Togodgue immigrated from Cameroon 4 years ago.
In mid-July, O’Connell sent Johns a scathing letter. In it, he openly accused Johns of theft and proposed that the artist pay to create a foundation to assist Togodgue and other artists and athletes from Cameroon.
“Forgive me if you have considered these points and were already planning on doing something significant for Jean-Marc,” O’Connell wrote. “But the optics of the wealthiest and most respected Titan in the art world taking a personal drawing of an African ingenue … well, surely you have turned on the news or read a paper in the last three years.”
We could create a swirl of ugliness all around you. The 91-year-old Johns, who must believe his reputation as a great artist is secure, is suddenly confronted with the prospect that the main thing people will know about him is a racial offense. It's a dramatically threatening letter!
After that, the artist and the teenager came to some agreement, which is undisclosed.
ADDED: That word in the post title — "transformative" — refers to the basis for coming within the "fair use" exception to copyright law.
By the way, how did Togodgue make an anatomical drawing of a knee? Did he not copy from some medical illustrator's work?
The Washington Post headline says the teenager made a drawing of "his knee," but how can that be a drawing of his own knee?! He can't be looking at his own knee cut open. Even if he were awake during surgery, looking at his knee and drawing it, it wouldn't be all opened out like that. Isn't that a picture of the dissected knee of a cadaver?
ALSO: O'Connell is the subject of a 2013 article in The New Yorker written by Susan Orlean, "Walart/A career epiphany in a supermarket":That day, something about Walmart clicked... It was the quintessence of the suburban American experience.... After that outing, O’Connell began a Walmart odyssey, visiting stores up and down the East Coast and across the South, photographing the shelves and the shoppers—visits that were punctuated by the store managers invoking the no-pictures rule....
Anything related to Walmart is freighted with meaning.... He keeps the paintings neutral, he says, so that you can read what you want into them. That neutrality is what David Moos, an independent art adviser and former museum curator, thinks is “cogent and disarming” about O’Connell’s work.
Alec Baldwin, who owns four of O’Connell’s Walmart paintings, said that he loved them as soon as he saw them. “That’s how I grew up,” he told me. “In shopping malls in the sixties on Long Island. The prairie with acres and acres of shit to buy. . . . I know this place.”
CORRECTION: The lawyer quoted in the post title — Sergio Muñoz Sarmiento — is not Johns's lawyer, but a lawyer "who has has represented both artists and collectors in disputes over intellectual property." So it's significant that he "believes Johns may not have needed permission to use the work." That "may" — in "may not have needed" — means you're going to need a lawyer if you get sued.
Sarmiento also thinks it is important to respect the creative process and to consider the long tradition of artists incorporating ideas into their own works. That can be the urinal presented as art more than a century ago by one of Johns’s heroes, Marcel Duchamp....
“We don’t want to get to a point where artists think I have to get my art vetted by a lawyer before they start the work,” says Sarmiento.
And O’Connell's paintings copy the product packaging, as noted in his distinction quoted above: "This isn’t like him doing the Savarin coffee cup or doing some pop appropriation like I do." It's always amusing when people draw distinctions that put what they do on the good side of the line.
४३ टिप्पण्या:
It’s an off election year but some are still pretending the appropriation thing is real? John’s level of offense is directly proportional to his value to Democrats.
Imagine what Hunter Biden could put on one of his paintings…
Togodgue could do some sweet garnering here if he plays his cards right.
Thanks to James' appropriation and the controversy, I imagine the original drawing of the knee has now acquired considerable value whereas before it was worth basically nothing. And Togodgue is now an artist, not just a kid who draws. A certain amount of value could also be instantly conveyed upon his future works. It's a great opportunity.
Yeah, cancel old white Jasper. It is all about race 24/7/365.
If you take a picture of a building or a car, have you violated the copyright of the architect or the engineer? Of course not. If Johns included in his painting a reproduction of somebody else's painting, I don't see the problem. The transformative use seems obvious, but I don't think there is even a copyright claim at all. Nobody owns portrayals of the human knee, especially here where the doctor claims he was attempting to be true to anatomy.
