It was the German Marxist playwright Bertolt Brecht who once said the first law of creativity is theft. He was a visionary of sorts predicting the invention of hip-hop as the Nazi’s circled ominously around his life.

Theft divides opinion, its callous to those who own and liberating to those who don’t, but in art and creativity the ‘art of theft’ or the theft of art, takes on a very different character and a richer palate of meanings. 

In 2004 the Manchester artist Chris Ofili came clean “I like hip-hop’s cut and paste attitude,” he said, acknowledging that is best work was torn, reassembled juxtaposed and yes, stolen.  In ‘An Afromodern hip-hop thang’ a previous blog on Central Station I argued that a deep strain of appropriation and creative borrowing lay at the heart of the contemporary afro-modern movement.

Bootsy Collins would have called it, ‘shake and take’ bootzilla baby. But he couldn’t be bothered.

As I dig deeper beneath the layers of afro-modernism I see a recurring pattern of concentric creations, impossible to really work out where the beginning begins and the end, ends.

Chris Ofili’s ‘The Adoration of Captain Shit and the Legend of the Black Stars’ (1999) reworks images of blaxploitation and takes its title from the astronautic name of a ‘B’ list Philadelphia funk singer, Captain Sky, who in turn was a cheap Xerox of the master of afromodernism, the eccentric funk legend Gorge Clinton, Bootzilla’s buddy.

Clinton only stole periodically, but he was stolen from throughout the nineties. His look was comically mad, acid-specs, pink hair and comic-strip paranoia. He wove great tapestries of funk which tore up the galaxy and rarely returned to earth: his mind a maggot brain of ideas, and inspirational images.

It was Atomic Dog that really caused the trouble, so propulsive, catchy and canine. Atomic Dog -Bow Wow Wow Yippee Oh Yippee Ay. The afromodern gangstas of hip-hop loved it, they recycled it nightly, and in the case of Cordozar Calvin Broadus aka Snoop Doggy Dog fashioned an entire career out of the lyrical memories of old ‘70s music and the assertive chic of his own self-proclaimed doggystyle.

So music was ripped and torn and yet the theft was curious in its intensity each stolen beat or borrowed image was in some ethereal sense a quote, a reference back to true greatness and in the case of Ofili and Snoop recognition of the unbridled greatness that had preceded them.

For afromodernism the first law of creativity is neither theft nor gentle appropriation it is a tender form of heist where the victim is adored and deeply loved.

It’s like Bootzilla baby a weird and complex thang.

Find out more about Stuart Cosgrove here. See more about Chris Ofili on Artsy.

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Mix-Blog: A bit like a mix-tape but with blogs instead. Read more from the series here.