Tag: art photography

Ending Appropriation of Photographs by So-Called Artists – Part II

harbel

Anonymous photographer: US Supreme Court

In light of yesterday’s decision by the supreme court in favour of Lynn Goldsmith, I wonder if there is a special hot place in the underworld for those so-called artists, who will now face an onslaught of lawsuits.

Lawsuits, which until yesterday’s US Supreme Court ruling were an uphill battle with limited chance of success.  Lawsuits that are now very winnable and should finally drive a stake through the heart of those that appropriate photographs to remake them, silkscreen them, or make other two dimensional copies.

In case you have been living under a rock, the ruling everyone had been waiting for fell yesterday in the case between the Andy Warhol Foundation and the photographer Lynn Goldsmith over the use of a Goldsmith photograph of the artist Prince (see my blog: Ending Appropriation of Photographs by So-Called Artists).

The US Supreme Court ruling was 7-2 in favour of Goldsmith, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor writing in the majority opinion: “Goldsmith’s original works, like those of other photographers, are entitled to copyright protection, even against famous artists…”

Where does this leave Richard Prince and so many others who have no original ideas and simply change the scale, or rephotograph other photographer’s work?  Do they file for Chapter 11 protection as a business (assuming a lot of these photographers have protected themselves behind some corporate structure), or do they declare personal bankruptcy in order to avoid the courts, legal fees and the now almost inevitable damages to be paid.

Does Gagosian drop Richard Prince as an ‘artist’.  Do other galleries do the same for those that for too long have lived off the work of others?  Does this ruling make the art gallery complicit?  Considering yesterday’s ruling, art galleries can surely no longer pretend that they didn’t know, when they decide to represent a particular copy-cat artist.

And perhaps more interesting, given that collectors are fickle beings; will the market now finally speak and make the work of copy-cats unacceptable, or better yet unsellable?   Could it be that to hang Richard Prince’s cowboys, or an oversized Instagram image on your wall and talk about your art collector sophistication becomes so gauche that the monied collectors finally take their losses and turn their backs on appropriation and theft.  Is it time to send the copy-works to auction – if the auction houses will touch them – and take the inevitable financial bath?

I look forward to a few years from now walking into a non-descript local museum and finding a poorly lit, somewhat hidden picture, with a small cardboard tag that reads:  “Here hangs a work by so-and-so, who used to be a somebody, but now is a nobody.  Felled by the courts and art collectors for being no more than a copy-cat”.

It is a great day for Lynn Goldsmith, Donald Graham, Eric McNatt, Norm Clasen, Jim Krantz, and so many others, who have had their work stolen and abused with neither credit, nor compensation given.

Harbel

 

Christie’s Visionary Collector – Mr. Paul G. Allen?

harbel

I guess the good news is that the Allen collection going up for sale at Christie’s this week contains seven photographs.  Allen is by Christie’s hailed as a visionary collector, a self-made connoisseur, who took no advice from experts and collected with his heart, for himself, and on his own.

Yet, the only thing that made sense in all the hype I read, was that he was drawn to the pointillists and Jasper Johns because of their use of dots and letters and random words, which Allen could relate to from his time working with, and developing code.  The rest feels a lot like one, or two of everything.

The stars are all here and of course, as a constellation, they are labeled by Christie’s as a visionary collection.  It seems over a period of relatively few years, Allen was able to use his bottomless pot of gold to assemble a collection of art works, which as a whole has neither depth, nor much vision that I can tell, but which all share the same characteristic; the works are all ‘safe’.  The artists are already in the cannon of art history.  There are no flyers, no mistakes here.

Of course there is the possibility that Christie’s only picked the smooth, leaving the rough for the local North West auction house to sell.  Yet, I wonder if this is the usual self-made person, turned insanely rich, turned art collector/patron, turned museum director darling, fundraising target….  One of those people who helps the art market, without really helping art.

Like the bored spouses of hedge fund managers with nothing to do, who are trying to make their own museum.  This, in an effort to be taken seriously on the cocktail circuit and catch the eye of the museum director, in order to secure a seat on a coveted board of trustees.  They collect to gain acceptance.  They collect to be seen and to gain access.  They bring nothing to the party, other than the frightening smell of eau des nouveaux riches.

I am of course being harsh, and probably overly critical, but doesn’t it always seem that museum directors spend their time collecting ‘patrons’ of the arts who 25 years ago wouldn’t have known a pie chart from a Damien Hirst spin painting?  Patrons who with their money bought their way into a society, which is volatile and insecure, and entirely dependent on a bank balance at one particular moment in time, and of course a squeaky clean personal history with no suspect behaviour that has not been covered up properly.  They carry the designer handbag, outrageously expensive fragrance, and single-use outfits worth as much as the annual culture budget of a mid-size town.

