Les retours compulsifs des artistes contemporains aux images ready-made Article - Juillet 2021

There are many artists today who appropriate – in a repetitive, or even obsessional manner – preexisting visual documents. This growing recourse to ‟already there” representations has often been linked to the current plethora of images, fostering a desire to avoid producing new objects. But this attraction for ready-made images reflects above all an awareness of the agency of images, contributing to the construction of a collective imagination. It also conveys a singular rapport with time : utopias are no longer relevant today ; the present, arousing incomprehension, creates concern ; it seems therefore that traces of the past should be infinitely re-examined, so as to understand ‟where we are”.