Link to What's New This Week Eddie Breen Revisits Paintings

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Created: January 22, 2003
Latest Update: January 22, 2003
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Site Teaching Modules Eddie Breen Revisits Paintings

Site Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individual Authors, January 2003..
"Fair use" encouraged.

This essay is based on Eddie Breen's Piggyback Art. Breen finds old paintings in thrift stores and such, and adds his own idees, altering the whole piece to express new ideas. This fits well into our discussions of art as a means of expression, even if you're not an artist. You don't have to be an artist. Just take advantage of the art media to express feelings and ideas that somehow escape articulation, and/or don't capture what you're trying to express. Unless I'm mistaken, the flaming bass shown above is that fish that moves and sings. Marleen Boykin brought us one. Guess I should paint it, hmmm?

Breen is limited to the found art he uses as a foundation for his work. But we are not. You're free to use any of the drawings or paintings on site in any simple art program, like PAINT, to capture your feelings and ideas and share them with us on site. And if you happen to create something you like, just print it in color and voila: a new work of art.

Larger versions of the thumbnails are available on Breen's site, where he also provides explanations of what he is trying to communicate with his alterations to this found art.

original found art . . . Breen's alteration
Original found art . . . . . . . . Breen's alteration.

"Whenever I see a statue with blank eyeballs, I wonder why they didn't just add the rest of the eye. It always bugs me. Text says, 'Render unto Albino Caesar that which is Albino Caesar's!' I surrounded Caesar with things he should be rendered, starting off with blind white cave fish, then parsnips, then monkey skulls. After going through other white things, I thought of the white house, and how Caeser kind of looks like George Dubya. I put on a sweet smelling eye daisy on the other side, a snow Jesus and a little devil asking, "What's in YOUR Wallet?'
posted by Eddie Breen 11/22/2002 01:01:39 PM "

original found art. . . Breen's alteration . . . jeanne's alteration to Breen's alteration
Original found art . . . . . . . . Breen's alteration . . . . . . Jeanne's alteration to Breen's alteration.

Breen's alteration of this child's portrait brought immediately to mind Patrick Graham's work. Reminds of the painting of the shamrock in Ireland's national museum. The symoblism of the child lying rigid as in a coffin, the faces and expressions of others included, the starkness of the imagery, and the intensity of the color stood out for me. And the darkness of the symbolism, at least for me. So I promptly altered the red Satanic smile, to render the child more in keeping with my own feelings.

Breen explained the portrait in his own words:

"This is the end result of my painting at St. Lawrence University's Breenapalooza. My goal was to make something humorous without scaring off the gallery goers, some of whom seemed to look at a single piece, then flee, trying to grind the vision out of their eyes with their palms. Yikes! As you can see, I failed utterly! Well, I'm kind of used to that by now. At least I didn't have to use the pepper spray I velcroed under the table on any angry art nazis!

"Before I started on this piece I had a couple of different ideas ready to go, but I dumped them all at the last minute, as usual, and launched into 'Casper the hairy ghost had a winning smile' - to make it more interesting, I piled on 'but his tempetuous disposition discouraged relationships.' This guy was always destined to be Casper, but what version? I gave him a long toothy flame dog smile, which looked good on flamedog, but makes Casper rather terrifying! I should have endowed Casper with cartoon eyes, instead of the mass murderer glare he ended up with! Oh well!

"I gave him a hurricane for a hat, a weeping girlfriend and I painted my cold virus all over the piece, which I'm sure, in reality, also infected the canvas every time I coughed. I painted arrows up and down, to indicate Casper's emotional state, threw in a few gratuitous holy ghosts and ants, and popped in some St. Lawrence references. One is St. Lawrence himself, in a martyr barbecue, asking to be turned over since he's done on that side. This is how St. Lawrence became the personal protector of wise-asses everywhere. There is also a blue-cold girl in a rapunzel like 'cold room' which, according to my hosts, are where coeds must sleep - unheated barrack dorms - the deprivation somehow keeping them from becoming slutty. This one still sounds like bullshit, but, I put it in there anyway, the story being the important thing after all..

Thanks to Cathy and Carole and Todd! it was fun!
posted by Eddie Breen 11/18/2002 01:55:40 PM"

My favorite of Breen's work, as introduced on his site, is that of the Sea Captain. It's apparently also the favorite of his wife, since she gave it a place to hand, and it's not for sale.

Breen's alteration Sink or Swim

Discussion Questions

Notice that Breen paints right over the frame. What is the sociological impact of that? Consider barriers and frames as defining where one space ends and another begins. Could that be used to signify a postmodern sense of overlapping truths and realities? How might that relate to Breen's imposing his more recent work over work that was painted some time before? Consider that the ability to re-engage, revisit, revise the past is something we find ourselves preoccupied with.

Does Breen seem to respect the mood and feelings of the original painter? Or does he seem to colonize the works? And what would "colonize" mean in this sense? Consider that we have the ability to let the work speak to us from many different perspectives, and the option of respecting the work as an other, or of incorporating the work into our own. Which do you think Breen does with the portrait of the child?

Bear in mind that Breen's is art work that he sells. You cannot legitimately sell his art that you have copied (reproduced) from the Internet and altered. But you could alter for your own enjoyment and print it for your own private use. Rauschenberg used to use published to photos to alter in this manner in his works. And he was sued for that use of others' works. If you buy found art work, as Breen does, then you can sell that artwork once you have altered it, because you owned it.

Sometimes artists sell works but retain the right to reproduction. That means that even though you could sell the altered work that you bought, you couldn't reproduce copies of it, for you didn't get the right to reproduction when you bought the work. That's why you can't sell copies of alterations you make to Mickey Mouse. Disney owns the reproduction rights.