The problem is it doesn’t help.  It is safe.  It does not support the artists that need the help now, not when they are dead.  The true visionary artists that are living in cold studios and who rarely benefit from their work until the obituary has been written.

Paul Allen – visionary – collecting visionary artists…. hardly.  But let us for fun have a look at the seven photographs that made the cut and joined the Allen collection and are now on sale with all the hype that Christie’s can provide.  The 7 are in order of catalogue appearance….. drum-roll please:

Edward Steichen:  Flatiron 1904/5, acquired in 2001

Man Ray:  Swedish Landscape 1925 (Rayograph), acquired 2000

Andreas Gursky:  Bibliothek 1999/2014, acquired 2014

André Kertész:  Cello Study 1926, acquired 2000

Irving Penn:  12 Hands of Miles Davis and His Trumpet, New York, July 1, 1986, year of acquisition not indicated

Paul Strand, Mullein Maine 1927, acquired 2002

Thomas Struth, Stellarator Wendelstein 7-X Detail, Max Planck IPP, Greifswald, Germany, 2009, acquired 2015

It seems to me that there is neither head, nor tail to these seven; not in process, subject matter, period… they have only one thing in common, they are safe names and they are expensive.  They are, like the rest of the visionaire’s collection, safe work by safe artists.  This just goes to show that with deep pockets comes…. no forget it.  Nuf said.

Harbel

Ending Appropriation of Photographs by So-Called Artists

harbel

When the Marlboro Man met the hedge fund manager and his unscrupulous Art Advisor.

For a very long time, I have rejected the so-called ‘artists’ who appropriate and re-introduce someone else’s work as their own, which in turn, by way of the non-discerning eye of the opportunist art advisor, finds its way into the collection of a Wall Street hedge fund manager with more money to burn than a forest fire in Colorado.  A collection where bigger is better and expensive is an attribute.

For the past 30-odd years I have followed the ups and downs of the judicial system, which has interpreted a single word: ‘transformative’ in any number of ways with wins and losses awarded to one side, or the other.  More often than not, the victims have been photographers with great talent, but not so deep pockets.

There may finally be a glimmer of hope on the horizon.  2021 may well turn out to be a key year in the fight to take photography back from the copycats:

In August 2021, the photographer Lynn Goldsmith – probably best known for her portraits of musicians – was successful at the New York Second Circuit Federal Appeals Court, in her appropriation case against the Andy Warhol Foundation.  The ruling overturned a lower court decision and states that Andy Warhol’s silkscreen of Goldsmith’s 1981 portrait of Prince was an appropriation and was not sufficiently transformative.

Goldsmith, Lynn – The Artist Prince 1981 | Warhol, Andy – Prince

In December 2021, the New York art gallery Metro Pictures closed it’s doors for the final time.  The gallery was opened in 1980 by Janelle Reiring, an assistant to Leo Castelli, and a partner. Metro Pictures legitimized appropriation, mostly at the expense of photographers, who did not have a chance to benefit from the collectors who made Metro Pictures a huge success.  Not to suggest that the closing of a single gallery in any way changes what has been happening, but perhaps in a small way there is justice for the photographers who for years have tried to fight against overwhelming odds for their rights and their photographs.

Appropriation in the modern context probably originated with the ready-mades that the Dadaists exhibited.  A urinal, a metronome, an iron.  In the 1960s, things get a little fuzzy when Andy Warhol made Brillo Boxes and placed them in a gallery.  More fuzzy yet, when Marilyn Monroe’s studio portrait was turned into the now famous silk screen series, along side Liz Taylor, Mao, Elvis Presley…..  

I don’t know if it hinders or helps, but I think of ‘transformational’ as something more than taking a two dimensional image and changing it to another two dimensional image, where you can still recognize the original image.  I don’t care if you go from colour to black and white, or the other way around; add paint; frame it, or unframe it; enlarge it, or shrink it; digitize it; re-photograph it….  If a photographer who in most cases has a difficult enough time making ends meet cannot count on society to protect her or his work, where exactly are we?

On March 1st, 2018, Richard Prince tweeted, attaching a photo of one of his Instagram appropriations:  “Last night at LACMA. Artists don’t sue other artists. They get together, have a cup of coffee, argue, kick the can, hash it out, talk about Barnett Newman, and how aesthetics for an artist is like ornithology is for a bird.”  Maybe, just maybe, 2022 is the year where the appropriated laugh last.

In his commentary on the work of 100 photographers called “Looking at Photography” Professor Stephen Frailey writes of Richard Prince: “Richard Prince’s work as a component of the hollowing of cultural authority is particularly perverse and savvy; the transaction from yard sale into the ranks of high culture, with the resounding approval of the financial market place.”

I guess the market speaks and the lemmings follow. Be that as it may, but answer me this: Where does Norm Clasen go to get his just rewards.

Harbel