US Appeals Court Rule in Favor of Richard Prince; Says His Work Did Not Infringe

From Reuters:

"(Reuters) - In a closely watched case in the art world, American artist Richard Prince won a federal appeals court order Thursday holding that he did not infringe the copyrights of a photographer by incorporating his images into 25 paintings and collages.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York reversed a lower court's finding that Prince must hand over artwork using the photos to Patrick Cariou, whose pictures of Rastafarians in Jamaica were incorporated into art, exhibited in 2007 and 2008.
"These twenty-five of Prince's artworks manifest an entirely different aesthetic from Cariou's photographs," U.S. Circuit Judge Barrington Parker wrote.
The court battle has been considered a test to what extent the appropriation of artists' works is protected from claims of copyright infringement.""
 
Ooops! I left out a word. The court said his work DID NOT infringe... NOT.... You can disagree (I think I might), but that what the 2d Circuit Court of Appeals said.
 
If the 2nd court of appeals ruling held, I wonder if the photographer would in turn be able to sell all the Prince artwork that was handed over. That would be quite a valuable group of pieces
 
I'm not sure I have an issue with this... I wouldn't want people to stop appropriating and sampling. I like too many pieces of art and music made via these means even if I'm not into this particular Richard Prince project.
 
Reappropriation is essential to the progress of artistic expression. There's a huge difference between someone exhibiting your work as their own and using it as a brick in their own construction.
 
Like anything else in this world, it doesn't matter until someone sees dollars to be made. Then things get tricky.

So, with regard to the Miles Davis photo... in which the 8-bit artist supposedly made no cash from, do you think there was more to it than a cash grab as many have alluded to in the comments? Perhaps he didn't like Kind of Bloop and didn't want his image associated with it? I wouldn't want one of my photos being used by someone whose philosophies didn't mix with mine and especially for free.
 
If a cereal or toothpaste promotion takes one of my photographs, and incorporates it in a collage, or makes an illustration based on it directly, I would want to be compensated.


The Photograph that was copied to make the iconic Hope Obama poster, is on the ragged edge of that. On the one hand, it is clearly a different medium, method and aesthetic, on the other - it's also clearly made from that one specific image - the photographer was a critical part of the success of that usage.

It gets sticky. I happen to agree with the court in this decision, but I wouldn't want it to be applied too broadly.
 
I do think Prince seems like a bit of a prick in this case. This could probably all have been avoided by informing Cariou beforehand and maybe offering him one of the pieces as compensation. I seem to remember reading somewhere that Prince (or more likely his assistant) called Cariou's gallery to order some books of the Rasta work but did not inform them of the appropriation. At the very least that's an incredibly rude thing to do especially since such a large portion of Prince's work uses Cariou's images.
The main difference between art and music here is that in music there are actually laws that make sure the original artists gets compensated when their music is sampled. I think this is needed in art, too.

Generally I tend not to get too excited about appropriation art. Not because I have a problem with the appropriation per se but because the effect of the gesture of appropriating wears off quickly. Take the cowboy pictures for example. Theoretically I can appreciate them but I don't have to look at them for that. And I can't shake the feeling that the only reason they're so successful in the art market nowadays (after the effect of the appropriation as a transgression has worn off) is that rich collectors can now hang cheesy commercial pictures of cowboys on their wall while still seeming sophisticated.
But all in all all I still prefer the cowboy pictures to other works of his. The nurses are just plain lazy in my opinion.
 
If someone is making money off of someone's work, they should be compensated in some form, even if not by law.

However, Prince has a history of doing this which he most likely does not want to start a precedence for. However, if someone is not making money off of the art, then I don't think they should be sued for money. Then again, the original artist may not agree philosophically / politcally with the work of the appropriating artist... so how do you stop them without suing? It's a rough issue and an artform that I would never want to see an absolute ban of.

At this point, maybe I've changed my mind regarding this particular RP work. He is basically the same as a brand at this point and if a brand used one of my images, then I'd expect to get paid. Other cases aren't so easy to figure out though.
 
