Photographic Plagiarism

The re-contextualization of a cultural artifact as an act of art-making is bound to push the buttons of people with more conservative notions about what constitutes art. When the cultural artifact is a two-dimensional image and the resulting work is also a two-dimensional image then it's even harder for some people to embrace such work. I for one think there's no minimum requirement for craft when making art. If this particular work is lousy...it's not because Price didn't release the shutter.

I was at the Cville talk and presentation of Abell. He used the example of his "Marlboro photo" as the Price's concept for a work of art as an argument of his great idea (Abell's) of the "life of a photograph", that, by the way, I'll use in the future for my own work, and is part of his oncoming book. What David show as a YouTube movie is the PDN interview to him after his presentation.

Let me say first, as Abell declared publicly, the copyrigths belongs to the publicity agent of Marlboro, so, they have to settle the issue of plagiarism and the penalty involved.
Second, Price didn't pretend to make believe that he shot the photo, he intentionally uses it to back his concept of the work of art itself.
Third, my intuition tell me that the owners of this million dollar piece of art won't find a buyer if they need the cash, so they paid a lot of money to Price and the middle man, more than they could.

It would be interesting to see someone create a brushstroke-for-brushstroke copy of Starry Night or any other well known painting and sell it not as a forgery of the original but in their own name as a painting of Starry Night. It may look like a copy, but is actually just a painting of what the artist saw when looking at Starry Night. :rolleyes:

In my own opinion, while I won't deny that conceptual art is art I think that whether by Duchamp, Price, or anyone else, the value of conceptual art lies less in the art and more in providing a rousing game of intellectual masturbation.

jd callow said:

Prince's idea is not so unique and it was done best (imho) by jasper johns.

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And hasn't Richard Prince been making these Marlboro Cowboy pictures since the 80's? If you are going to peddle in silly, er... make that high conceptual ideas, at least come up with a new one from time to time...

you know... once a decade, maybe?

I can't help, but think, the art world's ideas get smaller as the prints (and prices) get bigger.

Those who see Prince's action against Abell as defensible or admirable,
may you always keep your day job,
and may your own work never be stolen from you.

There's no culture without sampling or imitation

I make a chairs from wood by hand in my small shop.
You open a store across the street from my shop.
You take my chairs at night from my workshop,
and re-contextualize them...
you sell them from your store

If we have an agreement for you to do this, all good.
No agreement, all wrong.

It makes no difference how much you charge for my chairs,
whether you share them freely, and receive chairs in return.

I hear the remarkable argument,
"Of course I took Cardwell's chairs.
He is a chairmaker !
Where else am I supposed to get them ?"

It would be a more appropriate analogy to the 'free market'
if you defended the theft of my chairs
by claiming that you sell them cheaper than I do
thereby serving the public good.

Every MBA would worship you
for reducing your overhead.
You would probably be able to get a clever lawyer
who could sell a lawsuit
which would compel me to work for you for nothing
and carry my chairs across the street to you.

There would be the liability action, of course,
if I were run down by a drunk driver
and my estate would have to pay the damage to his car.
You, in turn, would claim what remained of my legacy
for your loss of potential income.

There's no culture without sampling or imitation
Indeed.

.

Cardwell, when was the last time you heard a song with a verse/chorus/verse/bridge/chorus sequence in 4/4? Oh yeah, probably 5mins ago on the radio. When the was the previous moment you did so? Another 5 mins ago.

Here's my point: there's imitation, sampling, and there's plagiarism. None of them can be cleanly separated from each other, but to believe that all works of art are unique and original is deception. Genres, styles, movements are based on imitating certain features of other works of art. Do you know how much the Renaissance painters and writers lifted from the Ancients? Will you throw Shakespeare to the drain because he lifted from Ovid or Plinus?

You see, I'm not advocating for "re-contextualizing" as you seem to imply. I was talking about a "share-alike" mentality, which applies to sampling, not "re-contextualizing."

This type of photography isn't new! Their is an entire genre of photography dedicated to photographing someone else's and then claiming the imagery as your own.

Avant-garde art is all about conception and re-contextualization. It has very little to do with execution: artist as director.

The statment being made by this movement, to the best of my knowledge, is on the reproducibility of photography. Any competent person can walk up to any given photograph, take a photograph of it, and the results will be almost indistinguishable from the original. Its a group of artist pushing the boundary regarding what exactly art is. Their are other artists who make almost none of their work. They come up with the idea and then order everything they will need for the opening. Its interesting and excited to wonder where its going from here!!!

