Appropriation: borrowing and blending rather than outright stealing

After Van Eyck's Christ / mixed media by Robert Trudeau
Originally uploaded by trudeau

Artistic appropriation: to adopt, borrow, recycle or sample aspects (or the entire form) of man-made visual culture.

Strategies include "re-vision, re-evaluation, variation, version, interpretation, imitation, proximation, supplement, increment, improvisation, prequel... pastiche, paraphrase, parody, homage, mimicry, shan-zhai, echo, allusion, intertextuality and karaoke." [2]

Inherent in our understanding of appropriation is the concept that the new work recontextualises whatever it borrows to create the new work.

See hip-hop music, opera, Shakespeare, etc.