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A Search for Comity in the Intellectual Property Wars: symposium at The New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU, April 28-30, 2006 [slides, audio, transcripts]
Will Fair Use Survive? Free Expression in the Age of Copyright Control, by Marjorie Heins and Tricia Beckles.
download the report [PDF]
Having trouble viewing this? Click here to view on SVA's site.
UPDATE 3/20/12: Watch the full panel online in iTunesU : "Joy Garnett Panel":
http://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/joy-garnett-panel/id424611105?i=111884189
more info:
http://newsgrist.typepad.com/underbelly/2012/01/the-case-for-appropriation-sva-feb-16.html
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Oliver Wasow. Framed Nutting. (2007) Digital photograph, dimensions variable.
UPDATE 3/20/12: Watch the full panel online in iTunesU : "Joy Garnett Panel":
http://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/joy-garnett-panel/id424611105?i=111884189
WATCH an excerpt of Rob Storr's talk on vimeo.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Panel: The Case For Appropriation, moderated by Joy Garnett
with: Virginia Rutledge, Robert Storr, and Oliver Wasow
Thursday, February 16, 2012
7-8:30pm
School of Visual Arts Theatre
333 West 23rd Street
Appropriation art made its name during the nineteen eighties in New York. Drawing on earlier traditions of collage and montage up through Pop Art, appropriation artists subverted, re-photographed, and re-purposed topical material, paving the way for contemporary approaches to art-making now further enabled by digital technology.
However, fueled by the ongoing backlash against digital culture, common forms of visual quotation, appropriation in particular, have come increasingly under attack. Copyright infringement lawsuits, many of them meritless, have been on the rise, including those brought by artists against fellow artists. The freedom to tinker, comment, reference or borrow -- the way art progresses over time -- is continually being challenged.
As issues of appropriation enter the broader public and legal debate, artists, historians, curators and those who are part of the visual arts community need to explain why appropriation and other forms of visual referencing are important elements in the making of meaningful art. We need to be able to defend these practices in clear language, in and beyond the courtroom. We need to make the case for appropriation.
Three panelists -- art historian and attorney Virginia Rutledge, critic and curator Robert Storr, and artist Oliver Wasow -- will join artist and NEWSgrist blogger Joy Garnett in a dialogue about the creative methods and ideas associated with appropriation art today.
Panelists
Virginia Rutledge is an art historian and attorney. Previously an exhibition associate at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, a litigator at Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP, and the Vice President and General Counsel of the nonprofit Creative Commons, she is now in private practice focusing on art, intellectual property, and related transactions and ventures, both commercial and nonprofit. Virginia has chaired the Art Law Committee of the New York City Bar Association and was the curator of the 2011 Texas Biennial, a collaborative project involving over 60 contemporary visual arts organizations across the state.
Robert Storr is an artist, critic, curator and in 2006 was appointed Professor of Painting and Dean of the School of Art at Yale University. He was curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, from 1990 to 2002. In 2002 Mr. Storr was named the first Rosalie Solow Professor of Modern Art at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. Mr. Storr has also taught at CUNY, the Bard Center for Curatorial Studies, Rhode Island School of Design, Tyler School of Art, New York Studio School, and Harvard University. He lectures frequently in this country and abroad. He has been a contributing editor at Art in America since 1981 and writes frequently for Artforum, Parkett, Art Press (Paris), and Frieze (London). He has also written numerous catalogs, articles, and books. Among his many honors he has received a Penny McCall Foundation Grant for painting, a Norton Family Foundation Curator Grant, and honorary doctorates from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Maine College of Art and Lyme Academy. His awards include the American Chapter of the International Association of Art Critics, a special AICA award for Distinguished Contribution to the Field of Art Criticism, an ICI Agnes Gund Curatorial Award, and the Lawrence A. Fleischman Award for Scholarly Excellence in the Field of American Art History from the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art. In 2000 the French Ministry of Culture presented him with the medal of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres. He is currently Consulting Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and in 2007 was chosen commissioner of the 2007 Venice Biennale, the first American invited to assume that position.
Oliver Wasow is an artist working with photography and other related media. He has had numerous one-person exhibitions, and his work has been written up and reviewed widely. He has participated in a number of major museum shows, such as “Image World” at the Whitney Museum of Art, and “Utopia/Post Utopia” at Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art. His work will be included in the forthcoming exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop,” to open in October 2012. He is the recipient of two grants from the New York State Council on the Arts, and a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award. In addition to his career as an artist, Mr. Wasow has also been involved in the art world in a curatorial capacity. From 1983 to 1987 he was the owner and director of The Cash/Newhouse Gallery in New York’s East Village, and he has organized a number of independent exhibitions, including “Moscow, Vienna, New York” at Vienna’s Kunsthalle, and most recently, “Artist Unknown,” an exhibition of thousands of vernacular images culled from the Internet at the Center for Art and Culture in Hollywood, Florida, (October 29, 2011 – January 29, 2012).
