Skip to Main Content

Remixing Architecture: Copyright & Fair Use: Pastiche

This guide will help clarify inspiration & plagiarism in the visual arts including architecture, art, & design.

Pastiche

Pastiche

The Grove Dictionary of Art defines Pastiche as an "image that self-consciously borrows its style, technique, or motifs from other works of art yet is not a direct copy.  The result can be sometimes incoherent and at times is deliberately exaggerated and satirical, as in caricature" (Grove Dictionary of Art)​.  Some critics argue that pastiche creates debate regarding social and cultural context.  Others argue pastiche lacks innovation and is just a recycling of old ideas.​  The key to pastiche is one must add something to the original; simply changing the materials used to create the object is not enough.

Examples of Pastiche:

Left: Parthenon by ASaber91CC BY 4.0 - Built 125 AD, Rome, Italy

Right: Villa Almerico Capra (La Rotonda), Vicenza, Italia by Quinok CC BY 4.0 - Palladio 1556-1590


Left: Sandro Botticelli, Birth of Venus, 1485-1486. Tempera on Canvas, 172.5 x 278.5 cm, Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy, 

Right: Leopold Forstner, Spring, 1907. Mosaic, Grand Hotel Wiesler, Graz, Austria. (Jugendstilmosaik Hotel Wiesler, Graz 1 Glasmosaik „Der Frühling“ von Leopold Forstner by Thomas Ledi CC BY 4.0)