Of Interest??

[Bill Pierce]

Some of you may find this NYT article interesting; actually, very interesting. You can guess which side of the argument I'm on, but this article also brings out some interesting reasons for "appropriation."


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/ar...egion&emc=urb3

[Shac]

Thanks Bill - will be interesting to see the final outcome. Meanwhile on related issues - have you seen this?
http://www.ted.com/talks/larry_lessi...reativity.html

[Pablito]

Very interesting indeed.

I have not sifted through the 150+ comments yet but one issue not addressed in the article is the impact Prince's actions may have had Cariou's relationship with his subjects.

The sort of project Cariou carried out tends to be built on an understanding, a certain level of trust or mutual respect. I wonder whether Cariou's outrage is based at least in part on a perception that Prince violated the dignity of the Rastafarian subjects. Cariou may have, in good faith, made certain commitments to his subjects, only to find them broken through no fault of his own. Just conjecture...

[Pablito]

More:

http://www.observer.com/2011/07/rich...ng-copywrongs/

(and bump...)

[Teuthida]

All Art is appropriation. There is nothing thats not a derivative of what came before. The question is: has it been "re-configured" as a unique statement?

I remember someone - a chelsea gallery favorite - back in the 80s who exhibited prints of other photographers as his own, as a "meta-narrative" of the nature of representation. I suppose it may have worked as a "philosophical exercise," but I feel sorry for the impressionable art rubes who bought the stuff at hyper-inflated prices.

[gdmcclintock]

Today, plagiarism is rampant in our schools, colleges, and universities. Art by appropriation is plagiarism.

[celluloidprop]

Originally Posted by Teuthida

I remember someone - a chelsea gallery favorite - back in the 80s who exhibited prints of other photographers as his own, as a "meta-narrative" of the nature of representation. I suppose it may have worked as a "philosophical exercise," but I feel sorry for the impressionable art rubes who bought the stuff at hyper-inflated prices.

Are you thinking of Sherrie Levine? The Walker Evans rephotographing project was her first notorious show, but she's actually done some very interesting work dealing with reinterpretation and appropriation.

I'm very fond of her 'La Fortune (after Man Ray)' - she made real the subject of a Man Ray painting.

[celluloidprop]

The article does a fairly terrible job of really dealing with the issues of appropriation and fair use, instead throwing out some social media BS (all kids today are okay with stealing!!!) and tacitly agreeing with Prince's arguments.

IMO, Prince's work doesn't meet the fair use standard - he doesn't comment on or take the appropriated works far enough to become new works. And I strongly disagree with the art worlders who've lined up to support him, that standard has worked well for a long time, toeing it doesn't endanger contemporary art. Hip-hop was dealt a blow with the sampling cases of the early '90s, but it quickly rebounded.

[robklurfield]

I shouldn't like to find myself sitting in Judge Leval's shoes having to decide this case. Whatever he decides may end up turning into a very slippery slope.

[Jamie123]

Originally Posted by celluloidprop

The article does a fairly terrible job of really dealing with the issues of appropriation and fair use, instead throwing out some social media BS (all kids today are okay with stealing!!!) and tacitly agreeing with Prince's arguments.

IMO, Prince's work doesn't meet the fair use standard - he doesn't comment on or take the appropriated works far enough to become new works. And I strongly disagree with the art worlders who've lined up to support him, that standard has worked well for a long time, toeing it doesn't endanger contemporary art. Hip-hop was dealt a blow with the sampling cases of the early '90s, but it quickly rebounded.

I think the point was not that 'kids today are okay with stealing' but that kids today do not consider it stealing at all. The article also makes the point that copyright law and the fair use standard that has worked for some time might be overrun quickly by people's behaviour. You can say 'it's worked well for a long time' but what use is that if nobody adheres to it anymore?

I've said it over and over again, copyright infringement is not stealing. Stealing is a simple matter. You neither need a market system nor even a society to explain the act of stealing. Two people, A and B, A takes something from B, A now has that thing, B is left without it.
Copyright infringement on the other hand is vastly more complicated. Infringing on somebody's copyright means that you're potentially depriving them from possible income they could generate through something the use of which they are by law entitled to decide on. Telling kids that both are the same is stupid and will ultimately just make them disregard it.

[pluton]

It seems to me that a defensible standard for mechanically duplicatable art, aside from the traditional Fair Use rules, would be if the original work is no longer recognizable in the new work, then it's use is OK.

The glib advice to any potential artist is:
Don't Make Art That Can Be Easily or Cheaply Duplicated.

Hand-crafted, unique pieces of sculpture come to mind.
But writing, photographic images, flat graphic art, video, recordings of music....are all basically fxxxxd.

Then there's also the supply-and-demand factor: When photography becomes easy and cheap, and images therefore plentiful, the value of the images goes down.
Gotta go now to sell a photo to stock so I can make $39 for a Time Magazine cover...