Moderator
Joy Garnett is a painter, writer and blogger in Brooklyn, NY. Her work has been associated with appropriation art since the controversy surrounding her 2003 painting “Molotov,” which reinvigorated the discussion regarding issues of authorship and fair use in the visual arts. She has delivered numerous lectures on this subject at colleges and universities, including Columbia University, The New York Institute of Humanities at NYU, Taubman College of Architecture & Urban Planning in Detroit, the European College of Liberal Arts Berlin, and Roger Williams University School of Architecture, Art & Historic Preservation, Bristol, Rhode Island. Her recent writings include "Analogue Natives" appearing in the 25th anniversary issue of M/E/A/N/I/N/G, edited by Mira Schor and Susan Bee (2012), and "On the American Apocalyptic Sublime," in Virilio Now: Current Perspectives in Virilio Studies, edited by John Armitage (Polity, 2011). For over a decade, Garnett has edited NEWSgrist, http://newsgrist.typepad.com, a blog that focuses on the politics of art and culture in the digital age. She is a recipient of grants from Anonymous Was a Woman, the Wellcome Trust, and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. She has been a columnist and contributor to Artnet magazine, and has served since 2005 as the Arts Editor of the contemporary media journal Cultural Politics, published by Duke University Press. Ms. Garnett is represented by Winkleman Gallery, New York.
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Image from greg.org, Canal Zone Richard Prince YES RASTA:
Selected Court Documents (2011) 376 pages, $3.95 - $17.99
WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT APPROPRIATION
Contemporary Art After Cariou v. Prince
A frank discussion of fair use and artistic practice
What: A free program open to all (no registration required)
When: Tuesday, December 13, 2011, 2:00 - 4:00 p.m.
Where: Great Hall of the New York City Bar Association
42 West 44th Street, New York City (between 5th and 6th Avenues)
Art and legal experts use similar terminology when talking about how artists use existing images, but are they speaking the same language?
Panelists for this program represent a range of stakeholders in the discussion. Audience participation and tough questions are encouraged.
Speakers:
Dan Cameron, Curator
Anthony Falzone, Stanford Fair Use Project
Claudia Ray, Kirkland & Ellis LLP
Walter Robinson, Artnet
Virginia Rutledge, PIPE Arts Group
Hank Willis Thomas, Artist
Moderator: Amy J. Goldrich
Program Co-Chairs: Amy J. Goldrich. and Lauren Gehrig
Presented by the Art Law Committee of the New York City Bar Association, John Cahill (Chair)
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Cory Doctorow @ SIGGRAPH
via BoingBoing:
...keynote address at the ACM SIGGRAPH conference in Vancouver, BC. The event's organizers were kind enough to record and release my video to their YouTube channel. My talk was about the way that copyright can be made to work for creators in the digital age, and why it's important for everyone that we don't get it wrong.
SIGGRAPH 2011 : Cory Doctorow's Keynote Address
More via Art, Revolution & Ownership Blog:
Copyright, Cory Doctorow and me
By Martha Rans on August 15, 2011 – 9:14am
Last week I was fortunate to find myself at SIGGRAPH and see Cory Doctorow’s keynote. It was inspiring. To have him here in Vancouver as we make the final preparations for “Art, Revolution and Ownership” lit the fire under me to get writing again. Here are some excerpts of what he said:
Here in the digital age, we copy like we breathe, and so the stakes for getting the rules right on copyright have never been higher
So today, let’s get beyond “Copyright good/copyright bad” arguments and dig into the meatier questions:
“What do we want copyright to do, and which copyright will do that stuff?”
Let’s start with something everyone in this room should be able to agree with: copyright should serve as an incentive to creativity. A good copyright system results in more people making more creations. One of copyright’s most important goals is serving creators.
Cory (from my pov) demands that we differentiate the industry from creators and understand that what is being done under the guise of copyright does not serve creators. This should be obvious but for whatever reason the media often lump the industry together with artists suggesting that many creators agree with their views on drm when that is simply not the case. Many of the unions, guilds and association have disagreed with the industry position on some aspects of Bill C-32. They are lost in the copyright/left debate which rages in the blogosphere to little constructive effect. As I have said before, many creators feel shut out of the conversation because the system does not serve their interests.
Cory offers an eloquent and informed reminder on the need for us to develop better (more innovative?) ways to ensure remuneration for creators. “We need intermediaries who can provide the plumbing through which our works flow, because without them, we have to bear the costs of creation and distribution and most of us can’t do that.” What I take that to mean is that WE have the obligation to work a little harder at answering the what do we want copyright to do question.
More analysis via Rhizome:
We Copy Like We Breathe: Cory Doctorow's SIGGRAPH 2011 Keynote
When Cory Doctorow started his Keynote speech at this year's SIGGRAPH conference he started bravely by granting the audience "unequivocal permission to record video, audio, and to use those recordings ... in all media now known or yet to be invented throughout the known universe." This past Wednesday, two days after the speech, the Keynote was available on YouTube.
In the speech, Doctorow, co-editor of Boing Boing, outlined copyright and digital rights management's current state of affairs by providing details and examples that took the conversation far beyond the typically polarized copyright debate that divides the analysis into two mutually exclusive parts - either bad or good.
