NEWSgrist - where spin is art

Down to Earth @ ecoartspace

via email:

Please join ecoartspace and Solar One on Saturday Oct. 3rd for events with the Habitat for Artists Collective
and a performance piece Mothers and Daughters at Solar One by artist Chere Krakovsky from 1 – 4pm
Solar One -23rd Street and the East River, NYC

Followed by an opening at ecoartspace NYC, for Down to Earth from 6 – 8pm
ecoartspace - 53 Mercer St. between Broome and Grand, 3rd Fl, NYC

Down to Earth Artists:
Joan Bankemper, Knox Cummin, Stacy Levy, Ann Rosenthal/Steffi Domike, Susan Leibovitz Steinman, Simon Draper and the Habitat for Artists Collective, including Todd Sargood, Cathy Lebowitz,
E Odin Cathcart and Jeff Bailey.

Additional Contributing Artists:
Jacinto Astiazarán and Fritz Haeg, Lenore Malen & The New Society for Universal Harmony, Eve Mosher, Andrea Polli and Chuck Varga, Andrea Reynosa/Kevin Vertrees-SkyDog Projects and Christy Rupp

Camera On City

via Ms. Jen Bekman, Sept 12, 2009:

An unexpected reminder of the over there that’s not there anymore. Caught me off guard.

Camera on city, Castle Williams, Governors Island, NY (2003) by Lisa Kereszi, from the Governors Island series.

Related:

Ed Ruscha on The Lost Horizon.

Last night’s view via Andrew Pile.

Manny Garcia: Down on AP, Down on Fairey

via Bloomberg News:

AP Has No Right to Obama ‘Hope’ Image, Photographer Tells Judge
By Erik Larson

July 13 (Bloomberg) -- The Associated Press, which sued artist Shepard Fairey for using an AP photograph as inspiration for a Barack Obama campaign poster, wrongfully copyrighted the image it seeks to protect, the photographer told a judge.

Mannie Garcia, the freelance photographer who took the disputed photograph while on assignment for AP, said the news company’s copyright for the image should be invalidated, according to a July 9 filing in New York federal court.

“The AP is aware -- and was aware at the time of filing its copyright application in the Garcia photo -- that it was not the true owner of the rights to that photo,” the photographer’s lawyer, George Carpinello, said in the filing.

Garcia is challenging both the AP and Fairey by trying to join the pending lawsuit between them. The news company sued Fairey in March, accusing him and his Los Angeles-based company, Obey Giant Art Inc., of copyright infringement for using Garcia’s 2006 photograph of Obama at a National Press Club panel discussion about the humanitarian crisis in Sudan. Garcia also claims Fairey wrongfully copied the photograph.

The AP “remains confident in AP’s ownership of the copyright, because Mr. Garcia was an employee of AP when he took the photo in 2006,” said Paul Colford, an AP spokesman.

Garcia, who works out of Kensington, Maryland, said in his court filing that he can’t be considered an AP employee, because he was on assignment for five weeks and wasn’t eligable to join a union or receive health, vacation or unemployment benefits.

The Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington placed Fairey’s Obama image on display in January and the Institute for Contemporary Art in Boston opened a 20-year retrospective of his work two months later. Fairey’s work, often found in the form of street art, focuses on social and political subjects with media including screen prints and stencil paintings, court papers show.

The case is Fairey v. The Associated Press, 09-cv-01123, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

To contact the reporter on this story: Erik Larson in New York at elarson4@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: July 13, 2009 18:06 EDT

God Save the Queen! Long Live the Public Domain!

Via:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Elizabeth_I_in_coronation_robes.jpg

via The Independent:

Drawing up battle lines – art gallery takes on Wikipedia

The appearance of some of the world's most famous portraits on a website could create a legal landmark

By Andrew Johnson, Sunday, 19 July 2009

In her coronation robes, Elizabeth I looks formidable and stately – the Virgin Queen in her pomp, an image to propel rivals into battle. Some 400 years after her portrait was painted, that is precisely what she has done.