I like the quote from the Walart article in The New Yorker:
Maybe it’s because he has no formal art training, or maybe it is just his particular turn of mind, but O’Connell lives by the credo that art is everywhere and, by extension, everyone is an artist, and he is dedicated to making art an everyday experience for the general public.
For people with a smartphone, art IS everywhere, if you are looking for it. I enjoy taking pictures of birds and animals, plants and places that I've been, as well as the occasional sunrise/sunset sky picture. There is beauty all around us for those with their eyes open.
Alec Baldwin: The internationally-recognized expert on Walmart and the people who patronize them.
That day, something about Walmart clicked...
"Clicked." Just like when he saw a racial angle to his son's friend's artwork being incorporated in a famous artist's work. Rather than just inquire about the copy right issue, O'Connell saw the race angle as leverage to essentially swallow that other artist's fame and add it to his own.
A perfect summation of the mind of a virtue signaler turned opportunist.
He probably could have made a claim that Johns stole his actual work and used it in his (Johns) own work without too much problem. To throw the entire racism blanket over it as if this was Johns inspiration- 'Hey...let's do something racist in this painting!' borders on the absurd. A 91 year old man born in Augusta, GA certainly did live in the old segregated South. It is no longer the old segregated South. And today all of them apparently live in Connecticut- Salisbury.
Not sure what Johns was thinking, but surely this was a compliment of sorts to the young artist. That said, he certainly should have requested permission to use someone else's art in his own- compliment or not.
I just see the entire racist thing a tiresome reach in this case. Cheapens, not raises, the entire claim. Makes it seem more Al Sharpton-ish than an artistic claim. Why can't it just be a usage claim without being raaaacisst?
If men weren't wired to be fascinated by pussy, there would be no feminine modesty. It would be like any other body part, like an elbow or knee, I used to say. Just a hygiene problem and nothing more.
Maybe it works the other way with blacks and deep pockets. Black modesty is violated.
High art, high dudgeon and low low Walmart prices.
Did O’Connell get written permission from Walmart (and any people in the stores visible in his photographs) for the pictures he took? Or does he have legal opinions that support his taking these likenesses and profiting from them?
If he wants to play silly buggers, we can play.
Oh! The teenager is black! Writers could save us the trouble of reading by merely mentioning that foundational detail up front, for every detail, every hint of impropriety, wrongdoing, is built upon it.
The race angle turns me off. It comes out of nowhere. As if a drawing of a knee can somehow project the skin color of the artist. Using regional slurs (as if racial and class divisions are uniquely “southern”) to suggest motive is despicable. Maybe the copyright question is the issue. Maybe it can be examined rationally in light of so many artistic license examples in popular art, from fan fiction to hip hop sampling to yes the reproduction of commercial products like Warhol and the guy in this article.
Nope. Gotta throw logic in a hole and obsess about race and inanimate objects again. We have a 30-ton boulder dropped into every issue now and it’s tiresome and stupid.
I thought this was an interesting conflict over copyright law until race was interjected. That gives it the stench of a racial hustle and makes me no longer care. It’s just about greedy people - one trying to exploit an artist in an ugly way and a famous artist exploiting material in a “traditional” way. After all, was there anything about race in the painting if one didn’t know that the creator of the knee image was from Africa?
This is the perfect feel good story of a woke culture victory that can be easily mocked by Republicans.
"A White artist from the segregated South using the work of an African teenager" who came from Cameroon four years ago, Mr. O'Connell sees fit to say.
Well, well. The South is not segregated now and has not been for some time. Cameroon four years ago was not still selling Africans into slavery. At least not to the segregated South as far as I know. So I have to wonder at the imaginative Mr. O'Connell's skill at crafting an outrage story to fit so nicely into the madness of the day. It's almost as if he's learned a lot about packaging and marketing form his trips through the Walmart isles.
"Togodgue could do some sweet garnering here if he plays his cards right. Thanks to James' appropriation and the controversy, I imagine the original drawing of the knee has now acquired considerable value whereas before it was worth basically nothing."
