Serendipity: Appropriation Art, An Awesome Louis Vuitton Bag, and SomeCopyright Law

About a year ago, I was looking for images of a couple of bags to give to my son so he could buy me a replica on a trip to NYC.  I quickly ditched that idea after reading a couple of articles on the sale of replicas and bootleg designer bags, but it was not a total waste of time because I came across an image of this bag by Louis Vuitton:

Pulp Weekender in Yellow

Pulp Weekender in Red

I love this bag.  Why?  I can't explain why I like it, I just do.  The size, shape, color, composition all come together, for me, to form a big bag of awesome sauce. The bag comes in red, as well, but I prefer the yellow.

The bag is the result of a collaboration on the Spring 2008 Louis Vuitton Collection between the designer, Marc Jacobs, and an artist named Richard Prince.

What does this have to do with copyright law?  Nothing, really.  But when I looked up Richard Prince to see what he was all about, I came across a behemoth of a copyright case that has the entire Art World in a total uproar.  Serendipity:  I was looking for information on a purse for my blog, and found an intellectual property topic as well.  

So, Richard Prince is an appropriation artist.  For a non-arty person like me, this means that he takes another artist's work and uses it to make his own.  I'm already not a big fan. Appropriation art at its core is not about original ideas, and the movement does not appear to be very concerned with giving the artist on whose base the appropriation work is built any credit at all. Obviously, that is a blanket generalization and there are artists out there who appropriate but give credit where it is due.  For a more academic, serious Art discussion on the topic of appropriation art, check out this link.

Cowboy by Richard Prince

Original 1983 Magazine Ad
Photographer Unknown

Prince started out with a series entitled Cowboys that spanned  from 1980-1992 in which he took mostly Marlboro ads and rephotographed them or incorporated them into paintings.  Yes, the picture to the right is a rephotograph.  I have to think the photographer that captured the original image (to the left) but remains largely uncredited for the awesome shot would like to stab Richard Prince in the eye with a rusty fork.  But, maybe that's just me.  After Cowboys, Prince did several series, most notably the Joke Paintings and the Nurse Paintings. Here's a link to a Google image search for the Joke Paintings, Nurse Paintings, and Cowboys. He also did some other series, but they are less relevant to the story, and frankly, there is one of a pre-pubescent Brooke Shields that skeeves me out.  So, google that at your own risk.  Your eyes will NEVER be the same;  some things just cannot be unseen.

BACK TO THE LOUIS VUITTON BAG.  The Joke Paintings and the Nurse Paintings are the two series most directly referenced in the Louis Vuitton collection.  The Nurse Paintings were all rephotographs or paintings of the covers of pulp fiction novels about nurses.   Marc Jacobs has said that Prince looked to the covers of cheap paperbacks set in exotic locales for inspiration for the Louis Vuitton collection.  

Louis Vuitton/Richard Prince
Spring 2008 Collection

So, around the same time that the Spring 2008 LV collection was being shown, Prince had a series of paintings entitled Canal Zone showing at the Gagosian Gallery in NYC.  The Canal Zone series borrowed rather heavily from a lesser known photographer, Patrick Cariou's book, Yes Rasta.  When I say borrowed here, I mean he took 35 photographs out of the book, drew dots over eyes, guitars in to hands, etc. and painted 28 paintings including images from Yes Rasta. To be fair, Prince did not just take the picture out of the photography book and hang it on the wall.  Prince is said to have scanned the images, did all kinds of things to them like blowing them up really big, and also he created paintings including the images.  But, depending on who you ask, Prince did little but enlarge the photos and make minor changes to them.

The image on the left is the original photo from Yes Rasta by Patrick Cariou
The image on the right is the Richard Prince work from Canal Zone

Cariou was not amused, and filed suit shortly after the exhibit against Prince, his art dealer, Gagosian, and the Gagosian Gallery for copyright infringement.  A defense to copyright infringement is a legal doctrine called "Fair Use."  Fair Use is intended to balance two concepts:  an indivdual's right to control (read here:  profit) their original expression and the rights of other individuals to comment (in this context, Prince's right --arguably-- to make art using someone else's art). The problems with the Fair Use Doctrine are too many to cover in a simple blog, and way over my pay grade when you get into the Academics of Art.  But the long and short of it is that the court must balance Cariou's right to profit off his work over Prince's "right" to create art, or comment,  using as his "medium" Cariou's art.  

In Cariou v. Prince, the federal court ruled that Prince's appropriation of Cariou's photos did not constitute fair use.  In March 2011, the court issued an injunction, ordered Prince and Gagosian to destroy any unsold infringing works and to notify any purchasers of the infringing works of the infringement, and that the works are not for public display or profit.  The decision is now on appeal, with amicus briefs from the likes of the Andy Warhol Foundation and a conglomerate of museums.  The unsold infringing works are in storage for now, even though Cariou could have hosted a giant bonfire based on the court's ruling.  

An example of a Nurse Painting exhibited

with a different bag from the LV collection, 

with a joke written on the bag  as in the

Joke Paintings.

Appropriation art is supposedly different from pop art, although the distinction is one that requires a much finer eye than I possess.  The question that bothers me is this:  without Patrick Cariou, the nameless artists of the pulp fiction novel covers, the Marlboro photographers, the authors of the jokes, would any of Prince's series even exist?  Probably not.  Prince admits that all of his work uses as its medium someone else's art;  in fact, that is Prince's point.  To his fans, Prince is the ultimate commentator on modern life:  

"He is absolutely essential to what's going on today, he figured out before anyone else...how thoroughly pervasive the media is...."  


Maria Morris Hamburg, Curator of Photography, New York Metropolitan Museum of Art

To his detractors, Prince is an unoriginal hack, stealing other artists' work and profiting wildly in the process.  But really, is that fair?  When debating this topic, it is very easy to devolve into migraine inducing philosophical rhetoric such as "isn't all art derivative?"

In a sweet piece of irony, Prince himself recognized the conundrum that is appropriation art in an interview about an exhibit that was not a huge success:  

 "The problem with art is, it's not like the game of golf, where you put the ball in the hole or you don't put the ball in the hole.  There's no umpire. There's no judge.   There are no rules.  It's one of the problems, but it's also one of the great things about art:  it becomes a question of what lasts."

Well, he got the last part right;  however,  I bet he would speak differently about judges and rules now.

For an overview of Prince and his body of work, check out his wikipedia page.  For a very informative and entertaining read on the Prince v. Cariou case, check out this article and this article both by Cat Weaver at Hyperallergic .

Enjoy!

Julie

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