I agree in some ways. If someone is making money off of someone's work, they should be compensated in some form, even if not by law.

However, Prince has a history of doing this which he most likely does not want to start a precedence for. However, if someone is not making money off of the art, then I don't think they should be sued for money. Then again, the original artist may not agree philosophically / politcally with the work of the appropriating artist... so how do you stop them without suing? It's a rough issue and an artform that I would never want to see an absolute ban of.

At this point, maybe I've changed my mind regarding this particular RP work. He is basically the same as a brand at this point and if a brand used one of my images, then I'd expect to get paid. Other cases aren't so easy to figure out though.

That's sort of what I think, too. Whether or not he likes it, the moral questions Prince's appropriations raise are entirely different now that he is a fairly wealthy established artist than they were when he started out. Especially when he has all the money and influence of Gagosian behind him while he's using the work of another artist (not just a commercial photographer) who's trying to make a name for himself in the art market. And especially since the original artist is fairly unknown so people are likely to see the appropriation before the original. It's not the same as with the Cowboy pictures or even Catcher in the Rye where everybody immediately realizes that it's an appropriation.
Like I said, I think this could probably have been avoided if Prince had offered one of the pieces in the show to the orignial artist as compensation. But I have the suspicion that Prince doesn't think Cariou's contribution is worth the price of one of his works.
 
It's harder to appropriate others' work in the UK - our copyright law allows someone else's work only for private study, criticism and news reporting under "fair dealing". If you use someone's work in any other way, for example in a "transformative" work or as parody, you're breaking the law, with all the consequences that brings.

Basically, in the UK, you must obtain the copyright owner's formal permission if you want to use their work in your own. Nice and simple. I'm not aware in the UK of artistic freedoms being stifled by our copyright law. Possibly, the US should adopt ours!

I'm all for appropriation - but I think you should be courteous to the copyright holder and seek permission (you have to in the UK anyway) - or, in other countries with more lax copyright laws, at least inform them.

A friend of mine, the British photographer Lisa Barnard, is probably most associated with these images, which have been widely exhibited and published under her own name. However, thy're not hers: she found them in a drawer in the abandoned Conservative Party office - warped and distressed by age and damp - and appropriated them for her comment on Thatcherism and the Iron Lady's legacy. These appropriated portraits - enlarged and rephotographed by Barnard - sell for a lot of money, with her acknowledged as the sole artist.

You can see other photographs from her project here: "Chateau Despair".

PS: feel free to buy the book - already reviewed favourably by the Observer and Guardian newspapers! Copies are selling like hot cakes - it came out (by pure chance) a couple of weeks before Thatcher's demise!


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What if it's a political thing - non profit.

Say I'm against wars. A pro-war political group uses my images (altered) for pro-war billboards. If I have the funds, I will sue to stop them.

Understood... I would too. That is why I took back my original stance on the Richard Prince verdict, even said something to the effect of seeing the reason for suing based on philosophical / political differences, and my answer now is it depends. :)
 
I do agree that paying a useage fee or something like that would probably diminish his work but I do think that could've avoided a lot of trouble by just offering the original artist something as a form of courtesy. Especially since in this case it's not really appropriation of the kind we know him for. What he's done here is basically just collage work if you ask me. Frankly, I don't know what meaning there is in the gesture of appropriation in this particular case. If nobody knows the original work and the context of the original work, then he's not really recontextualising it.
 
I agree, no point in speculating on what we don't know. As for staying true to his work, I agree, but then again, I don't think appropriation is at the heart of all of his work. While in most of his work appropriation seems to be the essential element, there's also some work where it only seems to be a starting point.
 
Interestingly, when you're a starving artist appropriating things, you can be viewed as a guerrilla and earn admiration for what you're doing. It's witty ... it's innovative ... it's parody ... etc. THEN, when you start collectging megabucks for appropriating, the sympathy goes out the window. Poor Prince can afford to somehow compensate folks if he wishes.

I wonder what Shepard Fairey (spelling?) thinks about all this.
 
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