Roy Lichenstein: Copyright Violator (?)

Roy Lichtenstein is one of the world’s most celebrated artists. His paintings are worth millions, and even those with little knowledge of or interest in art will instantly recognise prints such as Whaam! and Drowning Girl.

 But the trouble with Lichtenstein’s work, says Rian Hughes, is that most - if not all of it - is appropriated from comic book artists without credit or compensation.  

So why has this been allowed to continue for so long? Hughes believes it’s symptomatic of a widespread snobbery towards commercial art. “If you unearthed a rare song and sampled it, people would take great delight in pointing out the source material. Yet in the art world, the source material – particularly when it is created by commercial instead of fine artists – is often treated as if it is some kind of cultural clip art – “low” art that fine artists will elevate to “high” art,” he says. “[W]hat we’re really hoping to do [with Image Duplicator] is encourage people to celebrate good art regardless of where it came from,” he says.

Read more here.

Create Joke Artist Statements

Generate your own free artist statement with the Arty Bollocks Generator, and if you don't like it, generate another one. Here's the statement I generated:

My work explores the relationship between postmodern discourse and life as perfomance. With influences as diverse as Kierkegaard and Frida Kahlo, new combinations are created from both simple and complex meanings. Ever since I was a student I have been fascinated by the ephemeral nature of relationships.

 

What starts out as vision soon becomes corrupted into a tragedy of temptation, leaving only a sense of decadence and the prospect of a new reality. As temporal impressions become transformed through boundaried and personal practice, the viewer is left with a statement of the edges of our world.

Some Thoughts on Site Specific Work

This video from Artquest concerns the creation of site-specific public art commissions.

Artquest  is a great resource IF you read and listed and watch recognizing that what you hear is unique to the U.K. and may need to be reconsidered or adapted for application in a North American setting. The quality and depth of the topics covered is very satisfying to me. 

A Teacher's Pride

I wrote a play and for the past two years, it has been my obsession. Now it is over. It was produced to remarkable and entirely positive outcomes—some anticipated, many not—and one thing it did was allow me to include a scene to honour two of my teachers from grade five (which was centuries ago). Those two teachers gave a sad little boy reasons to live.

I contacted them to ask if I could use their real names in the script and they were okay with that. A year and a half later, I contacted them again to see if they wanted to be my guest on opening night and then accepted (and brought their children). On opening night, I was very conscious and proud during that scene knowing that they would realize what a wonderful and positive influence they were on my life and that here I was, at age 65, still raving about them. I was particularly happy that their children would see how loved their parents were by a past student.

When I got home, I got this email...

Hi Chris!   

I just wanted to touch base with you -- and give a quick update on one of your Emily Carr "The Business of Art Practice" class students.   

At the end of the class you'd asked us to map out our goals for the short term/long term future, and in my presentation, my goal was to get myself to a point where at the end of 2012 I could go part time at my regular day job, and then by the end of this year be in a position to quit and be fully self-employed.   

Well... The timeline kind of jumped a year. I put the wheels in motion, put the word out to the Universe, and then everything started falling into place. Someone I  had done a book cover design for started a boutique publishing company and asked me on board as their art director. Then a couple author friends asked me to design their book cover with another publisher. That publisher loved what I did and asked if I'd like to do more for them. Next thing I knew, I was so busy I was basically working two full time jobs and having very little time to write my own books. So at the end of 2012 I asked my boss if I could go part time, which she was happy to accomodate. But due to hiring freezes and such, they had to make me an outside contractor. It wasn't until I walked out of the office that last day that I realized I'd basically just quit my job and was now, a year earlier than planned, fully self-employed. :-)  So, I wanted to thank you so much for your class, and thank you for the foundation that helped me make this work. I hope more of your students make their way to successful creative careers too!   

All the best,  Wyanne (fall 2011 class)

Brilliant Resource: Robert Genn

In case you did not already know about Mr. Genn's website, The Painter's Keys, it is an amazing resource—especially for painters. His Ten Commandments of Art Pricing display his abundant confidence, wisdom and sense of humour:

• Thou shalt start out cheap.Thou shalt publish thy prices.
• Thou shalt raise thy prices regularly and a little.
• Thou shalt not lower thy prices.
• Thou shalt not have one price for Sam and another for Joe.
• Thou shalt not price by talent or time taken, but by size.
• Thou shalt not easily discount thy prices.
• Thou shalt lay control on thy agents and dealers.
• Thou shalt deal with those who will honour thee.
• Thou shalt end up expensive.

Appropriation versus Copyright Infringement

This is a simple but helpful talk about "appropriation" versus "copyright infringement." Although it is done by the excellent British resource, Art Quest, Canadian law is essentially based on English common law. If you go to see it on YouTube you will see many other videos on the same topic listed to the right as this video plays.