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Some years back I attended a CAA session at New York City Bar Association called "Reexamining Appropriation: The Copy, the Law, and Beyond," organized by Martha Buskirk (Montserrat College of Art) and the brilliant IP lawyer and art historian Virginia Rutledge.
That panel was packed with amazing people who discussed everything from copying in the Renaissance to what we think of today as appropriation art. The legal segment of the session offered talks by William Patry, Senior Copyright Counsel for Google (and friend to fair use), and The Hon. Pierre N. Leval, United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Judge Leval introduced the concept of transformative use in his ground breaking article, "Toward a Fair Use Standard," 103 Harv. L. Rev. 1111 (1990), which is now considered an important determining factor in fair use cases.
At that 2007 CAA session I took copious notes and posted some of them to NEWSgrist. I am now re-posting my coverage of the legal segment of that entry here, to be considered in light of the Cariou/Prince case. -->>
via Reexamining Appropriation: CAA Takes Over NYC Bar, Feb 17, 2007:
{EXCERPT}
William Patry helped us segue from a discussion of art to one of law, no mean feat. His copyright blog, btw, is one of the most current, comprehensive ongoing discussions of fair use, art law, and authorship, around. He is the author of numerous treatises and articles on fair use including the new 7 volume treatise "Patry on Copyright". The most provocative point Patry made was that if there is a problem with copyright in the realm of visual art, it comes from within our own camp, and not from the courts. He pointed out that this is true for every industry now struggling with copyright and IP issues: the problems come from our own deep-seated contradictions.
Patry introduced Judge Leval to the room.
It's always amazing to see the huge conceptual disconnect between the world of law and contemporary art.... but having said that, it's impossible for me to feel any negativity toward The Hon. Judge Leval, as it is his formulation of the concept of "transformative" use (which I have framed on my studio wall) that changed the standard of the courts for the better, and serves as an illuminating concept and useful tool in discussing and determining fair use practices. However, like most people in the realm of law (with some shining exceptions), his understanding of contemporary art is rudimentary; he states this humble fact without reservation and cautions us against wanting anything more from the likes of judges (he doesn't mention lawyers).
Judge Leval expressed his surprise that we comprised an audience hostile to copyright, that artists in general and the previous speakers in the room could regard copyright as a negative thing at all, or even a "capitalist tool." I find this perhaps disingenuous -- how could this surprise anyone who reads the news and keeps up with the corporate shenanigans of, say, the music industry, for example? I believe he was making a point about why copyright exists in the first place, and what it is supposed to be for: it was not something that originated in the court system and then imposed upon the populace. Generally, its the other way around.
Judge Leval stated: "without copyright, authors and artists would still be at the mercy of and dependent on the good graces of wealthy patrons for their living." Speaking of a disconnect -- yikes. He spoke of Bach having to grovel for money to produce a concerto -- sound familiar?
I suppose what's sad is that we don't make a living for the most part, and artists ARE at the mercy of wealthy patrons, the current market system merely piggybacking on an older system of patronage and and power and wealth... oddly enough, copyright doesn't even really seem to come into it.
Winding up, Judge Leval clarified some confusion re: the two famous and seemingly contradictory landmark Jeff Koons decisions: He discussed why you can't compare the old Koons "Puppies" loss (1991) with the recent Blanch v. Koons win (2005); the old case was operating under the old standard in place previous to the 2 Live Crew case (1994), which basically made the world safe for parody, and where the idea of "transformative" use was finally put into play in the courts, hence inaugurating a "new standard":
(b) Parody, like other comment and criticism, may claim fair use. Under the first of the four 107 factors, "the purpose and Page II character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature . . .," the enquiry focuses on whether the new work merely supersedes the objects of the original creation, or whether and to what extent it is "transformative," altering the original with new expression, meaning, or message. The more transformative the new work, the less will be the significance of other factors, like commercialism, that may weigh against a finding of fair use. The heart of any parodist's claim to quote from existing material is the use of some elements of a prior author's composition to create a new one that, at least in part, comments on that author's work. But that tells courts little about where to draw the line. Thus, like other uses, parody has to work its way through the relevant factors. Pp. 8-12. [Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc.]
In the"Puppies" case, the judge was not even considering whether Koons' use was transformative; that wasn't yet part of the discussion. In the more recent case where Koons won, Judge Robert Sack certainly was considering the transformative question... Leval deemed the latter decision by Sacks as brilliant, informed, "very long" and wonderful. You can read it in full here [pdf]
One of the most germane questions came at the end from organizing co-chair Virginia Rutledge, who asked Leval if he thought that the importance of context and conceptual underpinnings of works of art would ever finally trump visual, formal (superficial) resemblance in the courts. And his reply was that -- to his consternation -- most judges tend to be conservative to the point of being reactionary when it comes to fair use.
Ending on a positive note, however, it was noted that law is not static, and it's a mistake to think of it as such; law is an evolving process, it changes and grows through the demands and needs of the people it is supposed to serve.
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