NY artist Joy Garnett makes paintings based on
found photographs gathered from the mass media. [more info].
In January 2004 she had a solo exhibition of a series of paintings called
"Riot," which featured the figure in extreme emotional states. One of
the paintings, Molotov, was based on an uncredited image found on the
web that turned out to be a fragment of a 1979 photograph by Susan Meiselas.
When Meiselas and her lawyer learned of the
painting, they sent a cease-and-desist letter to Garnett accusing her of
"pirating" the photo. They demanded she remove the image of Molotov
from her website, and that she sign a retroactive licensing agreement [PDF] that would sign over all rights to the
painting to Meiselas, and to credit Meiselas on all subsequent reproductions of
Molotov. Garnett offered a compromise: she agreed to give Meiselas a
credit line on her website, but refused to sign a “derivative work” agreement,
claiming that her painting was a transformative fair use of the Meiselas photo.
Meiselas’ attorney, Barbara Hoffman, turned down the offer and instead
threatened Garnett with an injunction, demanding that Garnett comply with all
of the demands as well as pay $2,000 in retroactive licensing fees.
Garnett pulled the image of Molotov
from her website, lest it result in the entire site being pulled down (cf: a “Take-Down
order”). She never signed over the rights to her work, but she was not pursued
once the image of Molotov was removed from her site.
Before Garnett removed the image from her
site, fellow artists who were following her story on Rhizome.org,
(a not-for-profit organization with a website and list serve dedicated to new
media art), grabbed the jpeg in solidarity. First they copied the html and
created mirror pages on their own websites; then they started making
anti-copyright, or “copyfight” agitprop based on the painting, resulting in many
derivative works including collages, animations, etc. Several media and
copyright reform blogs ran the story, and soon it spread globally, along with
the images. The story was translated into Italian, Czech, Chinese, Spanish,
French, and Catalan.
Two years later, (April 2006), Garnett and
Meiselas were invited to speak together at the COMEDIES
OF FAIR U$E symposium
at the New York Institute for the Humanities, organized by Lawrence Weschler
and hosted by
Their panel presentations were then re-edited
and published in Harper’s,
February ‘07. (See below).
Harper’s Magazine, February 2007
Portfolio (pp.53-58):
Joy Garnett and Susan Meiselas: ON THE RIGHTS OF MOLOTOV MAN: Appropriation and the
art of context [PDF]
Presented with Jonathan Lethem’s The Ecstacy of Influence: a plagiarism.
Harper’s
Magazine, April 2007
Letters: “Credit Where Credit’s Due,” Lawrence Lessig + Jonathan
Lethem; “All Riots Reserved” [PDF]; “All
Riots Reserved” (html)
Commentary on Harper’s piece
Alan Wexelblat, Copyfight (Corante.com),
edward_winklman blogspot,
David Bollier, OnTheCommons.org, 1/25/07: Authorship as a Collective Endeavor
Christopher Reiger, The Hungry Hyaena
blog,
[A thorough and thoughtful recap of the
Harper’s piece]
COMEDIES of FAIR U$E:
A Search for Comity in the Intellectual
Property Wars, April 28-30, 2006
Presented by:
The New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU in association with the NYC Humanities Council
Read final program [PDF]
Watch the COMEDIES videos and download mp3s of the
talks.
Read transcripts and comentary here.
Download and use/distribute Joywar lecture
images here.
Articles and Posts referencing
the conference
Mike Madison, madisonian.net, The Drama of Fair Use,
Laura Quilter, derivative works blog, comedies & tragedies of fair use,
Articles and Presentations
referencing Joywar
Richard Rinehart, Canadian Heritage
Information Network (CHIN):
“Nailing Down Bits: Digital Art & Intellectual
Property.”
