Analyzing the Discourse of " Appropriation " of History in the Critical Art of African-American Artists

 Postmodern art became art to deconstruct the hidden ideologies of the discourse of power for socio-political purposes, such as the struggle against the masterpieces of art, against heroism, against gender discrimination and racism. In this period, a broad effort was done to address social issues and problems concerning inequalities related to class, race, gender, and ethnicity and... to people involved with these issues. This critical content chose different ways of expressing itself; from a realistic presentation to a copy, an eclectic work, ironic references and “Appropriation" works of art that at first glance is accompanied by humor and parody. Appropriation means using or adapting pre-existing works of art and borrowing them to create a new work. At this time Appropriation for a specific purpose was an action that could not be avoided in the postmodern-centered state of contemporary art. The 1960s saw the emergence of a process that allowed artists to adapt and self-create other artists' works without modification or by slightly modifying or inserting parts of other people's artwork into their own, with the goal of substituting their own voice for another voice, thus opening a new meaning instead of the previous one. Since then, art of Appropriation has peaked in the 1980s, and today the widespread use of image capture in the creation of works of art has become commonplace. The contemporary era seems to have introduced artists to the world who were eager to reinterpret and re-represent these paintings in order to expose lesser-represented cultures and elevate excluded minorities to the center of discourse. Since the late nineteenth century, African American artists, with a return to the historical past and the use of black heroes and their epic and revolutionary ideas, and under the influence of political and social events, with their works of art to fight against racial colonialism. And painted a bright future for the black nation. But today's art is different from what we know as black art in the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. This study, in order to answer the question of the role of images in deconstructing aesthetics and deconstructing the power structure, focuses on postmodern art and critically analyzes the works of African American artists on the subject of "Appropriation" of famous works of art history. Consequently, among the goals of artists in this way of representation is to focus on excluded minorities, to emphasize the fine arts as something beyond nationality and race, to create a counter-narrative, to deconstruct the power structure, to empower blacks in culture. This research is based on descriptive-analytical method, and data collection is desk-based.