NEWSgrist - where spin is art

Yes, We Have No Bananas

via The Guardian:

 

Velvet Underground lose copyright claim over Andy Warhol cover

Judge dismisses lawsuit by New York band over rights to banana image on their 1967 album sleeve

By Sean Michaels Tuesday 11 September 2012 07.13 EDT

A judge has dismissed part of a lawsuit by the Velvet Underground, over the rights to the iconic banana image that featured on their debut album. The band were told they do not have a valid copyright claim, though they may continue pursuing the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for trademark infringement.

In January, members of the Velvet Underground filed a lawsuit in New York, alleging that Warhol's banana print on the cover their 1967 album, has become "a symbol" of the defunct band. They demanded that Warhol's organisation stop licensing the image for use on goods such as iPod covers, and pay them for past licensing.

In response to this suit, the Warhol Foundation issued a binding legal covenant, promising to never sue the Velvet Underground, or related parties, for copyright infringement. They offered indemnity "under the current, former, or any future copyright law of the United States … [and] regardless of whether said claim arises from VU's or any other [related] party's past, current or future conduct".

On Friday, US district court judge Alison Nathan ruled that because of this covenant, there is no longer a copyright dispute. "Without a specific dispute over imminent activity, a declaratory judgment here would simply be 'an opinion advising what the law would be under a hypothetical state of facts,'" Nathan wrote (via the Hollywood Reporter). "The [US] Constitution gives this court no power to issue such an opinion."

It is still not clear who is the legal rights-holder for the banana design: Nathan has simply ruled that for the moment, it's irrelevant. The Velvet Underground can only proceed with the trademark aspect of their case, arguing that the Foundation's use of the banana causes "confusion as to … affiliation, approval or sponsorship" by the group.

The Warhol Foundation has responded by pointing to the fact that the Velvet Underground broke up in 1972. Trademarks are apparently only relevant if they are linked to an ongoing business, and the group is scarcely a going concern. According to court papers, it has been 11 years since the band last licensed the banana image, for an Absolut Vodka advert.

Last month, in what may have been a related move, the Velvet Underground announced plans to reissue The Velvet Underground and Nico on 1 October.

Art's New Media: ARTFORUM Takes On the Last 50 Years (and Technology)

Letter from Philip Leider to Matthew Baigell, October 30, 1967.

ARTFORUM is celebrating its 50th anniversary with an issue dedicated to technology and the arts. You heard me. As ARTFORUM Editor-in-Chief Michelle Kuo points out in her Letter from the Editor: this is pretty freaking weird:

THE MESSAGE WAS BRIEF. Typed as if for telex, a 1967 memo from this magazine’s editor, Philip Leider, responded to a writer’s pitch with characteristically lapidary concision: “I can’t imagine Artforum ever doing a special issue on electronics or computers in art, but one never knows.” And, really, how could one know? The contingency of the moment is right there in black and white. Leider’s skeptical words said one thing, but the memo’s blocky, futuristic design, as if auguring a world defined by computer terminals and communications media, said another.

The magazine Leider helmed—which, with this issue, marks its fiftieth anniversary—was committed to the most advanced art of the day. In that sense, Artforum was very much dedicated to writing the future, whatever that might look like. So it’s safe to assume that it wasn’t a discomfort with the likes of punch cards that gave Leider pause. Rather, he was rightfully loath to pin art too closely to any one kind of media or technology—just as we are loath to do now, whether to avoid lapsing into a retrograde medium specificity, on the one hand, or technological determinism, on the other. Today we still cringe at manufactured genres like “computer art,” even if art as we know it could barely exist without computers. Technophilia and technophobia alike pervade museums, galleries, and art-fair booths; the language of new media and social media—platform, network, algorithm, sharing—abounds in press releases and exhibition titles, slaking our thirst for 1960s-cum-1990s cyber-euphoria. At the same time, Leider’s doubt echoes in the distance, a critical reminder that art’s affair with media is always prone to historical amnesia, to lazy conflations of vastly different positions and practices, to abrupt shifts from the faddish embrace of progress to a pining for the obsolete. We are nostalgic; we want to move on.