Date Published: 2006-09-15:
In any discussion of the cultural heritage
community’s response to intellectual property,
one should mention art that explicitly addresses
copyright. Of course sometimes art works
become unintentionally well-known for copyright issues that
arise around them. These
artworks can become exemplary of a specific intellectual
property issue, or can even
become cultural touchstones and rallying points for copyright
activism. One work in the
former category is the aforementioned sculpture by Jeff
Koons, String of Puppies. A work
in the latter category is Molotov, a painting by artist
Joy Garnett. Joy Garnett’s paintings
incorporate mass media imagery in the form of painted versions of
photo-journalistic images
that she finds online and elsewhere. Her subject is not
just the subject of the photo, but
the photo itself as a cultural artifact. In one such
painting, Molotov, she cropped and painted
an image of a young man about to toss a soda bottle
Molotov bomb. She exhibited this painting
and was sued [sic]* by the photojournalist who had
produced the original photograph. This
might have remained a routine instance of alleged copyright
infringement but for what happened
next. The art community rallied to Garnett and many artists
began appropriating the same image
for works of their own, sometimes changing the contents of
the bottle or other details, in a
cultural movement that became known as Joywar!
*The threat of an injunction was dropped after
Garnett removed the jpeg of Molotov from her website.
David Bollier, On the Commons.org, “Clearance Culture vs. Creative Freedom,”
Marjorie Heins, LAWDRAGON, “Quiet Riot - Will Fair Use Survive?”
Creativity is under assault. Copyright holders
from Mattel to a famed photographer are threatening those who create
and critique, undermining technology’s ability to propel
message and stoke debate.
Marjorie Heins and Tricia Beckles, Brennan
Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, Free Expression Policy Project.
Symposium
on Free Culture & the Digital Library,
Will Fair Use Survive? Free Expression in the Age of
Copyright Control (html); Download Final Report (PDF)
David Green, Towards Fair Use Best Practices
for Individual Creators: “Pirates,
Thieves & Innocents:
Perceptions
of Copyright Infringement,” Copyright Symposium, Center for Intellectual Property,
University of
March 8, 2004: “Joywar” is officially kicked off by Rhizome’s Net.Art
News publication and RSS
dissemination of the
blog post: Joywar: The Molotov
Years (see below)
Joywar took place during March and April 2004. This page contains an
incomplete archive accumulated
as the sit-in progressed. Many of the links may now be
broken. However, stills and screen shots of many
Joywar works can be seen in streaming video as
part of the lecture “Painting Mass Media + The Art of
Fair
Use” that I gave at
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/arts/dmc/docs/lectureseries.html, or in the Thumbnail
Archive. New
articles and links to presentations have since been added to
this page.
Read an encapsulization of the story here.
Read about it in the context of fair use here.
JG
NYC
November 2005
Joywar: The Molotov Years
Rhizome.org - Net.Art News, March 8, 2004
http://rhizome.org/netartnews/story.rhiz?timestamp=20040308
Recall Toywar, the battle between Zurich-based
net collective etoy.com and
eToys, a once-profitable but eventually bankrupted toy
vendor? Recap: in
1999, the retailer closed down etoy.com,
arguing that eToys users who
accessed the art site would be offended by its content. In an
act of
'electronic civil
disobedience,' etoy supporters bombarded eToys.com,
overwhelmed its servers, and helped devalue its stock to $1/share.
