For contemporary works of art that assume the museum or the gallery as a natural context, recontextualization is not something that happens to the work as a result of the collecting process, but a technique that artists often choose to employ as a key element of the artistic process [...] In interaction with context, particularly when artists play with materials, forms and methods that are closely related to corresponding examples from nonart realms [like the use of readymades, ed.] recontextualization is ultimately more an act of authorship than of physical transportation [...]The recontextualization can be as subtle as Sherrie Levine's photographs after other works of art, which contain within a seemingly isolated and portable object traces of multiple contexts of both display and reproduction, or far more explicit in the many and varied ways artists have physically recontextualized nonart and art objects alike. The process of considering works of art that respond to and incorporate other works, which may themselves be created through acts of recontextualization such as copying or appropriation, implies a layering of authorship, or a chain of quotation and reference, that can create a disconcerting sense of vertigo.
Buskirk, 2003, p.10, p.15, p.182-183
