What is Art? Warhol Foundation taken to court.

[Mabouya]

This is interesting.

Warhol’s Images of Prince: Social Commentary or Copyright Infringement?

The Supreme Court will hear arguments in the fall over whether the artist’s alterations of a photograph of the musician should be as protected as a new, transformative work.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/15/u...smid=url-share

(Link should get you past the paywall)

[Matthew Strongin]

Hey, thanks for posting. I'll be following closely as a Warhol fan. I have one of these, a square of the wallpaper not a poster, hanging in my dining room:

[hampco]

From my Madison, WI days:

1201001843-l.jpg

[rwsaunders]

Thanks for the post. Our daughter works in the museum field and intellectual property rights and estate law issues, are taken very seriously. Especially when property, or what some people think of as art, is donated to the institution. You can imagine the conflicts that arise, when Grandma bequeaths a piece that her family just realized might pay for that new lake house.

[j44ke]

Thanks for the post. Our daughter works in the museum field and intellectual property rights and estate law issues, are taken very seriously. Especially when property, or what some people think of as art, is donated to the institution. You can imagine the conflicts that arise, when Grandma bequeaths a piece that her family just realized might pay for that new lake house.

And sometimes, you try to auction art you bought from Sotheby's for $90,000 using Sotheby's as the auction house, but Sotheby's tells you that their authenticating experts now decided it is not authentic work by the artist so not only are they not going to auction it, the authenticating experts want to destroy it as a fake and you can't have it back.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/06/a...ert-panel.html

[echappist]

Surely minimalism art has jumped the shark when it repeatedly gets embroiled in copyright suits? Maybe from a legal perspective, there is a scintilla of creative transformation, but when it's mundane like this, it's really difficult to afford these creations a generous view, regardless of whatever backstory its creator might come up with



I won't opine on the copyright issue mentioned in the first post, but I do think there's quite a bit more creative transformation going on there, but at the current rate, I won't be surprised if someone encases literal scheiße in plastic and call it art, only for someone else to claim demonstration of (pun intended) prior art.



Or perhaps I'm just an old man shouting at clouds.

About 150 years ago, the post-impressionist artist Whistler took the art critic Ruskin to trial for libel, for what the art critic said of Whistler's Battersea Bridge painting (see below). The presiding judge famously (and with full sincerity) asked Whistler, "Which part of the picture is the bridge?"



We have come a long way from that (and from my perspective, I think Whistler was being harsh), but at times I can't help feeling like the judge (and Whistler). When something so mundane and offering up not so much in any of originality, creativity, nor technique is rolled into the category of "art", I can only think that such art is created in the hope that some nouveau riche gets to call him/herself someone who appreciates avant garde art. It's all so cynical...

[jdanke]

From my Madison, WI days:

1201001843-l.jpg

Chocolate Shoppe still going strong!

[echappist]

Chocolate Shoppe still going strong!

Oh no way! Must have walked past that street corner quite a few times on our way to getting pelmenis.

I thought that looked like State Street (acute angle intersection is the giveaway), but didn't make the connection about Chocolate Shoppe. My wife reminds me that we have indeed gotten ice cream at another location in Madison.

[j44ke]

I think this case will likely have very little to do with "what art is." If the Supreme Court does take that question on, it will be another example of stupidity by the current court. I think this is basically a contract dispute. The photographer signed a contract that limited use in exchange for right of reproduction, and the photographer claims the Warhol Foundation was in violation of that limited use stipulation when they sold an additional use of one of the other multiples produced under the original right of reproduction. I am going to guess that the photographer might view even the multiples as a violation of the original right of reproduction. Once Vanity Fair selected the image used in their 1984 articles, the rest became outtakes and should have been destroyed. I'll guess too that because Warhol work already had significant value in 1984, neither Vanity Fair nor Warhol could imagine destroying these outtakes and so they did not. That's probably fine as long as they were never used as a commercial product, but then the foundation sold the use of a second multiple to Vanity Fair.

I don't really understand why the court is hearing this issue. Seems like a simple contract decision. The originality or lack thereof isn't really an issue as far as I can tell. It seems more about the definition of single use. Is single use production of one image to be used one time in one magazine issue or is single use all of what is created in the process of making the work used in the magazine? The first would make the multiples a violation (I think) and the second would extend single use to all of the multiples. However, (again, I think) neither allows the foundation to sell an image from the multiples to Vanity Fair for what would be an additional use in their magazine.

[Mabouya]

Another "Is it art?" fracas:

(Aside - I like it, but I think the artists were the programmers, not the guy who typed a few words then hit <CR> )

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/02/t...smid=url-share

"This year, the Colorado State Fair’s annual art competition gave out prizes in all the usual categories: painting, quilting, sculpture.

But one entrant, Jason M. Allen of Pueblo West, Colo., didn’t make his entry with a brush or a lump of clay. He created it with Midjourney, an artificial intelligence program that turns lines of text into hyper-realistic graphics.

Mr. Allen’s work, “Théâtre D’opéra Spatial,” took home the blue ribbon in the fair’s contest for emerging digital artists — making it one of the first A.I.-generated pieces to win such a prize, and setting off a fierce backlash from artists who accused him of, essentially, cheating.

Reached by phone on Wednesday, Mr. Allen defended his work. He said that he had made clear that his work — which was submitted under the name “Jason M. Allen via Midjourney” — was created using A.I., and that he hadn’t deceived anyone about its origins."

[Scott G.]

Looks like the "Midjourney" AI was trained with a couple million Thomas Kincade pictures.

[j44ke]

Seems like the fight there is more about originality. I don’t know anything about this software but would be interesting if it never made the same product twice, even using the same words.

[claritycycler]

Related article, no paywall:

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/co...tition-2168495

[Mark Kelly]

I won't be surprised if someone encases literal scheiße in plastic and call it art, only for someone else to claim demonstration of (pun intended) prior art.

Have you seen the "Cloaca Professional" installation a MONA?

MONA is well worth a visit, BTW. Much of the modern stuff is "Yeah whatever" but some of it makes you stop and think. The place is the pet project of a fairly eccentric professional gambler who hired the bass guitarist from the Violent Femmes as artistic director.