When
the dust settled, the commercial giant had lost five
billion dollars worth
of equity in 81 days and etoy.com retained the rights to
its name. Now:
Joywar. Artist Joy Garnett, whose paintings sample
photojournalism, is
being sued by a photographer over 'Molotov,' a reworked,
large-scale
painting based on an image from 1978. The case hinges on the
question of
who owns media images, especially those that are
supposedly documentarian:
after all, if an artist can lay original and exclusive claim
to the
portrait of a revolutionary hurling a molotov cocktail, we
might have
pause to wonder on the nature of that captured event. We
might also notice
the anxiety released when an image is remade and given new
meaning, new
circulation, and yes, new profit potential. While she awaits the
outcome
of the suit, whose plaintiff is demanding several
thousand dollars,
credit, and that she not exhibit or produce the work again,
Garnett has
removed 'Molotov' from her website. Garnett's peers have
initiated a
'Joywar,' and a flourishing campaign to
sample, share and remix is
underway. It's impossible to list here all of the mirror sites
and uses of
'Molotov' that have exploded in the last week
or so, but it's clear that
many are in favor of the free dissemination and reuse of
images and the
rights of artists like Garnett to sample. -- Christine
Smallwood
http://www.somedancersandmusicians.com/solidarity.html
……………
Note: Rhizome.org
is a nonprofit organization that was founded in 1996 to provide an online
platform for
the global new media art community. Programs and services
support the creation, presentation, discussion
and preservation of contemporary art that uses new
technologies in significant ways. Core activities include
commissions, email discussions and publications, and a web site.
Though the organization is
based, the Rhizome.org community is geographically
dispersed, and includes artists, curators, writers,
designers, programmers, students, educators and new media
professionals.
[ref: http://rhizome.org/info/index.php ]
……………
__________________________________________________________________________________
Solidarity
Some Dancers & Musicians – March 2004
http://www.somedancersandmusicians.com/solidarityold.html
The American artist Joy Garnett, whose
paintings are derived from news images, is
faced with a legal action for thousands of dollars over this
one. This has nothing to do
with the protection of livelihood and everything to do with
the suppression of free
speech and free artistic practice.
Don't let the schoolyard bullies win!
Show your solidarity with Joy by grabbing this image and posting it on your
website
or by making your own artwork derived from it,
like
this or
this or
this or this or this or this
or this or this or this or this
or this or this or
this or this or
this or this or this
or this or this
or this or this or this or this
This list is by no means exhaustive!
When you've made your artwork or posted the image, don't forget to mail Joy
with the URL
about Joy
mail Joy
main page
UPDATE (Jan 16, 2005): This
solidarity page was itself remixed as part of The Getaway Experiment
commissioned by Turbulence. Have a look and keep
clicking the central image for more:
http://turbulence.org/Works/getawayexperiment/solidarity/index.php
……………
__________________________________________________________________________________
Britlatov
Cocktail
March 25, 2004
same text as above, recycled with new image :
http://sasnak.org/archives/000092.html
……………
back to top
__________________________________________________________________________________
Rhizome Raw
http://rhizome.org/thread.rhiz?thread=12168&text=23570
response posted by Matthew X.
Message 37 of 39 in
thread
3.2.2004
Joy-
I don't think Warhol is
the best parallel...you
should look into Leon Golub's practice.
He too collected
thousands of images from the news media and
reworked them on
his canvases...playing with scale and
surface. I remember seeing
a video about him working in his
studio. He had file cabinents full of
images torn from the pages of magazines
and newspapers that he would
create with.
best,
matthew
……………
__________________________________________________________________________________
JOYWAR: The Distorted Molotov
An homage to Joy Garnett's Molotov
Culture Kitchen - March 05, 2004
http://www.culturekitchen.com/archives/000555.html
Joy Garnett[’s] Riot
show are oil paintings of images sampled from newswires and other public news
media. Now she is not only being sued by the photojournalist
whose picture was sample[d] in Molotov
but she is being asked to never show and never sell the
artwork. This is obviously not a case of an
artist protecting his speech rights but of one artist using
his copyrights as a way to censor another
artist. A sad case of Stockholm Syndrome
if there ever was.
Check her work at First
Pulse Projects and drop her a line or two at joyeria[at]walrus[dot]com.
Trackbacks
Trackback for this post:
http://www.culturekitchen.com/cgi-bin/movabletype/mt-tb.cgi/522
The following blogs make reference to this post :
» Storm in a Pepsi bottle de Light From
An Empty Fridge
Artist Joy Garnett seems to have got into a bit of legal trouble with a
painting called Molotov,
part of... [More...]
