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"Pastiche" used to be the incantation to make reuse palatable. (Alongside appropriation and buggery.) Condo, for instance, made his unoriginality acceptable under the guise of ostensible mockery (implying critique, implying meaning). This was a cake-and-eat-it-too situation if there ever was one. Because eventually everyone stops saying the word pastiche and just says Condo- and this is the moment that the art self-justifies, magically, and Condo becomes sui-generis almost tautologically, as if it didn't need Picasso. It no longer looks like a stupid Picasso, it looks like a Condo. It looks like "expensive painting." And so in this way the world has rid itself of the magic incantation pastiche because its the aerosol we now breathe.