This special issue of Artforum aims to move on but not forget. In the following pages, we’ll take stock of five decades of conversation and contestation that helped forge art’s manifold possibilities and that now stand as a vital record of history. More broadly, we’ll reflect on the past fifty years of media, technology, and art, from the Plexiglas and Porta-Paks of the ’60s to the networked art of the present. For the story of media is, in many ways, the story of contemporary art—both its history and its future.

Shock value aside, the issue is chock full of things I want to read right away, not to mention to assign to my graduate students. Did I mention that it's really thick? Yes, art advertizing is up, friends: you can prop open your studio fire door with the thing.

Also: no reviews.

 

4 Possible Outcomes for Cariou v. Prince

 

Courtesy Flickr and the Artists; Illustration by BLOUIN ARTINFO - Image Via

Handicapping Cariou v. Prince: 4 Possible Outcomes for the Landmark Appropriation Art Lawsuit

by Rachel Corbett

Published: August 29, 2012 in ARTINFO.com

Rumors have been swirling that judges in the Patrick Cariou v. Richard Prince copyright lawsuit are nearing a decision. But while the outcome of the ongoing appeal has been eagerly anticipated on both sides, there’s a good chance the answer won’t be a simple “guilty” or “not guilty” for Prince. Instead, legal experts expect the judgment to fall somewhere in between, or perhaps even branch off into dozens of rulings — one for each painting in the contested series.

Last year, U.S. district court judge Deborah Batts sent shock waves through the art world when she ruled that Prince’s “Canal Zone” collages, which incorporate photographs from Cariou’s book, “Yes, Rasta,” infringed on the photographer’s copyright. Batts wrote that Prince didn’t meet the four standards of the fair use principle, and that ultimately the paintings — some of which are worth more than $10 million — could be destroyed.

Whatever the outcome of Prince’s appeal, that penalty doesn’t seem likely to stand. In May, one of the three appellate court judges, Barrington Parker, compared the injunction to “something that would appeal to, you know, Huns or the Taliban.” In fact, according to Columbia University law professor Philippa Loengard, it’s “very unlikely” that the judges will uphold the lower court’s decision in its entirety. “I would bet millions that’s not going to happen,” she told ARTINFO.

So, we asked Loengard, what are the other possible scenarios?

 

READ ON.....

Good-Bye to All That: Artnet, 1996-2012

Caspar David Friedrich
Man and Woman Contemplating the Moon
ca. 1824
oil on canvas
34 x 44 cm

 [Image from "Romancing the Sky", Artnet, 8-24-99, link]

 

 

Long ago, in an art world far away and online, long before blogs, before Blouinopolis, Galleristopia, and HuffingPuffingtonia.....way way long before Hyperbolicallergica, Twittersylvania, Artfagolicious or even Newsgripe, there was Artnet.....

 

Somehow it doesn't feel like it was that long ago. Summer of '99, I was an artist working a full-time day job in a museum, typically bored, marginalized and underpaid. One day I answered the phone at my desk and it was Walter Robinson, who I'd never met, and about whom I had heard only some scant, low-level art world gossip. He was calling to ask me to write an article for something called Artnet. It was online. (So was I). He needed someone to cover a big, multi-faceted traveling show that had just opened at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts: "Cosmos: From Romanticism to the Avant-garde, 1801-2001." I happened to be headed to Montreal that summer (how'd he know?). He would edit it, I would get paid. We'd do it all by email.

It was a struggle, writing my first review of a vast museum show. But after submitting my draft, for the first time I found myself occupying the weird terrain where negotiations between writers and their editors take place. It felt good. The results, "Romancing the Sky," was not too terrible, and Walter invited me to consider a new project. Soon I found myself penning a regular column, "Into Africa," for which I covered exhibitions of contemporary and tribal African or African-influenced art around town. Over the course of 18 months, I wrote nine pieces, secure in the fact that my fledgling efforts would be subjected to the stern rigor of Walter's editing.

Since then, I've had the pleasure (and the pain) of working with other editors who continue to show me, through similarly weird processes, how to write well. But it was Walter who showed me how to write with seeming ease about art, how to be accessible without dumbing-down, how to be lively without being trashy (no, really), and how to be serious without being deadly dull.