Found in March 12, 2004 04:04 PM
» Britlatov
Cocktail de sasnaK
The American artist Joy Garnett, whose paintings are derived from news images,
is faced with
a legal action for thousands of dollars over this one.
This has nothing to do with the protection
of livelihood and everything to do... [More...]
Found in March 26, 2004 11:43 AM
Say it loud, say it
proud!
1 Comment by: doron at March 6, 2004 11:21 AM
it is my opinion that image has no
copyrights .
2 Comment by: Oligonicella at March 11, 2004 10:31 AM
Baloney. That photojournalist makes a
living by taking photos. Sometimes at great risk to self.
Did the artist *ask* the
photographer? Did the artist *pay* the photographer for the right to use
his/her copyrighted work?
The lazy attitude that
one has the -right- to simply steal the work of another and use it as the
basis for a prefab hack is just that,
lazy. How hard is it to simply paint someone throwing a mol?
Not. Not at all. What the painter did was to
plagerize. That is unethical, and illegal. No sympathy here.
3 Comment by: carol at March 11, 2004 12:15 PM
The case has similarities
to one involving the Barbie and Ken dolls from several years ago. An
artist took the dolls (some bought, some
found) and modified them, then resold them. The court
verdict was that the modified dolls where
an original peice of art work and even though Mattel owned
the copyrights on the unmodified
version of the dolls, they could not prohibit the resale of the modified
ones, nor could they collect
royalites. Legal precident is with the painter in this case.
4 Comment by: Sigivald at March 11, 2004 07:31 PM
So, Oligonicella, if a
painter ever sees a photograph, and paints a picture based on seeing it, does
the painter also need to ask and pay?
Since when is painting a
picture based on some other work the same as "stealing the work of"
that
person? The photograph is copyrighted;
images created via other media based on seeing that photograph
are not, however, violations of that
copyright.
Making a copy of the
photohgraph (even with, say, photorealist painting) might be violation. Making
a
painting compositionally based on the
photograph, but with painterly method and especially with substantial
changes, is not, nor should it be.
(Doron is still wrong;
images have copyrights. But s/he is right that the image's copyright only
applies to
the literal image, not to
interpretations of that image, especially wholly-created ones in other media -
there
may be some meat in a copyright case,
of course, for an "interpretation" that consisted simply of
re-coloring
a scan in Photoshop... but IANAL.)
5 Comment by: ryan at March 12, 2004 06:50 PM
The problem with dealing
with this as copyright, is that Joy's work (like that of Gerhard Richter,
Rosenquist,
Rauschenberg, Levine et
al) is a comment on the image being appropriated - and therefore should be
considered critical commentary - a fair use.
But it gets sketchy for some because the painting is also being
sold. it's not sketchy for me because the object of the painting
is an artifact, just like the original photo, that is
sold not based on it's materiality
(well maybe for some painting collectors it is about that, but not usually
photography), but based on it's communicative
potential. no one has asked if the photographer
obtained
permission to capture the image of the
person throwing the molotov? why's that? we should believe that
someone owns the rights to an image because
they snapped a shutter, while the person photographed is
merely a landscape? Joy merely treated
the image as the person in the photo was treated.
But the archive must be
kept safe...
ryan
6 Comment by: steve at March 19, 2004 10:14 PM
someone should have thought to
copyright that cross around his neck
that someone would have made a few
bills
……………
__________________________________________________________________________________
Joywar
Lukemelia 3/8/2004, 11pm
http://www.lukemelia.com/blog/archives/2004/03/07/
Now playing: Joywar.
[Molotov image]
It's like Grey Tuesday for visual art...
……………
__________________________________________________________________________________
Diritti di Riot
Guerriglia Marketing March 9, 2004
http://www.guerrigliamarketing.it/news/news.htm
L'artista Joy
Garnett è stata citata in giudizio da un fotografo autore a causa della sua
opera Mololotov,
una rielaborazione ad olio su grande formato di un immagine pubblicata nel
1978 su un settimanale
americano.