I believe Sherri Levine was the first to do it. She would photograph pieces by Edward Weston, Immogen Cunningham, etc... and then title them "After (artists name)." Some people don't buy it. Some see it as blatant thievery.

yours:

Sherrie Levine was certainly one of the first to have it acknowledged. In that way. She was mostly known for a rephotographic work based on a walker evans piece. It was very intentionally blurry and dark with poor tonality in it's reproduction. Much as Prince's work tends to be (very intentionally!) But I think warhol and crew were doing things very similar to that long before that.

In response to the ORIGINAL question though - I will defend to my death Richard Prince's right to do such things. I think it can be fairly easily proven that he did not choose the images he did for the same 'aesthetic virtues' the original photographer brought to the images. No way. It's got NOTHING to do with that. It has a lot more to do with talking about images in advertising and consumer culture, blah blah blah... so I don't think there's ANY sort of 'foul play' going on here.

However - that being said, (and I feel a certain authority in being able to say this - because I've been following Prince's career since the beginning in the early 80s... ) I also feel that he's mostly unsuccessful in his attempts - and the work is pretty uninteresting. I really appreciate what he's trying to do however. I just don't think he succeeded.

The funny thing about the artworld is that he's now being credited and rewarded financially due almost purely to his ability to stick with it -and keep himself really 'out there'. And that's no mean feat. I'd really love to think there would be some sort of acknowledgement of talent in the artworld - but it doesn't always work that way. It's something of a PR game, sadly - and a direct reflection of larger consumer culture. The more money you throw at advertising - the more popular the product is. In this case - it's not so much 'paying for advertising' so much as who the bigwigs of the artworld are pushing. But I digress.

I think another body of work that would be very important to include in this discussion - is richard misrach's playboy series - where he photographed found playboy magazine pages with bullet holes in them (someone was using the mag for target practice). I think something of a similar nature is going on here.

If you're a singer and you take a song written by someone else, sing it and make and sell a recording of it aren't you required by law to pay the songwriter a royalty or fee?
What's the difference between Prince's or Levine's copying of someone else's photograph and selling it versus some person taking a Beatle's recording, copying the actual recording and then selling that copied version?

Early Riser said:

What's the difference between Prince's or Levine's copying of someone else's photograph and selling it versus some person taking a Beatle's recording, copying the actual recording and then selling that copied version?

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Big difference. It hinges entirely on what the 'subject' of the work is. It's not entirely unlike the difference between 'god save the queen' in it's classic version - and one by the sex pistols. You would never pay money into the derivative version to get the same thing you can in the original, right?

If you're bringing something much larger to the table than the original offered, then it's not really plagiarism. Most of these cases are parodic, ironic or simply critical. By your line of thinking - there would never be any justifiable reason to purchase warhol's 'campbell soup can' painting - when you could buy your own can of campbell's soup at the market.

Will you throw Shakespeare to the drain because he lifted from Ovid or Plinus?

If you had been a groundling at the Globe, and thought Will had come up with a good thing,
and you had your band of merry players put it on across towne, calling it "Hamlet, by Michel",
I promise you would have been last seen as a bloated carcass bobbing in the Thames.

And quite right, too.

df cardwell said:

I promise you would have been last seen as a bloated carcass bobbing in the Thames.

And quite right, too.

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You do not have the slightest idea how much the Renaissance playwright lifted one from each other... Because, yes, there were people making "Hamlet" plays that were mere varia on Shakespeare's, and without the slightest trouble.

Ben Jonson was an anomaly in those days because he was protective about his authorship, and Hogarth is probably the single artist most responsible for the copyright laws, which are sometimes dubbed "Hogarth's law".

You do not have the slightest idea how much the Renaissance playwright lifted one from each other.


why do you say that ?

Cervantes was quite concerned with copyright, so that idea has existed for some time, but there is also a question of when the idea of the "work" came into being as a thing with a sense of internal integrity that is the product of a single author's genius, and some would argue that that isn't really understood as such until the beginning of Romanticism.

No one thought anything was wrong with changing Shakespeare's plots and giving the tragedies happy endings to make them less gloomy in the eighteenth century, for instance. It is only in the nineteenth century that scholars begin comparing Shakespeare's different versions to produce a variorum edition, with the idea of finding the one "true" text that represents the genuine fruit of a single genius.

