ABSTRACT
Art historical scholarship has feasted on the identification of sources, on the establishment of the historical filiation of motifs in the visual arts, on typological continuities of forms and functions, and on demonstration of access to works of art as possible, influential models. The appropriation of existing works of art and architecture for subsequent reuse takes many forms. Works of visual art, monumental or in miniature, seem to belong to a special category of culturally produced objects, especially when they exist in a material state. George Kubler in The Shape of Time marked the importance of the re-entrance of an established, or foreign artistic repertoire into a new artistic context; motivated by a sense of potential utility to extend the possibilities of representation and empowered by the absence of resistance. The current global marketplace for proven eye and mind-catching images has opened an encyclopedic repertoire of artworks and prepared them for limitless exploitation, whether for artistic or commercial reasons.