After yesterday's sad news that Artnet magazine would be ceasing activity, I visited its Wikipedia entry to see what needed updating. Someone had already posted the news and citations, so I looked at the very abbreviated list of contributors, and decided to make it inclusive. This took the better half of a morning going through Artnet's archives. It struck me that nearly everyone at some point or another has written for Artnet. There are artists like myself, unknown and well-known, art writers, some of whom were just starting out and who now helm major magazines. There are curators, dealers, former museum directors, collectors, art fair instigators, pop-up scholars, bald capitalists, paparazzi, art astrologers, tricksters, bloviators, poets, speculators, gossips, and all manner of gadfly. Every one of these individuals has a diverting Artnet origin myth to tell, I'm sure. Artnet was pre-blog. After the dawn of the blogs it amazingly kept going. It was ahead of its time, and right on time. It will be missed.

***

ARTINFO
"It's a Real Kick in the Gut": Readers and Writers on the Demise of Artnet Magazine
by Julia Halperin, Benjamin Sutton, June 26, 2012

edward_winkleman blog
Artnet, June 26, 2012

Art in America
Artnet Magazine to Cease Publication
by Brian Boucher 06/25/12

Artnet
NOTHING LASTS FOREVER
by Charlie Finch, June 25, 2012

NYMag - Vulture
Jerry Saltz on the End of Artnet.com’s Magazine
By Jerry Saltz, June 25, 2012

The Observer/GalleristNY
Artnet Magazine Will Cease Publication, Ending 16-Year Run
By Dan Duray 6/25/12

Art Fag City
Artnet Magazine Closes, But Archives Will Be Preserved
by Paddy Johnson on June 25, 2012

NYTimes ArtsBeat
Artnet Chief Steps Down and Artnet Magazine is Closed
By RANDY KENNEDY, June 25, 2012

LATimes - CultureMonster
Artnet Magazine shutting down due to financial difficulties
By David Ng, June 25, 2012

Makers Weigh-in on Sarah Morris and Origami Crease-Pattern Flap

 

This post on the blog MAKE is highly unusual for the number of smart, insightful comments, which I include below.

via MAKE (thanks to Rob Myers):

“Lawsuit Between Origami Enthusiasts Unfolds” – What Do You Think Makers?

Posted by Phillip Torrone | Monday June 18th, 2012 3:00 PM

Lawsuit between origami enthusiasts unfolds – The Madeleine Brand Show:

Origami is the Japanese art of folding paper. You start with one square sheet. You crease it, fold it and pretty soon you’ve created a bird or maybe a frog.
Expert origami artists can take that same sheet and make elaborate flowers or lifelike insects.

There’s a lawsuit pending though, that could shake up the craft of origami, and the art world in general. Reporter Sanden Totten takes us inside a dispute between and origami maker and a painter.

Origami artist Robert Lang is suing abstract painter Sarah Morris, claiming that she used his designs in her paintings without asking permission.

We’ve featured Robert Lang’s origami here at MAKE (and CRAFT) so – please review the entire article (and listen the show, MP3) and post up what you think about this. Is it fair use for the artist, Sarah Morris, to make artwork from Robert’s computer generated folding-designs, or is it a copyright violation? Her paintings are the crease pattens, blown up, colored, and they’re paintings – not folded up. Robert does not appear to be credited in her works according to the article. Armchair lawyers, weigh in!

15 Responses to “Lawsuit Between Origami Enthusiasts Unfolds” – What Do You Think Makers?

1. Steve Hoefer (@Grathio) on June 18th, 2012 at 3:36 pm said:

   Credit is a weird and complex thing. I once received a legal threat to _remove_ credit that I had given someone who inspired me. (No, I don’t understand either.) I’ve run across projects very obviously inspired by things that I’ve done and not been given credit. And that sucks, it’s like a punch in the gut. There’s this person out there whom I inspired to do something great (good!) who is claiming all the credit for themselves. (bad!) Every time I see it happen I get wound up, throw a tiny little angry party in my head. Could I sue? Sure! Would I win? Possibly, sometimes.

   But I don’t sue. I rarely even send a nasty (or passive agressive) letter. Because what do I really want? Do I want to get paid? Sure, who doesn’t, but any settlement is going to be small and I’ll have to deduct the legal fees. That’s if I win the suit. If I loose, it’s all out of pocket. There are better ways to get paid.

   Do I want to get recognition? Of course! But do I want to be recognized as someone who creates and encourages inspiration, or recognized as someone who sues those who are inspired by my work? I most definitely don’t want to be known as the latter. If the choice is between no recognition and being an inspirational wet blanket, I’ll take obscurity.