Hers is one of more than 3,000 images from the National Portrait Gallery uploaded onto the free internet encyclopedia Wikipedia in April by Seattle-based Derrick Coetzee. The gallery, founded in 1856, responded last week by threatening legal proceedings against the PhD student.

That action unleashed outrage in cyberspace and quickly led to a stand-off between the proponents of free information and cultural institutions wanting to protect one of their few revenue streams – licence fees for reproducing images of their artworks. The row also goes to the heart of an internet revolution which does not recognise borders or national laws.

The gallery has instructed the law firm Farrer and Co, which represents the Queen, to sue Mr Coetzee unless the pictures are removed. They claim that letters to Wikipedia were unanswered. While the portraits are long out of copyright, the photographs are not and, the gallery argues, the digitisation process to create high resolution images has cost it around £1m. They are, they say, therefore entitled to a licence fee.

Wikipedia, which is supporting Mr Coetzee, argues that the portraits are owned by the public. Moreover, they work with many global cultural institutions which are glad to have their images widely disseminated. A further complication is that Mr Coetzee is a US citizen based in America, where copyright laws around images of publicly owned art are different. The gallery points out that Wikipedia's servers are based in the UK and come under the jurisdiction of a UK court. [Newsgrist note: this statement is untrue! None of Wikipedia's servers are based in the United Kingdom, and none of Wikimedia Foundation's operations are conducted in the UK*]

But Alison Wheeler, an editor and administrator for Wikipedia in the UK, said the Inland Revenue takes the opposite view. "It's a very significant case, and very complicated," she said. "It gets to the heart of the internet. The Inland Revenue argues that if you buy something online, it doesn't matter where the server is located, you still pay tax. So the gallery wants it both ways.

"My view is that our taxes have paid for these, but you can't see them unless you live in London. People have a right to see them. I think the gallery has taken advice from other institutions and decided now is the time to act and settle this matter once and for all. There is no doubt they are taking it seriously."

Yesterday the leading art critic Brian Sewell waded into the row, calling the gallery managers fools. He added: "The National Portrait Gallery has always been managed by fools and this is another example of their folly. I'm on Wikipedia's side. The only thing the gallery has to preserve are the pictures themselves. The images must, in some sense, be public property already."

Media lawyer Duncan Lamont, of Charles Russell solicitors, disagreed. "This is the arrogance of new technology which thinks it can trample over rights and say, 'I'll have this for free'," he said. "Copyright law is very clear. If somebody has taken a great deal of effort to get the lighting right to produce the best picture possible then they should be protected."

Mr Coetzee said he could not comment, as he is being represented by the internet freedom campaign group Electronic Frontier Foundation. The group could not be contacted yesterday. 

*Note: Link

Please correct the false factual statement

mgodwin_wmf wrote:

Sunday, 19 July 2009 at 04:08 pm (UTC)

Your article states the following: "The gallery points out that Wikipedia's servers are based in the UK and come under the jurisdiction of a UK court."

This is entirely untrue. None of Wikipedia's servers are based in the United Kingdom, and none of Wikimedia Foundation's operations are conducted in the UK. Please correct this false statement of fact as soon as possible.

--Mike Godwin
General Counsel
Wikimedia Foundation
415-436-9333 x 608

Mamma Don't Take My Kodachrome Away

Photo via flickr: lreed7649. View more photos tagged with “kodachrome” and also in the Kodachrome group pool.

originally spotted at flickr blog.

via A Thousand Words (Kodak), June 22, 2009:

A Tribute to KODACHROME: A Photography Icon
They say all good things in life come to an end. Today we announced that Kodak will retire KODACHROME Film, concluding its 74-year run.

It was a difficult decision, given its rich history. At the end of the day, photographers have told us and showed us they've moved on to newer other Kodak films and/or digital. KODACHROME Film currently represents a fraction of one percent of our film sales. We at Kodak want to celebrate with you the rich history of this storied film. Feel free to share with us your fondest memories of Kodachrome.

[read on...]