Un caso di
estremismo del diritto d'autore che non solo pone l'annosa questione del
facoltà di rielaborazione
delle immagini, ma lo fa a partire da un'originale che è una fotografia di
cronaca.
Il fotografo ha
infatti potuto catturare il gesto del soggetto senza premurarsi del suo
consenso, avvalendosi
del diritto di cronaca. Mentre, paradossalmente, quel gesto di ribellione
viene trasformato nel suo opposto
nel momento in cui diventa una semplice rappresentazione.
Joy Garnett è stata così costretta ad
eliminare l'opera dalla sua serie Riot (già esposta a
che dal suo sito internet.
Per rispondere a questa assurda causa, una
serie di siti della comunità artistica (e non solo)
hanno
cominciato a ripubblicare la pittura della Garnett in originale o rielaborandola.
Questa la ragione
della nuova immagine di home page sul sito di guerrigliamarketing.it.
Attenzione:
grazie a tutto questo, l'opera finirà per aumentare il suo valore
……………
__________________________________________________________________________________
Joywar,
riprodurre per tutelare.
March 10, 2004 – Neural.it
http://www.neural.it/nnews/joywar.htm
La rielaborazione dell'opera di un'altra
persona non è una pratica nuova nel mondo dell'arte,
e spesso gli autori originali coinvolti hanno
manifestato disappunto per aver perso una parte
della loro 'paternità'. Paradossale è però il caso di Joy Garnett, artista che sta per subire una
causa di violazione
cronaca degli
anni settanta. Uno dei fotografi originari ha chiesto alcune migliaia di
dollari di
risarcimento intimando che l'opera ('molotov') non sia più esposta, nè pubblicata e che
le
sua riproduzioni vengano rimosse perfino dal web. All'assurdità della
richiesta la risposta
spontanea è stata quella di creare un network di siti che riportano l'immagine
'proibita' in
una qualche forma. La riproduzione infinita dell'opera è la risposta politica
che si avvale di
un presupposto tecnico tanto necessario (l'immaterialità della riproduzione
in rete, e quindi
la sua semplice duplicazione), quanto ormai acquisito da tutti, meno, forse,
dagli artisti
ancora seduti sui loro privilegi di mercato.
……………
__________________________________________________________________________________
tshirt
Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2004 16:33:22 +0100
From: ottokin <xxxx@xxxx.com>
To: Joy Garnett <joyeria@walrus.com>
Subject: Re: tshirt
Produce this shirt an
fuck the Pepsi!
image archived here:
http://newsgrist.net/joywar_tshirt.jpeg
bye from
Paolo
……………
__________________________________________________________________________________
TOYWAR RECALL
2004-03-10
By etoy.MARCOS @
http://feed.etoy.com/p301.html
JOYWAR. the next art war!
[Image]
for further information go:
http://www.somedancersandmusicians.com/solidarity.html
http://www.eyebeam.org/reblog/
http://rhizome.org/netartnews/story.rhiz?timestamp=20040308
……………
__________________________________________________________________________________
Storm in a Pepsi bottle
Light from an Empty Fridge (blog), Friday 12
Mar 2004 16:03
http://www.fridgemagnet.org.uk/archives/2004/03/002812.shtml
Artist Joy
Garnett seems to have got into a bit of legal trouble with a
painting
called Molotov, part
of a exhibition called Riot
based on photos from newswires
and news sources.
What's the issue? Well, it's not, as I first
expected, the fact that the molotov
bottle has a Pepsi logo on it. That initially reminded me of
Alexander Kosolapov,
whose use of corporate logos I wrote about before. It appears,
though, that the
painting is based on a photograph taken in 1978, and the
photojournalist who
took it is suing for X thousand dollars and also as a
general Cease And Desist to
prevent further exhibition.