But all that, I think, is separate from the contemporary issues of appropriation in modernist and postmodernist art. Duchamp is commenting on art and allegory with "La Fontaine" in a way that the manufacturer of the urinal is not (as an aside, photographs and reproductions of this work are often presented in English speaking countries with the title "The Fountain," which completely misses the reference to the French Aesop, Jean de La Fontaine). Warhol is saying something about consumerism, art, and possibly even the beauty of everyday objects with his soup cans and Brillo boxes that did not interest the designers of that packaging (though maybe they deserve a museum show for producing such ubiquitous iconic images, as the Eames brothers and Saarinen have their iconic if mundane mass produced furniture in places like MOMA).

Prince is working in the same vein, though such a gesture doesn't seem as radical today as when Warhol or Duchamp did it, and I don't think it's as interesting as the work of his predecessors. Prince's work suggests that Abell deserves a museum show of his own as the creator of an American icon. At the same time, it's a parody of that icon, so I wouldn't call it plagiarism. It may not be the most revolutionary or brilliant work of its type, but I think I understand what he's getting at.

Sparky said:

Big difference. It hinges entirely on what the 'subject' of the work is. It's not entirely unlike the difference between 'god save the queen' in it's classic version - and one by the sex pistols. You would never pay money into the derivative version to get the same thing you can in the original, right?

If you're bringing something much larger to the table than the original offered, then it's not really plagiarism. Most of these cases are parodic, ironic or simply critical. By your line of thinking - there would never be any justifiable reason to purchase warhol's 'campbell soup can' painting - when you could buy your own can of campbell's soup at the market.

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First Warhol's Campbell soup can was a painting, and no matter how good a painter you are there is a translation that occurs from reality to canvas, but beyond that Warhol's soup can was set in a white environment, there was a physical perspective to it, i.e. the eye position he created for the view, and the original object itself was not a 2 dimensional piece of art or painting but was instead a 3 dimensional non art object in which the graphics on it were a small part of the objects actual function, which is to contain soup. The point being that a common, non-art object could be viewed as art. Which is a significant thought. Copying 2-d art verbatim, and then exhibiting it as 2-d art with little or no alteration is just stealing.

As for the sex pistols "god save the queen" they changed the lyrics very substantially and made the new version clearly a parody or even an editorial comment on the original. What Prince and Levine do is copy someone else's work with little or no change or alteration to the original version. And the worst thing about this is the precedent they set. If Prince and levine, or others can use Warhol or the sex pixtols to justify their own plagiarism, even when the difference between the degree of plagiarism is significant, that new level of plagiarism becomes the new bench mark and the new permissible standard. Why can't someone now just download your jpeg off APUG and print it,claim it as theirs, and sell or license it to others? They can cite Prince and Levine as precedent. And how does all of this crap further art? It seems to me to be more a disincentive to true creativity and original work.

David A. Goldfarb said:

the Eames brothers and Saarinen have their iconic if mundane mass produced furniture in places like MOMA).

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A slight interjection here ... David, if you are referring to Charles & Ray Eames they were husband & wife, not brothers. Ray was a lady. Used to confuse me when I first heard of them. I thought they were a gay couple until I saw a photo of them.

goldie said:

A slight interjection here ... David, if you are referring to Charles & Ray Eames they were husband & wife, not brothers. Ray was a lady. Used to confuse me when I first heard of them. I thought they were a gay couple until I saw a photo of them.

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Hah! Yes, of course.

Early Riser - I won't quote your comments just for the sake of brevity - one can just 'look up' to see them. At any rate - I'm quite aware of the qualifications you are making on my two examples. About warhol the point was simply that you're now giving him leeway that wasn't given to him in the 60s. And your arguments about prince and levine were pretty much what was applied to warhol. That's what made it so racey. So what I'm trying to say is that YOU are the modern-day equivalent of a 60s warhol dissenter. It's my opinion anyway. And of course the sex pistols 'reinvented' or 'appropriated' the song - in their own image. The very use of the title was what was so shockingly outrageous about it.

For me it is INESTIMABLY valuable to have art that questions, that pushes the envelope. Even if those questions are met with a resounding 'NO'. Art always needs the shock troops - the people to show what is possible... to ask tough political questions about the nature of our culture. But I think it's probably BESIDE the point where your concerns come into it.

I have the overall feeling that you feel that richard prince, let's say, is trying to capitalize on the 'quality of image' of this photographer originally hired by marlboro. I say 'BS'. I say the entire point is that he's USING that image NOT as a photograph, or even a visual work - but as a cultural artifact to talk about things like commercialism and mythology and the PR industry.