Being There: Eve Sussman & Rufus Corporation

via ART REVIEW:

Eve Sussman & The Rufus Corporation, Winkleman Gallery, New York

By Jonathan T.D. Neil

Posted by artreview.com on 22 May 2009 at 6:09pm

White on White: The Pilot (just like being there)
15 May – 20 June

Eve Sussman and Rufus Corporation, Yuri's Office, work in progress, 2009. Courtesy Winkleman Gallery, © the artist

The kind of art that Eve Sussman and Rufus Corporation make often requires a bit of explanation, so bear with me: their current project, ongoing at this point, is titled White on White: A Film Noir. Devotees of art history will quickly recognise that Sussman and Rufus are once again drawing upon a significant work of past art, and in particular of past painting, as – how to describe it? Let’s call them 'datums': facts of orientation that can serve as a reference point with which to find one’s way. For 89 Seconds at Alcazar (2004), the datum was Valesquez’s Las Meninas (1648); for The Rape of the Sabine Women (2007), it was David’s 1799 masterpiece of (roughly) the same name; now the datum is Kasimir Malevich’s Suprematist Composition: White on White from 1918.

The cartography in which Sussman and Rufus engaged for their own White on White involved a kind of nomadic travel through central Asia. As Jeff Wood of Rufus describes it at one point in a dispatch from the Caspian Sea: “This is a research trip. For an art film about extreme combinations. Architectures. Economies. Landscapes. Personalities.” The Rufus Corporation website has been given over to a blog that details some of the travelers’ more bizarre and enchanting experiences, from sharing vodka in the early morning with a pair of freelance hydro-geologic archaeologists in Almaty, Kazakhstan, to bribing their way onto a train heading for Turitam, the rail stop for Baikonur, the former Soviet settlement and location of the Cosmodrome, birthplace of the world’s first space program.

The contents of the Cosmodrome are of particular importance for Sussman and Rufus. There, preserved like some eighteenth-century period room, lies the office of Yuri Gagarin, the world’s first spaceman. This is where the group’s travels reconnect with Malevich. Suprematism was Malevich’s answer to that most revolutionary of questions, What is to be done? His suprematist compositions, beginning with the quasi-mystical Black Square (1915), supplied a visual proving ground for the creation of a new consciousness, one that would free itself of all spatial and temporal limits. (The paintings trace their roots to Malevich’s costume and set pieces for Matiushin, Khlebnikov and Kruchenykh’s cubo-futurist opera, Victory Over The Sun (1913), a utopian space drama if there ever was one.) Malevich’s declaration in 1918 that he was “the commissar of space” led Wood to imagine Gagarin as heir to Malevich’s dream world and, eventually, Sussman and Rufus to the gates of Baikonur.

White on White: The Pilot (just like being there) thus stands as the first or pilot “episode” in this science fiction tale (all good SF is noir by nature). The centerpiece, Yuri’s Office, is a replica of Gagarin’s office. Actually, this is incorrect. What is stationed in the gallery is a full scale, three-dimensional replica of Gagarin’s office as it is pictured in a photograph that Sussman surreptitiously shot while touring the site. What this means is that the office reproduced in three dimensions in the gallery is not really a duplication of the office itself. It is a 3D duplication (the office in the gallery) of a 2D representation (Sussman’s photograph of the office) of the thing itself (Gagarin’s office at the Cosmodrome), which, it seems important to note, has been preserved to look like it did in the 1960s.

As with all such mise en abyme, this one is not without its distortions: the geometry of Yuri’s desk “recreated” in the gallery is just off square (Nicolas Locke, Sussman’s collaborator on the production of the office, told me that its inside angles come out at roughly eight-seven degrees), as is the rug, and even the ink blotter on the desktop. These details may be very small and easily missed, but that of course does not mean that they are not there and available to be seen and registered—“just like being there.”