   So I don’t sue (or haven’t yet). It’s not the solution to my problem, ans sometimes there is no good, correct solution to a problem. I figure it all comes out in the karmic wash. A person simply can’t build a good reputation on ripping off the work of others.

   Reply ↓
2. chuck on June 18th, 2012 at 4:01 pm said:

   The internet has made intellectual property as we know it an obsolete thing. I see too many novel things in a day to catalog what inspired what and why. As far as direct inspiration or the modification of someone else’s idea goes, credit is what matters and we should all give it where it is due. If your interest in your ideas is purely financial then don’t share them. Ideas are viral and you can’t claim ownership of a shared idea any more than you can sneeze in my face and demand I don’t catch your cold.

   Reply ↓
3. Stryder on June 18th, 2012 at 4:17 pm said:

   It would be one thing is she was “inspired” by the stuff and rendered a painting from my mind’s eye. It might even be ok if she looked at the pic and free handed her own interpretation. But if she did multiple 99%-to-scale cut n pastes and presented it as abstract art, giving due credit would have been calling herself out for fraud.

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4. Janebot on June 18th, 2012 at 4:19 pm said:

   Robert Lang makes his living off those patterns. They are made with his own software, (he is an engineer) which he writes and designs, and he uses the software to create unique paper patterns. He sells books, teaches classes, displays his folds in museums, and sells special order (life size paper origami quartet for an orchestra performance)origami. Those are his livelihood, and when she takes them, laters them, makes money off them, and does not credit him, she is acting dishonorably at the least, illegally at the worst. Those patterns are the work of a master folder, with decades of experience and teaching, and most of his designs are only foldable by masters, since the computer allows him to design folds that stretch the limits of what the paper can do in terms of thickness and strength. I am a hobbyist and my mother is a master folder of 30 years experience, and his incredible designs are beyond our ability to replicate. I have met him and seen his folds on display at a museum in California, and they’re astonishing. His folding patterns are his property and the result of his hard work, and she should credit and purchase them accordingly.

   Reply ↓

   • Dominic Muren (@dmuren) on June 19th, 2012 at 12:15 am said:

     Legal technicalities aside (because copyright has been around long enough, and ben revised enough, that it cannot accurately represent the interests of the majority of people):

     “Robert Lang makes his living off those patterns. They are made with his own software, (he is an engineer) which he writes and designs, and he uses the software to create unique paper patterns. He sells books, teaches classes, displays his folds in museums, and sells special order (life size paper origami quartet for an orchestra performance)origami. Those are his livelihood, and when she takes them, laters them, makes money off them, and does not credit him, she is acting dishonorably at the least, illegally at the worst.”

     Robert Lang does not make print-based modern art. There is no reasonable way that this piece of artwork diverts revenue from him. In fact, if it gave credit (which would be polite, but is not required by copyright law) it might even expose more people to his work (since he can’t exhibit in all museums at once).

     Let me be clear: I’m not saying she’s not breaking copyright law. I’m just frustrated that copyright law, as it stands today, causes artists to get sued unnecessarily, and encourages Robert Lang, one of my favorite thinkers, to act like a troll.

     Reply ↓
5. Janebot on June 18th, 2012 at 4:22 pm said:

   *alters derp!
   I appreciate that we all stand on the shoulders of giants- there is a great deal of origami that is hundreds of years old, unattributable, or public domain that she could have used, or she could have put on her artist hat- and made her own designs, like Robert Lang did to begin with.

   Reply ↓
6. johngineer on June 18th, 2012 at 4:48 pm said:

   She probably looked at the original patterns and said to herself: “those are fascinating” and wanted to find a way to showcase what she found so interesting about them, so she made paintings of them. It’s really not uncommon to get hung-up on some small piece of a larger work, and want to celebrate it and create from that starting point. Mimicry is a valid (if presently overused) creative avenue.

   In another time, she might have called her work “Origami (after Robert Lang)”.

   But we live in the early 21st century, where inspiration without written permission (and royalties) is verboten. So rather than ask for permission, get the wrong answer, and end up on someone’s radar, she went ahead and did it on the QT and then got caught. The penalty for either is about the same.