It's not therefore a case of Evil Corporate
Censorship Boo Hiss, unless there's
something going on that I wasn't aware of, but it does seem like
another example
of a ridiculous use of copyright given that the original
was taken over twenty-five
years ago and this painting cannot be said to be depriving
the original photographer
of anything at all - in fact it potentially increases her
profile. Nobody is going to use
this painting for some purpose instead of the original. A
painting of a photograph is
not a copy of the photograph, rather a derived work, and
the original was publicly
displayed in news media which increases the degree to which it
could be said to be
public domain. This looks like simple artistic
oversensitivity and I don't have much
sympathy.
Anyway, here are a couple more links on the
subject. New developments will bring
updates, though only if I hear about them, obviously.
News story on rhizome.org where Garnett appears to be a
member. I'm delving
through posts on rhizome.org to try to find out a little more
information.
Solidarity page - links to lots of interesting modified and derived
works that people
have done based on
Molotov as part of the campaign - for example, Distorted Molotov,
[...]
» trackback (0) » art+design
» ip
……………
__________________________________________________________________________________
netartreview
http://www.netartreview.net/logs/2004_03_07_backlog.html
::
The artist Joy Garnett may have a lawsuit against her
for using a photo-journalist's image in her
painting titled Molotov. What has
followed after Garnett made her situation public is a deluge of
appropriations and commentaries by net art communities (although
Garnett is not revealing the
names of the plaintiff or her lawyer -- we know the
plaintiff is a woman). Joy Garnett recently
updated her "webring" on the Rhizome Raw list; her
original post can be found on Rhizome.org's
thread: http://rhizome.org/thread.rhiz?thread=12379&text=23895#23895
Because there currently
is no website hosting all of this information. Net Art
Review is supplying all the links, as updated by
Joy Garnett, listed below:
Molotov Web ring : [snip!]
:: Eduardo Navas [+] ::
……………
__________________________________________________________________________________
netartreview
http://www.netartreview.net/logs/2004_03_14_backlog.html#107934566080035392
::
Recently several mailinglists were flooded
with the support messages and actions for
the Molotov painting by Joy Garnet (see post below by
Eduardo Navas). Though I
didn't read all responses (I'm not on all lists that
commented on the Molotov case),
the main thing I missed in all comments was that this
whole type of copyright lawsuits
have had already some clear precedents. Probably the best
known example is the
case
"Puppies" for the work "String of Puppies".
Jeff Koons lost the case and it's interesting
to know why. Here I quote from the article "COPYRIGHT PROTECTION AND APPROPRIATION ART"
by William M. Landes:
"... is appropriation of mass media images by the artist Jeff Koons who
was the
defendant in three similar copyright cases in the 2nd Circuit.
In the best-known
case,
photograph of a group of puppies with their owners, tore off the
copyright notice
from the card, and hired an Italian foundry to make four
sculptures based on the
photograph. Since Koons admitted copying, the only issue on
appeal was if his
copying was a fair use.
Counting against fair use is that Koons added little to the original image
except
for changing the medium and adding color. Indeed, altering
the image would
have defeated his purpose of changing the meaning of the
image by putting it in
a different context. On the other hand, Koon's sculpture
is not likely to damage
the market for the copyrighted photograph. The products
are in different markets
and won't compete for sales. Yet the plaintiff's business
was licensing photographs
so upholding Koon's fair use defense could potentially
eliminate an important
source of revenue to photographers and result in adverse
incentive effects.
Koons' principle argument for fair use was that his work should be privileged
as
a satirical comment or parody. By appropriating an
everyday image, he claimed
that his work commented critically on a political and
economic system that places
too much value on mass produced commodities and media
images. Not surprisingly,
the court rejected his defense because his work did not comment
directly on the
appropriated image. As noted earlier, fair use requires that the
parody be directed
at least in part at the original work. When the parody
comments on society at large,
the defendant should be able to license the copyrighted
work."