The mock-ironic tone of that tagline uncovers what I think is ultimately central and deeply important to not only this but all three of Sussman and Rufus Corporation’s recent projects: each is deeply interested, if not invested, in certain problems, or rather mechanisms, of reference. This may seem obvious at the outset given their choice to hitch their wagon to significant works of the art historical past, but in no sense are any of Sussman and Rufus’s works simply about the paintings to which they point. Think about Las Meninas for a moment: the great achievement of that work was to shatter the barrier, to that point taken for granted, which had split pictorial from real space (indeed, it was just this revelation in front of Valesquez’s work that sent a young Richard Serra, then living in Florence, to dump his paintings in the Arno and to begin making sculpture). I like to think that 89 Seconds in Alcazar takes up residence in that moment of shattering and extends it for us so that we can magnify the points of stress between reality and representation.

Eve Sussman and Rufus Corporation, How to Tell the Future from the Past, v.2 (still from installation), 2009. Courtesy Winkleman Gallery, © the artist

Each work—89 Seconds, The Rape, White on White – holds tightly to a notion of reality (I hesitate to say 'realism') upon which much contemporary talk of 'mediation' (new and otherwise) has little purchase. White on White appears as if it will be most adamant about this. For all its oddity, for all of the directions—both spatial and temporal—in which the references point, there simply is no getting over what we might as well call the 'fact of the image' (is this not the very hinge of cinema verité?). How to tell the future from the past v.2, a three-channel video installation that captures a 72-hour train journey across the central Asian steppe (and joins Yuri’s Office in the present exhibition), attests to this undeniable reality, to its veracity. There is the landscape of Kazakhstan passing by; it’s just like being there. Only it isn’t.

Abe's Penny: a new "micro-publication"

Above: from Vol. 1.1 featuring  Tod Seelie and Brandon Johnson. [Link]

I just received my first installment of Abe's Penny, a new "micro-publication" that comes in the mail (yes, print on paper, not electronic), in the form of single postcards with an image and a text. They are in line with one of my favorite projects of all time (which is entirely email-driven): Carol Szymanski's inimitable Cockshut Dummy. The May volume of AP consists of photographs by Peter Bernard Killeen and a story by Eric Ledgin.

via Artnet news, 4-14-09:

ART & LITERATURE, ALL ON A SINGLE POSTCARD
Downtown Manhattan art-scene veteran Anna Knoebel, who labored in the fertile fields of artist Devon Dikeou’s Zingmagazine for several years, has launched a publishing empire of her own. Dubbed Abe’s Penny: A Micro-Magazine, the publication -- helmed by Anna with her sister, Tess Knoebel -- consists of four postcards that subscribers receive one by one, once per week, for one month. Each postcard features an image and a few lines of text. The full set of four postcards is a full story. Volume 1.1 featured photos by Tod Seelie with a poem by Brandon Johnson, and Volume 1:2 had photos by Melanie Flood and a poem by Sam Witt. Subscriptions are $48. For details, see www.abespenny.com

More info, and an interview; via Pacific Standard, 4-21-09:

Print Is Dead / Long Live Print

The decline of print publishing has been chronicled just about everywhere over the past several years, and while it's always a bummer when good magazines or newspapers shut down or the New York Times seems to shrink a little more every week, I'm certain that no matter what there will always be creative-minded people who are interested in producing and searching out beautifully tactile, self-contained printed objects. I for one look forward to seeing all the innovative new works that are sure to develop in the void – projects that explore classic printing methods, innovations with new techniques, and radical ideas about what even constitutes a publication.[...]

What's behind the name?
The name, Abe's Penny, came from the penny press, which we were enamored of because making newspapers inexpensive made the spread of information affordable. Using the word penny worked because of what we were saying before about paring down a magazine to its essence, or smallest form. We decided to call it Abe's Penny because it's self-contained and referential, like the postcards.

[...]