I really feel I have to challenge you on your comment about leaving the originals 'unchanged'. In both cases, levine and prince have gone to fairly great lengths to make it VERY plain that these are APPROPRIATED images. I mean I've even explained exactly how Levine was doing this - and Prince's technique was fairly similar - except he seems to have a taste for what he refers to as 'bad ektachrome' - if you compare his copies to the original works on which they're based you will notice a SIGNIFICANT loss of detail and very strong shifts towards the blue and magenta, characteristic of spoiled film. Not to mention the use of text applied across said images. I don't think it would be possible to do this kind of work and NOT modify the original - otherwise it wouldn't be clear in what mode the artist was operating... there needs to be some sort of critical or otherwise ironic 'distance' there.

Again - I don't think it's great art on it's own (for me anyway - I really can't speak to others) - but I think it's very IMPORTANT art to have out there - and it paves the way for others to do great things by establishing certain boundaries and at the very least by bringing up the whole discussion we are having.

Sparky, if one wants to push the envelope of art, copying an existing work of art does not seem to push anything. Warhol elevated a often overlooked common place object as art, Prince and Levine took existing art and merely copied it. They didn't really alter, change or re interpret it. The fact that they acknowledged that they appropriated someone else's art is not noble on their part but simply stating the obvious, and maybe avoiding litigation by doing so. If they were looking to argue their concept why not write about it, why instead copy someone else's work and sell that work for far more than the original artist received for it.

I do not consider myself a "modern day" warhol dissenter, I understand the significance of what Warhol did. However what P & L did was not remotely as significant a concept. I think what they have done is over conceptualize, over intellectualize,over rationalize and justify ripping off someone else. As for them making their copies appear more degraded, bad color, etc.,well they're starting with misappropriated copies of the originals to begin with, and justifying that the image quality is poor is in itself their means of expression could just be a way of not having to even make any effort to better the image quality.

More importantly if this type of work is accepted it will become the new benchmark for acceptable plagiarism and the next conceptual artist who wants to make a name for him or herself will simply push that line even further. Where does this end up? This is the digital age, someone can buy a print, scan it and produce surprisingly high quality copies, almost indistinguishable from originals. What next? Sell those prints side by side against the original artist's work and then justify their theft with the precedent of Prince and Levine? What about just converting "Citizen Kane " to color, or the "Godfather" trilogy to B&W and selling them as your own work.

Call me old fashioned, but to me copying some one else's work, changing it ever so slightly, signing your name to the bottom of it and then writing an essay to justify and rationalize your actions is not art and not creativity. To me it shows a lack of integrity and creativity

Unless you know the secret, that the images are lifted from advertising, Prince's images, are nothing more than someone else's pictures of cowboys. And pictures of cowboys will be all that most people viewing the work will see.
The work fails in communicating it's message and at the very least, borders on outright theft.
Warhol covered new ground, though Man Ray and the dadaists went there before him. Prince's work only covers well trodden ground, however.

Early Riser -
I've offered you an explanation of (very approximately) what they were trying to do and how they've taken pains to distinguish these from the originals - and yet you choose to ignore these points and continue with the 'copying' rhetoric... so I guess this isn't technically a dialogue.

Again - it's NOT the work they were trying to copy - but USING the work as an artifact from a larger context - I'm sorry you're so unwilling to consider that point.

It's okay not to like something. But it's not okay not to like something without making an attempt to understand it first. That's just bullying. I don't see that as any different from wrongly accusing someone of having spat on you , say... as a pretext for punching them in the nose. Or attacking a country because you provided falsified evidence for them having WMDs (LOL).

Please try to understand intent before you judge. Nothing good can ever come from that.

I understand what you are saying about the need to push boundaries. It's just that this out-and-out copying is not exactly new. Levine's photograph of an Ansel Adams photograph was sort of edgy and funny back when. But good grief, that was some time ago.

The first time you saw somebody light a fart with a match, it was funny. The second time you see the same person do it, you start to wonder about their arrested development.

Sparky said:

- but I think it's very IMPORTANT art to have out there - and it paves the way for others to do great things by establishing certain boundaries and at the very least by bringing up the whole discussion we are having.

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right. I'd agree with that, clay. And yes - well, I think levine and prince are pretty trite now - as I did then... I still think they should 'be allowed' to voice their opinions.

I mean - doesn't the very FACT that they've made these de facto COPIES of WELL KNOWN originals TELL YOU that they're not trying to 'get away' with something...? It seems to me you've got a far more insidious kind of copying going on in the photographic community - people doing AA ripoffs or whatever - and then claiming that as their own... that seems to me to be a far LESS honest practice that is FAR more widespread. At least these guys are making no bones about it... ya know?

Hah, more stupid self-referential art-world masturbation (Prince, that is).