Throughout Contrapposto, Cricket’s artistic journey is defined by the tension between traditional, skill-based art and the rise of 20th-century conceptualism, a movement that prioritizes the idea behind a work over its aesthetic form. This conflict is dramatized in the university critique where Sharon, a technically brilliant painter, is dismissed for creating “dime-store illustration” (162), while Kyle is lauded for a purely conceptual piece: A Polaroid of another artist’s work. Kyle’s project directly references the real-world practice of appropriation art, famously employed by Richard Prince. In the 1980s, Prince began re-photographing Marlboro cigarette advertisements, cropping out the text to isolate the iconic image of the cowboy. By presenting these familiar images as his own art, Prince challenged ideas of authorship and originality, much like Kyle does in the novel. 

In contrast, the novel champions artists who possess virtuosic technical skill, like the Romanian teacher Oana and Marcus Carpenter. Cricket’s artistic journey begins with him learning to hone his technique as the Old Masters did. During the early parts of his life, Cricket holds the Old Masters as a template for his life. After reading that the Masters were often discovered in adolescence, Cricket naively convinces himself that he must achieve artistic success before he reaches the age of 16.