And a cute Q&A with the editors from Evil Monito Magazine, 4-14-09:

 Q&A: Anna & Tess Knoebel

 

 

EM: Occupation and Position
Anna: Anna Knoebel, Co-Founder, Editor, Abe’s Penny

Tess:  Tess Knoebel, Co-Founder, Editor, Abe’s Penny

AP Misses Point Entirely (Again)

 

via Huff Po:

If the AP Has the Right to Do What It's Done, Then So Do I

By Shepard Fairey Posted April 16, 2009 | 08:37 PM (EST)

My lawyers filed my response to The AP's claims against me on Tuesday. It includes a dozen examples of AP photographs that consist almost entirely of copyrighted artwork from me and other artists. Today, The AP issued a statement accusing me of "making attacks" on them. I don't feel the need to respond to that in detail, because my lawyer already has.[pasted below]

As I have stated before I am fighting the AP to protect the rights of all artists but I do want to emphasize one other important point. I'm not accusing the AP of infringing anybody's rights. I'm saying everyone should have the same broad rights of fair use and free expression, and that includes The AP. I'm not questioning The AP's legal right to do what it does. But I am saying they have to be consistent. They can't have it both ways. If AP photographs that do nothing but depict other artists' work are protected by fair use, then my work has to be, too, because it's at least as transformative, creative and expressive as The AP photos we identify in my response, if not much more so. If the AP has the right to do what it's done, then so do I.

via Stanford Fair Use Project:

AP Issues Statement About Fairey's Answer, Misses Point Entirely

by Anthony Falzone, posted on April 16, 2009 - 9:12am

In the answer to The AP's counterclaims we filed yesterday, we included a dozen examples of AP photographs The AP sells, which consist almost entirely of the copyrighted artwork of Fairey and other artists.

Today, The AP issued a statement accusing Fairey of "making attacks" on The AP and "deliberately omitt[ing]" the "newsgathering context in which the various images were generated and in which they are used."

The funny part about this is Fairey doesn't allege The AP's photos are illegal or infringing, much less "attack" The AP. The point is very simple: The AP applies an obvious double-standard. It is happy to sell, through its image licensing database, photographs that are really just bare copies of artists' work, yet it condemns Fairey for using an AP photograph in a far more creative, transformative, expressive and defensible way. Fairey's allegations don't say the AP shouldn't be allowed to do what it does. These allegations -- and the AP's response -- just demonstrate The AP demands wide leeway for its use of other artists' work, but insists that others, like Fairey, are entitled to much less leeway.

As for "newsgathering," The AP misses the point again. While the photographs may have originally been taken for the purpose of newsgathering, they are presently for sale on The AP's image licensing database as a commercial product for "professional photo buyers."

So let's get this straight: We're not alleging The AP's photographs infringe anyone's rights, or demanding The AP stop doing the excellent work it does. We simply contend The AP should have to play by a consistent set of rules. We contend fair use should apply broadly -- for everyone. If The AP's bare copies of other artists' work are protected by fair use, then Fairey's significantly more transformative and expressive work has to be, too.

Latest Richard Prince CopyFight

via The Art Newspaper:

Richard Prince and Gagosian fight back over copyright

Response to lawsuit by French photographer Patrick Cariou claims images not “strikingly original”

By Andrew Goldstein
Posted online: 8.4.09 | From Issue 201 (April 2009)

NEW YORK. Lawyers for Richard Prince and his dealer Larry Gagosian have responded to a copyright-infringement lawsuit filed by French photographer Patrick Cariou, vigorously arguing that Prince’s appropriation of Cariou’s photographs of Rastafarians for a recent series of paintings is protected under the US doctrine of “fair use”.

The suit, filed in New York after Gagosian displayed the paintings in a show titled “Canal Zone” (8 November-20 December 2008), alleges that the defendants made unauthorised use of images from Cariou’s 2000 book Yes Rasta, an ethnographic survey of Rastafarian culture that the photographer assembled during a decade of research in the mountains of Jamaica. The Rizzoli publishing house, which co-produced the “Canal Zone” catalogue and was also named in the suit, filed a response denying that it distributes the book and claiming indemnity.