   Reply ↓
7. Wicker on June 18th, 2012 at 5:25 pm said:

   I think it’s a pretty far stretch to attempt to sue an artist in a different medium, using small sections of software generated patterns which she layered and otherwise altered to produce her finished product. A product which in no way appears to mimic the work of the person suing her. He works in paper to create a three-d object, hers is two-d. If no one had told me she was inspired by his work, I would have easily believed she simply drew the shapes herself. I think Lang should probably save himself some stress and let it go.

   Should she credit him, absolutely if he desires it. Why not? She said herself his work inspired her.

   In terms of a court case, he has as much chance to win as lose I would say. Depends on the judge more than anything else and whether he can produce hard evidence of “copying”. It would need to be virtually traced from the original to have a prayer. I hope they settle out of court and save the world one more rather silly litigation.

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8. Brent Marshall on June 18th, 2012 at 5:44 pm said:

   A couple of years ago I had an extended conversation with CARFAC (http://www.carfac.ca/) regarding this exact topic. After getting several levels of people experienced in copyright law, the result was murky at best. As an Origami folder I use crease patterns (CPs) to learn from, and sometimes reproduce for a commissioned rate, but at all times you provide the original credit for the design.

   In a conversation a few years ago with the late Origami artist Eric Joisel (http://www.ericjoisel.com/) I was asked to change the credit from a photo of my fold / his design because it was not folded the way he folds. He also provided a photo of his finished product, which was simply astounding. It was a fascinating lesson in proper accreditation.

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9. Ed on June 18th, 2012 at 5:52 pm said:

   What does his software license say?

   Reply ↓
10. Matthew Krawczun on June 18th, 2012 at 7:39 pm said:

    there’s an old saying.

    “a good artist borrows a great artist steals”

    if you had to get or give credit for everything piece of art made there would be no art in the world. I understand this man makes a living off his art but this isn’t going to change that. this is about greed, feeding an outdated belief that we own ideas

    Reply ↓
11. Sean Ragan on June 18th, 2012 at 10:00 pm said:

    Here’s a key bit of language from Blanch v. Koons, a recent (2005) and important US federal case about artistic “appropriation,” as it is known:

    “The painting’s use does not ‘supersede’ or duplicate the objective of the original, but uses it as raw material in a novel way to create new information, new aesthetics and new insights. Such use, whether successful or not artistically, is transformative.”

    If it is “transformative,” per earlier case law, then it is fair use. The qualifier that the artistic success of the use is irrelevant suggests that whether new information/aesthetics/insights are actually created, or not, is less important than the intention to create them, which Morris clearly has. The other part of Judge Stanton’s test–that the use not supersede or duplicate the objective of the original–also weighs strongly in Morris’ favor, because the objective of Lang’s originals is, clearly, to provide a pattern for producing folded paper works. Morris’s objectives–to provide patterns to be appreciated abstractly, as paintings, solely for their beauty as patterns–neither supersedes nor duplicates that objective.

    Reply ↓
12. Karl Royle on June 19th, 2012 at 12:42 am said:

    It may have been a nice idea to credit the original inspiration but it isn’t required legally not should it be. The paintings are not only a completely different medium but also not even a copy of his work. All she did (as far as I understand it) was to use small pieces of his work and create a new and original pattern then color it. The copyright only applies to the entire image not pieces of it and coloring it even if it was whole, changes the “use” of the original.
    One last thought; if I built a four foot high Cambell’s soup can would Andy Warhol or his estate deserve the royalties? Of course not.

    Reply ↓
13. Niall de Buitlear (@nialldebuitlear) on June 19th, 2012 at 2:34 am said:

    Don’t understand why this is going to court, really. Surely if both parties are reasonable they would agree an appropriate license fee and forget about it. I suspect the origami folder is being unreasonable and is angry about what he perceives to be plagiarism though I don’t accept that it is.

    Sarah Morris’s paintings do sell for a lot of money and no doubt this is also a factor in why he would be so annoyed. However I think that shows a complete failure to understand the art market and how it creates “value” as well as a failure to understand the tradition of abstract painting and conceptual art which Sarah Morris is involved with.

    Reply ↓
14. Shannon Hoover (@shahoo) on June 19th, 2012 at 4:11 am said:

    Robert should be flattered, art is highly derivative and can’t be patented or trademarked.

    Reply ↓