So this image right here was going to start of a rant about art history. It was going to be a good rant too about how the watering down of our collective culture was eroding away at the foundations of civilization and how critical thinking for visual images should be taught in high school and blah blah blah. Whatever.
That all went out the window when I went mucking about the internet for a copy of Roy Lichtenstein's original work for you to compare it to and found out that the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation is about as uptight as the recording industry (citation!)
The short of it is that Lichtenstein did big ol' oils and acrylic paintings of panels from comic strips that he didn't originally draw and sold them as his own. It was a whole movement in the art world with critical thinkin' and making statements and everything. Go read an art history book if you really want to understand why this is a completely acceptable idea, it was the point of my original article anyways. (Here. Here's a freebie.)
Now what I'm having problems wrapping my brain around is that the people managing his estate get all upset when someone else makes a derivative work from the same original image. Of course they look alike, it's the same source material. If I paint a Campbell Soup can it's going to look an awful lot like what Warhol did because it's the same freakin' can.
I just don't see where they think they have a leg to stand on when, if you take away all the philosophy from Lichtenstein's work you end up with someone who pretty blatantly ripped off another artist.
Grawrargraphrear. I have to go before my sputtering shorts out my keyboard.
Oh, and here is one more link so you can compare what Big Box Mart has in their mass produced home decor vs what they are obviously imitating: Bah! Internets.
Tomorrow I promise pictures from my trip to Duluth. No more crazy artist talk (for awhile at least).
The thing is, Lichtenstein was always pretty forward about the fact that what he did was "art" and what he ripped off of was not. He always believed that he took something with no value and literally made it his. I'm not saying I disagree with you, on the contrary I agree with everything you said. I just don't see it as that strange of an action from his estate, since even if he was still alive I could see reacting in a similar manner.
ReplyDeleteThe best discussions I've read on what belongs to the public domain in regards to fine art emerged shortly after the Dali estate freaked out over google parodying his melting clocks. There is a pretty weird line drawn in the sand over what is and is not considered copyrighted. Which is hilariously ironic, since copyright law was originally created so that families could not continue to cash in on the ingenuity of their great great great grandfathers invention for the rest of eternity. Not to protect that right as people so readily believe.