Cariou’s lawsuit is seeking unspecified damages as well as the “impounding, destruction, or other disposition” of all 22 paintings in the series—which combines the Rastafarian images with pornography and expressionistic brushwork—as well as all unsold catalogues and preparatory materials. In their answer to Cariou’s suit, Gagosian’s lawyers assert that Prince’s incorporation of the photographs is allowable under fair use, which permits the limited reproduction of copyright material for creative purposes. “Cariou’s copyrighted works,” the response states, “are factually based in that they are real-life photographs of Rastafarians as they appear in their native environments, whereas the works of art by Prince utilise small portions of the photographs, together with other images and media, to create a new and unique work which comments upon certain aspects of culture.” Gagosian’s filing further claims that “the creation and exhibition of Prince’s works was not commercially exploitative, was justified with a genuine creative rationale, and was done without bad faith”.

In his response, Prince, a renowned appropriation artist who frequently uses others’ imagery in his work, argued that the photographs in Yes Rasta are not “‘strikingly original’ or ‘distinctive’ in nature”, and that his “transformative” uses of the photographs were “done in good faith and reflect established artistic practices”. Prince’s answer furthermore stated that his appropriation, which he claims is sanctioned under fair use, “poses no harm to the value of such photographs and any market value relating to the photographs has… been enhanced rather than decreased”. Lawyers for Prince and Rizzoli declined to comment, and Gagosian’s representation did not return phone calls. Prince was sued in the 1980s for copyright infringement related to another photographer’s work; the lawsuit, lodged by Garry Gross, was reportedly settled out of court.

In a telephone conversation, Cariou, who is based in Paris, bridled at the claim that Prince only used a small portion of his Yes Rasta photographs. “In my lawyer’s opinion and others’ opinion, this case goes way beyond fair use,” he said. “They used 30 pictures of mine. If you’ve seen the ‘Canal Zone’ book, it starts with Rasta, it ends with Rasta—it is the centrality of it, there is no question.” According to Cariou, the suit has now advanced to the discovery phase, during which his lawyer will try to ascertain how much money the defendants earned from the paintings, among other matters. Gagosian’s filing states that eight paintings from the series were sold, and Cariou says they were priced between $1.5m and $3m each. To Cariou, the defendants’ response has been “extremely arrogant”, particularly the claim that his work is not distinctive or original.

“I laughed,” he said. “I could be a really bad photographer, but in that case why did you use 30 of my pictures?” Cariou says that he has already received a “settlement proposal” that he would consider for a “just” amount. “But it’s a big number we’re talking about,” he says.

Shepard Fairey Has a Posse

Great statement from Shepard Fairey on art, appropriation and fair use that speaks truth to power. I hope the haters who shout "plagiarism" will read it and think twice. The comments are fun too!

via Huffington Post:

The AP, Obama, & Referencing
by Shepard Fairey
Posted March 26, 2009 | 12:18 PM (EST)

I'm sure a lot of people are wondering about my case with the AP over the Obama HOPE poster. I can't talk about every aspect of the case, but there are a few things I want to discuss and points I'd like to make. 

Most importantly, I am fighting the AP to protect the rights of all artists, especially those with a desire to make art with social commentary.  This is about artistic freedom and basic rights of free expression, which need to be available to all, whether they have money and lawyers or not.  I created the Obama image as a grassroots tool solely to help Obama get elected president. The image worked due to many complex variables. If I could do it all over again, I would not change anything about the process, because that could change the outcome. I am glad to endure legal headaches if that is the trade-off for Obama being president. 

