounds and alters contexts. The use of “appropriation” in art surprises the senses and impacts our thoughts. With all appropriated symbols as signifiers, they reside in one image, equally emitting their referential meaning. They co-exist and complement each other, while they also contradict and antagonize each other. They all have to be re-contextualized, re-examined, and re-evaluated.

III.
Chang’s Appropriation Art presents three different creative forms together: (a) planar oil paintings, (b) newspapers painting, and (c) sticker art.

(1) The Countless Incarnations of Bucket Men - Planar Oil Paintings

In 2003, Chang moved to London, England. She felt a strong attraction to that ancient country. Her work, The Queen of the Bucket Men, based on Queen Elizabeth from the sixteenth century, was selected for an exhibition in the United Kingdom National Open Art Competition in 2008. In it, the queen is wearing richly ornamented clothing while sitting with her hands placed leisurely in her lap and her head covered by a bucket. It is this queen who betrothed her life to her own country. It is this queen that laid the foundation for national strength for an originally poor and militarily weak Britain. Only through her contributions was the country able to reach the height of maritime supremacy during the reign of Queen Victoria centuries later. In the four corners of the painting, the artist draws bucket men, who jointly attack the queen with clubs. Could this be an attempt to take advantage of the queen when she is blind and vulnerable? Or does this represent a fight for justice by the colonized East against traditional Western hegemony? Also selected for the 2008 National Open Art Competition, her work, March of the bucket men, which received the Preferred Work award, features endless stretches of bucket men armed with sticks and wearing buckets over their heads. Without a sense of self-consciousness, they follow and move forward without fear, yet blinded. This was Chang’s reaction to the United States’ attack of Iraq. Because of just one person’s decision, so many precious lives were continuously being sent into a ruined battlefield. Was this kind of fighting really worth it in the end? Similar reflections appeared in her 2010 painting, Tank and red flower. This painting appropriates a breathtaking historical lens from the day after the 1989. Tiananmen Massacre in China. A man had appeared from nowhere to stand before an approaching tank. Who was he? Where did he find the courage? In Chang’s painting, the bucket-wearing scarecrow ignores the immediate danger in front of it, and is already prepared to disregard its own life.

In the paintings of bucket men, a part of the “appropriation” comes from classical works in Western art history. Examples of this can be particularly found in some of her 2010 works: Google the bucket men, The Story of Eden Garden, The BucketMan’s Family, The rise of the Empire, The Bucket Man’s Battle, and Birth of the Bucket Man. These works appropriate the compositional elements of images from masterpieces in Western art history. Then, they integrate these elements with the inherent forms of the bucket men and add ordinary characteristics of modern life. The composition of fragments of Western art history and daily life elements have already existed as a symbol of the first language sequence in the viewer’s memory. When they are selected by the artist to become a vocal avenue of expression, the works, as a form of expression, become a second sequence of language. And, these symbols of the first language sequence, which had originated from art history and daily life, become signifiers for the second sequence of language in the work and refer to the intended meaning to be conveyed by the artist. That is the reflection brought to the viewer by metaphors or allegories of the signification produced by the work.

(2) Famous Bucket Men – Newspapers Painting

Chang’s newspaper painting is not her way of explaining the schematics of the textual content of the newspaper. Instead, she draws bucket men onto the existing photos of the newspaper, so that they are inserted into the narrative context of the news. Chang’s practice of drawing bucket men on to actual newspapers was actually the result of her first defeat. She stated that: “In 2009, I participated in the Summer Exhibition organized by Britain’s Royal College of Art. I had held very high expectations in that competition. After being unable to achieve success, I felt extremely disappointed. And, for three months, I was depressed. During that period, I lacked the spirit to create art and spent a lot of time reading newspapers instead. The Times had always been my favorite newspaper. I particularly liked the way its name was printed across the front page. One day, I drew a bucket man on the front page and made him hot news. This helped soothe my sense of failure.” Now, when there is a newspaper that catches her attention due to a particular photo or article, she would immediately incorporate into her newspaper works. Bucket men bravely capture the newspaper headlines. As the artist declared, “I would be happy if bucket men became famous even for a day.”

