Artist Copyright Buffoonery
One of the great things about Andy Warhol was the way he altered iconic imagery and made it his own. Warhol’s subject material was often covered by copyright, but of course he changed the source material in such a way that it made it his own. Anyone else could do the same thing and use the same source material, but they would’ve looked like fools for copying Warhol’s clearly defined style. I’m bringing all of this up because of this post that Sean brought to my attention this morning.
Our friend Micah designs posters for MySpace, and much of his source material is public domain imagery. Micah has turned these various bits and pieces into some very well received works, all bearing his unique style. He recently created this poster, which among other things uses this public domain image of a cat. Unbeknownst to Micah this image has also been used in a series of prints by artist Derek Erdman.
All of this brings us to the post linked above, in which Erdman accuses “MySpace, Chili’s or a band called, ahem, “Red Suit Space Jump Apparatus” of stealing one of his Cat Head paintings and making a poster out of it. Of course, the kitty in question isn’t his at all, it’s a piece of clip art. Some actual artist at some time did create this cat, just not Derek. In truth Mr. Erdman just wanted credit, I guess original credit for finding Mr. Kitty first. Regardless, they’re both welcome to it, as it belongs to the public now, to do with as we please.
All of this really wouldn’t matter to me if it didn’t remind of the way, say, record labels treat mashup artists. The point here is not to claim that the Erdman piece isn’t art, it clearly is, but it likely would have never been created if the source material was still covered by copyright. Unencumbered by the threat of a lawsuit both Micah and Mr. Erdman made their separate pieces of art, and a simple drawing of a cat, created long ago by someone long dead, was given not one, but two new lives.
Postscript: I chatted with Derek on AIM tonight and he explained that this was a misunderstanding and that he’d spoken with Micah, everyone loves each other and presumably still loves Chili’s. The cat has accepted a position as an editor at The New Yorker. Burton still cares way to much about copyright issues, and should probably stop visiting digg every day.
November 6th, 2006 at 11:01 pm
Same as I wrote on CSTB:
Thing is, I didn’t find the image in a clip art book, I found it in a story book from the early 20s. It was a little bigger than the one on clipart.com. The image in question was just the head of the cat, which I silkscreened poorly making it off center. It was the background that threw me, the fact that the white ink behind the black was off center nearly identical to one of mine. So it looked more to me that he had taken MY “version” of the image, oh, I got all huffy.
Really, what had happened is that he did the same exact thing WITH the same exact image. Well, I’m not going to say that he did a poor job at silkscreening it.
Also, I invented the Coca-Cola logo, eBay, shoes, etc.
November 7th, 2006 at 12:11 am
Oh, I should clear up:
The original image was part of a much larger image that included a house & other cats.
Micah did the same exact thing to only the top part of the image, otherwise he was infinitely more creative.
I did not invent eBay, but the auction process. Oh, shoes & boots.
IT’S VERY NICE TO MAKE EVERYBODY’S ACQUAINTANCE.