James? You must mean Johns. But the original drawing doesn't belong to Togodgue. He gave it to his surgeon. Togodgue owns the copyright, a set of rights having to do with copying it.
"Oh! The teenager is black! Writers could save us the trouble of reading by merely mentioning that foundational detail up front, for every detail, every hint of impropriety, wrongdoing, is built upon it."
You're addressing me, not the Washington Post. WaPo put it in the first paragraph.
This doesn't do Jasper Johns any credit. The expectation would be that you either ask for permission first or use the drawing as a springboard for your own imaginative and original rendering, rather than just copy it to put in your own painting. But would we be hearing about this story without the racial angle?
"Nice reputation you have there, old man. Shame if anything were to happen to it..."
Johns just had the misfortune to live into these ugly times and insist on remaining an artist.
Better to lie flat.
If you take a picture of a building or a car, have you violated the copyright of the architect or the engineer?
In France the answer to that, regarding buildings, can be yes.
https://theculturetrip.com/europe/france/articles/why-its-illegal-to-take-pictures-of-the-eiffel-tower-at-night/
What strikes me is the recruitment of young athletes from abroad to a private New England High School. Are there no student athletes in the U.S. who might also benefit from what is self described as a Sugar Daddy relationship between the school and the student. The student who in this case has now suffered two injuries requiring surgery as a result of this play for pay arrangement? Would young Mr. Togodue have been offered this opportunity if he were 5’6” and not 6’5”?
In the era of Black Lives Matter, they found it particularly offensive that a White artist from the segregated South was using the work of an African teenager in this way.
Wow it really is always 1963 for some of these people, isn't it?
I have a family member that is a set decorator for film and TV. They get clearance for every piece of art on sets. I remember that he did a pilot where a scene was filmed on location in an elementary school. Pictures were taken of everything on the walls of the room. All the existing artwork done by children was taken down and stored. He had his crew make "kid's art" with crayons to put in place of the removed art. (He used one that his young daughter did - and filled out a waiver for it.) After filming, the fake kiddie art was taken down and the real kiddie art was put back up, using the pictures as a guide.
There is a painting of a ship on the ocean that is in possibly 100+ films and TV shows, usually behind a desk in an office. An LA prop house paid to have a bunch of them in various sizes made and owns copyright on it, so no legal problems.
“Sarmiento also thinks it is important to respect the creative process and to consider the long tradition of artists incorporating ideas into their own works. That can be the urinal presented as art more than a century ago by one of Johns’s heroes, Marcel Duchamp....”
He completely missed the essential legal point - it is perfectly legal, under the copyright laws, to copy ideas, just not the expression of those ideas. A lot of the interesting case law in copyright involves this idea/expression dichotomy, and that the purported copyright expert attorney just opened up questions of his expertise.
Ann, I think it was, was absolutely correct - it all revolves around Fair Use (17 U.S. Code § 107), and its 4 factor test. There very much appears to have been unlicensed copying of original expression. The question is whether the copying was allowed under Fair Use:
17 U.S. Code § 107 - Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include—
(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
How many times has Edward Hopper's Nighthawks been copied? I don't know if or how copywrite law applies to that work but the following was in the description of just such a copy ...
Nighthawks by Edward Hopper is a remarkable oil painting with exceptional use of color, detail and brush strokes. The original was created in 1942. This oil painting is filled with silence; like Hopper's other works, the scene created is still and tense. This very strong and beautiful piece will be contemplated and admired in your home by all who visit ... Painting arrives ready to hang and with a Certificate of Authenticity.
Nighthawks
I certainly wouldn't by it without that Certificate.
If you take a picture of a building or a car, have you violated the copyright of the architect or the engineer?
Under U.S. law (specifically, 17 U.S.C. Section 120(a), the copyright in an architectural work
"does not include the right to prevent the making, distributing, or public display of pictures, paintings, photographs, or other pictorial representations of the work, if the building in which the work is embodied is located in or ordinarily visible from a public place."