:: Peter Luining [+] ::
……………
__________________________________________________________________________
Miscellaneous Quahogs
Wednesday, March 24, 2004
http://www.sensoryresearch.com/~quahogs/weblog/2004_03_01_archive.html
Read this, if you're concerned about artists' rights to rework culture:
posted by Quahogs ! at 3/24/2004 10:22:04 PM
……………
__________________________________________________________________________
More about painting, photography, and copyrighting images
March 24, 2004 - Working Artist's Journal - Anna L. Conti,
http://www.bigcrow.com/anna/journal/mar04.html
Is it ethical for an artist to paint a picture based on a photograph, without
permission of
the photographer?
This issue has come up more and more frequently since the Pop art era, and it
is currently
being debated online and in the art world because of a
lawsuit being brought against painter
Joy Garnett, by a photojournalist. The photographer shot a photo of a young man
throwing
a molotov cocktail, the image was printed in a
newspaper, and Ms. Garnett made a painting
from the image. The painter's friends are taking action by disseminating Ms.
Garnett's
painting, as well as digitally manipulated versions of it, as
widely as possible. I think they
are trying to make these points:
1- copyright protection is meaningless in these times
2 - we don't care if you use our images, so why should you care if we use yours
3 - copyright protection is wrong - open source standards are better for
society
(There is a parallel version of this argument in the music industry and it
seems like plagiarism
stories have been in the news a bit recently, so maybe it's a
bigger story than I realize, but
or now I want to focus on visual art.)
Both photographers and painters are visual artists. They both manipulate their
mediums to
present a personal vision to the viewer. Some present
"straight" reporting, which is generally
considered "real", "realistic" or
"realism". Others focus on stylistic concerns, but their work is
usually still "representational". Others are more
concerned with pushing the limits of their
mediums, and these images often become "abstract."
And there are plenty of artists who
cross these fuzzy boundaries.
Sometimes painters use photographs. They make painted copies of all or part of
the photo.
They copy the photo as exactly as possible, or just use it as a starting point, and change so
much that the source is not recognizable. Sometimes they
take the actual photo and literally
paste it into the painting.
Less often, photographers use paintings (or sculptures.) They shoot photos of
sculptures and
paintings in public places. They set up a scene to look like a
famous painting, then shoot photos
of it. In at least one case a photographer (Richard
Misrach) photographed parts of paintings
and then published a book titled "Pictures of Paintings".
Both painters and photographers "use" what they see in their world.
This includes people,
animals, flowers, food, furniture, buildings, vehicles,
natural and man-made land formations,
sunsets, sunrises, bill boards, magazines, videos, web pages,
etc. The list is infinite. There is
no shortage of images.
Reasons why artists might decide NOT to paint or photograph a particular image:
1. They live in a society that jails or kills artists who make this kind of
image.
2. The image is copyrighted by someone and the artist does not wish to risk a
lawsuit.
3. The subject of the painting or photograph does not want to be portrayed in
this way, and
the artist cares about the feelings of this person or
group.
4. The image has already been done over and over, and this artist has nothing
new to add.
... and, after all, there is no shortage of images.
Reasons why artists might decide NOT to sue another artist for
"stealing" their copyrighted image:
1. It's more trouble than it's worth - how much money can you squeeze out of
the average artist?
2. Thinking about people who live in glass houses.... is there an artist
anywhere who hasn't
appropriated something from other artists?
3. The energy that goes into tracking down and prosecuting copyright violations
is not put into
creating new work.
... and, after all, there is no shortage of images,
and new work to be created.
So, what I still don't understand is why this still happens. If your business
is in the visual arts,
then the issue of copyright is not new to you. So why ask
for trouble? If you're trying to make
a political point, then I can see how getting sued would
add to the value of your project. But if
you're mainly interested in aesthetics, use your creative
juices and pick another image that
does the same thing... it's not like there's a shortage of
images.
Elise Tomlinson on the law and
painters using public images, March 23
photonet forum - a series of
letters from photographers on the issue
