The notion of "author" was questioned in the 20th century by literary theorists such as Roland Barthes, who criticized the notion of authorship. In his 1966 essay "The Death of the Author," Barthes argues that we should not look to the creator of an artistic or literary work to interpret its meaning, but rather interpret a work on its own merits and according to his own terms. In the essay “What is an author?” » from 1969, the French philosopher Michel Foucault addresses the relationship between author, text and reader, opposing the practice of integrating the biographical context of an author into the interpretation of a text. Like Barthes, he proposes that although the relationship between the work and the author, or lack thereof, is necessary for the understanding of a text, it becomes a distraction that disrupts the reader's interpretation. Therefore, a work must be studied and analyzed through its form and content rather than its context. The practice of appropriation by artists in the 1960s saw the birth of an artistic movement which seemed to give substance to the theories of Barthes and Foucalt, where artists began to directly question the terms of authorship. In the wake of modernism, the potential for image creation became endless and artists began to critically interrogate concepts of art by pushing boundaries and raising questions of originality. Since the 1960s, artists have appropriated and incorporated a range of materials to create works. where originality always exists in a whole new sense. By questioning the very concept of art, these artists asserted their authority over the importance of the artist as author. Artists like Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque had previously appropriated...... middle of paper...... in their own right. Therefore, the authenticity of the primary source ceases to be imperative in postmodernist art, the new message built on perceptions of the past becomes imperative. Undermining the artist's authorial status, Michael Faucalt asks "what difference does it make who speaks?" . Appropriation artists have challenged this notion of authorship with a range of techniques that assert the importance of the artist as creator and author, dismantling traditional modernist notions and demands for total originality. Instead, artists have championed the idea that a work of art is ultimately an expression of the artist's individuality and that it is up to the artist to decide whether to include or not original sources. Originality should not be a constraint, it is society that exerts the pressure and demands originality, not the artist's obligation..