No disrespect was intended to photographer Mannie Garcia, but I did not think (and do not think) I needed permission to make an art piece using a reference photo.  From the beginning, I openly acknowledged that my illustration of Obama was based on a reference photograph.  But the photograph is just a starting point.  The illustration transforms it aesthetically in its stylization and idealization, and the poster has an altogether different purpose than the photograph does.  The AP photo I used as a reference, which I found out much later was taken by Mannie Garcia, (which was actually this one, not the one being circulated in the press) was a news photo that showed George Clooney and Barack Obama attending a 2006 panel on the genocide in Darfur. My Obama poster variations of "HOPE" and "PROGRESS" were obviously not intended to report the news. I created them to generate support for Obama; the point was to capture and synthesize the qualities that made him a leader.  The point of the poster is to convince and inspire.  It's a political statement. My Obama poster does not compete with the intent of, or the market for the reference photo. In fact, the argument has been made that the reference photo would have faded into obscurity if it were not for my poster which became so culturally pervasive. The Garcia photo is now more famous and valuable than it ever would have been prior to the creation of my poster. With this factor in mind, it is not surprising, that a gallery in NYC is now selling the Garcia photo for $1,200 each. As I understand it, Garcia himself did not even realize the poster was created referencing his photo until it was pointed out to him a full year after the poster came into existence. Mannie Garcia has stated in the press that he is an Obama supporter pleased with the poster result.

I did not create the Obama poster for financial gain. The poster was created to promote Obama for president, and the revenue from poster sales was re-invested in more posters, flyers, stickers, etc.., and donated to charity, including the Obama campaign. A free download of the Obama image was available on my website, which should provide further evidence of the desire to disseminate the image, not to benefit financially. 

Lastly, I m very saddened to see many people try to demean my Obama poster as being "stolen" or that because I used a photo I "cheated".  As far as the idea of the image being "stolen", I would love to have the clout to command portrait sittings from world leaders, but for me and most artists out there, that is not an option. For lots of artists, even licensing an image is out of the question financially. Should artistic commentary featuring world leaders be stifled because of copyright of the reference images even when the final artistic product has new intent and meaning? Reference is critical to communication, and in my opinion, reference as a part of social commentary should not be stifled. 

A writer asked me why I "didn't just draw Obama from my imagination". My response was that I needed to make my image look like Obama, who is not an imaginary character. I know few people who could capture a convincing likeness of close friends or even their own family members from their imagination or memory. I use my own family members as models, taking my own photos of them to illustrate from -  VIVI LA REVOLUCION and COMMANDA.  Were Obama a member of my family I would have employed this technique. 

Another suggestion someone made was "why not splice two or three photos together and illustrate from that?"  Well, though a direct match would have been harder to find, with an image as popular as the HOPE poster, internet sleuths would probably have found the references and maybe I'd be facing two or three lawsuits. This leads to the next question: is illustrating from a photograph "cheating"? I studied art, illustration specifically, at one of the most prestigious art schools, The Rhode Island School of Design. At RISD I was taught to draw from life, to draw from photo references, and to appropriate and re-contextualize imagery. All of these techniques had historical precedents which I learned about. Here are some great examples of famous painters working from photo references, and not always their own photos. 

I have respect for, and have frequently collaborated with, photographers, but I do not think permission, or a collaboration is warranted in every case where an artist works from a photo reference. I collaborate with photographers because I WANT to, not because I believe I HAVE to. Usually, when I work directly with a photographer as a collaboration, I do so because I am building upon, rather than transforming their original intent. Of course, as with everything, the definition of transformation and fair use is somewhat subjective. I'm an artist, not a lawyer, so I'd prefer to see more latitude for creativity even though I do respect intellectual property. 

This case has raised many issues, including the use of references in art. Some of my earlier works have been attacked by some as "plagiarism". I think reference is an important part of communication and it has been common practice in the art world. When I flipped through the Christie's auction house catalog from November 2008 I found many pieces that are based on reference or appropriation. Most are selling for over $100,000. Some are more clever than others, but these are all works that are at auction being taken very seriously. Take a look.

If the AP wins their case, every Obama art (or any other politician) that was based on a photo reference that was not licensed would be rendered illegal. Here are just a few that were an important part of the political discourse during this election cycle. I also think art that is critical of leaders that neither the subject or the photographer approve of need to be a legal form of expression. I think this Bush image is a perfect example.

This is a blog post that speaks more to the legal issues in the case. Thanks for reading.

more info:

Hypocrisy And Bad Faith In The AP's Countersuit Against Shepard Fairey
by Jonathan Melber
Posted March 12, 2009 | 10:31 AM (EST)