I don’t see the problem. We stole math and philosophy from the black Africans along with rhythms taken up by Beethoven, et al. Taking some half assed drawing from a kid seems like a non event in the scheme of insults and tribulations that we rain down on our black brothers on an hourly basis. Think grits, think fried chicken, think collard greens if you want outrage.
"This doesn't do Jasper Johns any credit. The expectation would be that you either ask for permission first or use the drawing as a springboard for your own imaginative and original rendering, rather than just copy it to put in your own painting."
Let's say you do collage and you have a tabletop covered in scraps you've torn out of magazines — various photos and illustrations and letterings. You make selections, you tear them down or cut them down and arrange and rearrange them, glue them down then glue other things on top, you rip sections out, you layer and layer and screw around with it all for days.
Are you saying that you should get permission from everyone who made everything that went into your pile of stuff before you started?
"Nice reputation you have there, old man. Shame if anything were to happen to it..."
Yes, that's exactly my point.
Loved Ed Ed Harris's lunatic act in the movie. Or,wait. I guess that was Jackson Pollock. Never mind.
So O'Connell jumps into the fray to exercise his White Man's Burden. Life would be so much sweeter if liberals were less racist and feel the need to perpetuate colonialist stereotypes of Africans needing White help to get along in the world.
Of course, in these excerpts the African's voice is completely shut out. We have no idea what he thinks of all of this. And no, I won't click over to the mendacious Bezos' Daily Woke Newsletter to find out. I'm not that interested in stories of anti-white racism and provincialism, and I am even less interested in what modern artists think about damn near anything.
Remember, the *purpose* of copyright is to encourage artists to produce works for the public to enjoy, not to give the first person who did something a way to prevent others from working.
In any case, I don't think the drawing itself was original or a transformative use of someone else's work. Isn't it a copy of a medical illustration done by someone with access to a dissected cadaver? Maybe the person who did the dissection should be considered the first creative person in the line of creativity.
God made that knee. What right does any artist have to claim originality over a technical reproduction of this Divine work? And what race should we assume God is for evaluating His wokeness?
In the era of Black Lives Matter, [he] found it particularly offensive that a White artist from the segregated South was using the work of an African teenager in this way.
WTF?
1: The South is only segregated in places controlled by the Left
2: So, what you're saying is that everyone should ignore everything done by anyone not "white", because if you use anything from "non-white" people you will be attacked?
That's a great blow for racial integration.
/sarc
Of course, that's the point. If "black people: started thinking of themselves as "people" instead of "black people", they might stop voting 90%+ for Democrats, and then the Left wouldd be screwed.
So, at all times and all places, we must do everything to make "black people" convinced that society is racist and they're under assault.
Which, after all, is true. but it's "left wing society is racist", and they're under assault from the Left
Howard said...
This is the perfect feel good story of a woke culture victory that can be easily mocked by Republicans.
Poor Howard. Even he knows that his side is completely in the wrong here. But he is contractually obligated to say something, no matter how stupid, on every Althouse post.
So, here he is
While the racism angle is pure BS, Johns did copy another person's work without permission. He really didn't transform it, he just added it to his own work.
“In France the answer to that, regarding buildings, can be yes.”
That’s an indication of the problem with Europeans in ,general, and the French, in particular, when it comes to copyright. They believe in something called “moral rights”, which gives artists, in particular, special rights to their creations. For example, you typically can’t destroy a work of original authorship in France. Luckily, we imported only a little bit of heir moral rights.
The "segregated South"??
Has anyone in the article ever been to Boston???
"In the era of Black Lives Matter, [he] found it particularly offensive that a White artist from the segregated South was using the work of an African teenager in this way."
Blow me.
@Bruce Hayden
So the goblins in the Harry Potter books are French? Since Rowling is a Brit it all makes so much more sense now.
Without plagiarism there could be no culture.
I wonder how Togodgue got the information to make his drawing? It seems physiologically detailed enough to be a copy of a medical office poster or an anatomy chart, perhaps he does not have the copyright to the sketch anyway.
टिप्पणी पोस्ट करा