New Art Is Gradually Becoming Less Appropriate(d)

Artists who appropriate images (those not in the public domain) have been facing ever-increasing legal headaches. (Exhibit A: Shepard Fairey.) Appropriators often cite the work of Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons as justification. It turns out that those artists may have begun as copyright outlaws, but they ultimately decided that securing rights was more than worth the trouble.