On one side of the chair is a prince, full-length and shot in black and white. On the opposite side is the same face of the prince, but with a silk screen and painted in shades. The first is a photo of the musician taken by Lynn Goldsmith in 1981, and the second is a work by Andy Warhol. The United States Supreme Court will decide in the coming days whether the pop artist plagiarized the photographer as he defends if it is an independent work of art. The debate serves.
Warhol’s work is an example of the art of appropriation. A form of creation that uses the work of a third party as a basis for giving new meaning or context. In addition, in many cases it is not necessary to request permission from the original author or even inform him. It is so called in Anglo-Saxon culture Fair use. When an artist discovers it, he has two options: accept that contemporary art is inspired and transform existing reality, or condemn it for plagiarism. Lynn Goldsmith chose the latter, but it is not an easy procedure.
The case against Goldsmith Warhol has gone from court to court as a result of conflicting decisions to the Supreme Court, which will try to clear up the big question: When does misappropriation turn into theft?
“Art is always appropriation because it involves enjoying the beauty of a third party. You can also tell the photographer that he has mastered the beauty of the prince. It is impossible to draw the line,” said Gabriel Garcia, director of CVLTO. , A design studio dedicated to cultural projects Underground. “Taking someone else’s work until you copy it and want it to be yours returns the wheel of art.” Interestingly, when asked to use this article as an illustration from the Photo Prince series, the Andy Warhol Foundation was silent.
It all started when Newsweek magazine commissioned Lynn Goldsmith to shoot Prince in 1981, a portrait he had never seen in daylight. Three years later, the magazine Vanity Fair He bought the right to this picture for $ 400 to get Warhol to create one of his covers. So far everything is in order.
The problem arose in 2016 when Vanity Fair published a series of 16 serials based on the same photo in connection with the singer’s death, and Warhol made it in 1984. Although now it seems the cult artist has become a victim of accusations. Plagiarism on the part of the photographer is the reality that the Andy Warhol Foundation has taken the first step. In 2017, when he felt the consequences of the publication, he sued Goldsmith and asked the court to declare that the Prince’s paintings did not infringe on his copyright. It was then that Goldsmith filed the lawsuit, which is currently in court.
A federal court judge ruled in 2019 that Goldsmith’s copyright was not infringed because Warhol’s work was transformative and therefore fair to use. This decision was later overturned by another appellate court, as the series of drawings retained the essential elements of the photograph – such as the angle of the prince’s gaze, the shadows around the eyes or the reflection of the Goldsmith lighting equipment – without significantly altering them. And did not receive Fair use. This is the last aspect that the Supreme Court intends to investigate and the one that opens a new line of debate: how different should the relevant paper be from the original?
At first glance, Andy Warhol’s work only adds new techniques to the prince’s portrait and some colors. But art is not read in these terms alone. The first judge ruled that Prince Warhol had mutated from a “vulnerable man” into a “cult figure larger than life”. Some have criticized the decision because the judge’s case is not an art critic, but in these cases the law is prevalent, and even more so outside the US.
As attorney Eva Soria Puig points out in her study Contemporary Art and Copyright“The United States has created more jurisprudence and allows us to more accurately analyze legal disputes over freedom of expression and the right to create, and CopyrightIt is different in Spain, where the law provides for only certain exceptions to copyright, such as parody or criticism.
One of the works on display at ARCO’s last market has been accused before another type of court of misuse: social media. Photographer Carlos Spotorno noted Finnish artist Riiko Sakinen for taking a portrait of President Pedro Sanchez without permission and minimally altering it in his work. My favorite far left leaders. The € 16,000 piece (which no one bought) was a sketch of Sanchez’s face surrounded by names such as Fidel Castro, Evo Morales, Nicolas Maduro, Stalin or Kim Jong-un.
“It can be a good example of satire. It is very difficult to set ethical boundaries, but I understand that appropriating the image of RTVE that we all pay for is not the same as Freelancing Neither are the quotes, ”says Pedro Jimenez, a cultural policy expert with the ZEMOS98 team. “It does not seem to me to be the least ethical, because Pedro Sanchez is a public figure, but I understand Spottorno’s claim of authorship,” he added. .
For Gabriel Garcia, Sakineh’s works These are assignments “without your own contribution or with little talent”. “It’s a personal opinion, because if it’s in ARCO, that’s the reason. But I’m familiar with the Quick Photoshop filter in it, and it seemed vague to me. , Adds also a graduate of fine arts.However, citation is an act of respect for the original author and his right is only in the academic field and not in the artistic field.
Garcia also believes that it is dangerous to restrict expropriation with satire. “Resignation may not be hilarious and, in the end, it’s your job.” He cites the example of Sephardic Fair’s cult image for Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. hope. The photo he took as a base was from the Associated Press, but he never paid for it and the agency sued him. He demanded a $ 25,000 fine and two years in prison, but they eventually reached an out-of-court settlement, which was not enforced. Argued the artist Fair use, But the AP believed he had acted with “bad faith” by removing captions from the photo. This case of misappropriation was one of the most controversial.
“That ‘s where the egos work. The original artist thinks you’re stealing his work. “Changed,” said the director of CVLTO.
The decision in the hands of the US Supreme Court is more relevant than it seems. If the court rules in Goldsmith’s favor, Warhol’s verdict could have a domino effect and make many other works illegal. There are not a few artists who have revealed appropriations throughout history, including Picasso, Duchamp, or Warhol’s own Marilyn Monroe, whose original photo was taken from promotional material. Niagara And never asked their permission.
“On a legal level, everything is a limitation. If you go through Anthony Muntadas’s work with a 100% legal filter, it will not pass. And that names all of his works. But they are expropriated artists and no one asks. “And not in other areas? There is debate, but it is very ethereal,” said Pedro Jimenez of ZEMOS98.
“Expropriation is insulted and in art, as in any trend, people jump on the winning horse,” said Gabriel Garcia, of Spain’s largest expropriation group, Equipo Crónica, on display at the Reina Sofía Museum. “People feel more accepted or comfortable MainstreamBut it is brave to evaluate the opinion of the majority, “as he did with Spottorno.
For Eva Soria, who has been studying the subject for years, “the public interest in freedom of expression and the right to creativity is fundamental and must outweigh the intellectual property rights of the owner of the work used, provided that exploitation is conditional. It will not harm their legitimate interests. ” For a lawyer, “copyright is an exception to freedom of expression”, so the latter should be the norm and Copyright The exception and not the other way around.
Every case is a world, understands the expert. For this reason, in Warhol’s case, Lynn Goldsmith’s defense in court also sounds legitimate: “Four years ago, the Andy Warhol Foundation sued me for using my photography without asking for permission or paying anything for my work. I fought this lawsuit to defend myself. On their own, but also the right of every photographer Free And visual artists to live by licensing their creative work and decide when and how to use it or whether we will allow others to do so. ” The final word will be given by the Supreme Court.
Source: El Diario
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