Abstract

The aim of the article is to establish whether and to what extent it is possible to protect the so-called works of appropriation art, which is the art form in which the artist uses all pre-existing objects, images or works of art within his own work, transforming and modifying them in a more or less meaningful way or reproducing them tout court. After the examination of the main US cases on the subject, it is carried out an analysis related to the (few) cases involving Italian judges. A distinction is therefore made between appropriative works that transform the original work both from a material and conceptual point of view and works that do not modify the original work.