This is a subject-object role reversal. Originally waiting to be reported about, the artist instead became a “god” who pro-actively handled everything. She utilized the narrative context of “that-has-been” for the news to abruptly add bucket men into it, resulting in a fracturing of the original narrative. She can arbitrarily arrange the plot so that it echoes the original images and texts. They can be witty, sinister, passionate, or nonsensical and lacking any relation. To Chang, the newspaper painting is similar to Duchamp’s use of “ready mades” in Dadaism. The difference is that Duchamp’s “ready mades” are completely removed from the original practical context of daily life, and utilize an entirely new attitude to enter the aesthetic context of the art world. Chang’s use of newspapers does not completely reject the established context of the newspaper content. Instead, it stands upon the base of the established context to construct her building of “appropriated art.” The intrusion of bucket men into the news creates a tampering. The tampering provides an opportunity for a dialectical dialogue between the photos. This is similar to the work, Ceci n’est pas une pipe, by surrealist artist, René Magritte (1898~1967). In the image of the painting, there is a pipe. But, at its bottom, there is a label with the words: “This is not a pipe.” It is obviously in the form of a pipe. Why does the label say it is not a pipe? However, the pipe in the image does not actually have the practical aspects of a pipe. Saying it isn’t a pipe is also acceptable. In this way, there exists a space for a dialectical relationship between the text and image. Chang’s “insertion” of painted images into newspapers indeed creates this space, which allows the viewer to invoke much imagination.

(3) Bucket Men Everywhere - Sticker Art

Regarding Chang’s third category of “Appropriated Art” - sticker art, she first draws very small versions of bucket men on to stickers. Then, during nighttime or moments when people aren’t paying attention, she begins the process of sticking the bucket men. The first bucket man sticker was stuck in the Royal College of Art next to a masterpiece showcased at the art museum. Then, she continued to stick them next to graffiti works found on the streets or bulletin posters to show her support or disagreement. The bucket men sticker acts as an avatar of Chang, and combines the oil paintings and newspaper painting previously discussed. It is not content to only remain on oil paintings or newspapers. It wants to go outside and mingle with crowds of people. It wants to receive the work of a master. It rejects silence and wants to use its own words to speak its mind. This method of “appropriation” is very convenient, comprehensive, and scary. This method of “appropriation” is based on “misunderstanding” to be fully received. The symbol systems of the first and second sequences completely overlap because of the existence of the bucket men stickers. It has already completely made the first sequence symbol system its own, directly making the signifier of the second sequence symbol system as the signifier of the first sequence symbol system. The signified of the second sequence symbol system is also the signified of the first sequence symbol system directly. As long as it catches Chang’s attention and finds itself stuck with a bucket man sticker, it becomes Chang’s. Moreover, its penetrating power is extremely strong, ubiquitous, and, perhaps, even right next to you and me.

For example, at the ancient English city of Bath, Chang stuck her bucket sticker next to a poster which read, “Military expenditures cost a trillion dollars worldwide. That is 1,000 billion US dollars. This is about a hundred times the cost needed for every child around the world to complete elementary school.” With that, the claim by the content of the anti-war poster became Chang’s anti-war claim. Additionally, Chang bought an album of graffiti art by Banksy. Each time she would find a grafitti work by Banksy in a city, she would stick a bucket man sticker next to it. In this way, the graffiti work by Banksy would also become Chang’s graffiti work. Banksy is an internationally renowned graffiti master. Tourists who spot one of Banksy’s works in a corner of a city consider it an amazing and special event during their trip. The bucket man next to this master’s works forces viewers to not only view Banksy, but also Chang. This achieves Chang’s objective of “using famous social figures to gain fame for herself.

Chang’s works are the most outstanding presentations of “Appropriation Art.” Planar oil paintings allow countless incarnations of bucket man. Painted images into actual newspapers allow bucket man to become known everywhere. And, sticker art allows bucket man to be ubiquitous. The great diversionary method of art appears easily with Chang. The language of art she creates is both naive and fantastical, yet sticks close to the pulse of daily reality.