Appropriation art meets Instagram: Is copyright law ready?; MSNBC, 5/26/15

Christopher Buccafusco, MSNBC; Appropriation art meets Instagram: Is copyright law ready? :

"Prince is an appropriation artist; he takes other people’s works and repurposes them in new, slightly different ways. The field of appropriation art dates back to Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, a signed and dated urinal laid flat on the ground, and it includes Sherrie Levine’s re-photographing of famous Walker Evans images. An appellate court in New York recently declared that Prince’s modifications to photographs taken by Patrick Cariou were fair use, insulating Prince from liability for copyright infringement.

In his new work, Prince isn’t borrowing from established artists—he may be borrowing from you. His new show in New York’s Frieze Art Fair includes blown up images taken (I assume, without authorization) from other people’s Instagram accounts. According to The Washington Post, Prince left the images and the usernames intact, but he substituted his own, somewhat unusual comments beneath the images.

Will the original Instagram users be upset? They might be after they hear that Prince’s works sold for $90,000 each. Will they successfully be able to sue him? Probably not.

Again, the reason why will be the fair use doctrine. Copyright law gives people rights to encourage creativity. Although copying someone else’s creative work without paying for it is often against the law, certain kinds of copying isn’t. The fair use doctrine protects some kinds of copying when doing so is beneficial to society. For example, a reviewer can reproduce a portion of a book or movie in order to criticize it."

A reminder that your Instagram photos aren’t really yours: Someone else can sell them for $90,000; Washington Post, 5/25/15

Jessica Contrera, Washington Post; A reminder that your Instagram photos aren’t really yours: Someone else can sell them for $90,000:

"This month, painter and photographer Richard Prince reminded us that what you post is public, and given the flexibility of copyright laws, can be shared — and sold — for anyone to see. As a part of the Frieze Art Fair in New York, Prince displayed giant screenshots of other people’s Instagram photos without warning or permission...

The collection, “New Portraits,” is primarily made up of pictures of women, many in sexually charged poses. They are not paintings, but screenshots that have been enlarged to 6-foot-tall inkjet prints. According to Vulture, nearly every piece sold for $90,000 each.

How is this okay?

First you should know that Richard Prince has been “re-photographing” since the 1970s. He takes pictures of photos in magazines, advertisements, books or actors’ headshots, then alters them to varying degrees. Often, they look nearly identical to the originals. This has of course, led to legal trouble. In 2008, French photographer Patrick Cariou sued Prince after he re-photographed Cariou’s images of Jamaica’s Rastafarian community. Although Cariou won at first, on appeal, the court ruled that Prince had not committed copyright infringement because his works were “transformative.”"

Fair Use, Art, Swiss Cheese and Me; New York Times, 6/16/12

Michael Rips, New York Times; Fair Use, Art, Swiss Cheese and Me:

"Patrick Cariou is not. He is an ethnographic photographer, and it is the sort of photographs he takes that have been some of the subjects of appropriation and subversion by the Pictures Generation. For this reason, the markets for Mr. Prince and Mr. Cariou are not just distinct; they are conflicting. In other words, no one heading out to purchase an ethnographic photograph by Mr. Cariou (or anyone else) was going to be diverted by the Prince show at Gagosian.

And that should be the answer to the legal question. Since Mr. Prince caused no economic injury to Mr. Cariou, despite his claims to the contrary, Mr. Prince should not be required to turn over his profits (or works)."

'Canal Zone' Collages Test The Meaning Of 'Fair Use'; NPR's All Things Considered, 5/16/12

Joel Rose, NPR's All Things Considered; 'Canal Zone' Collages Test The Meaning Of 'Fair Use' :

"Richard Prince is an art world superstar. His paintings sell for millions, and many hang in the world's great museums. But one recent series of works cannot be shown in public — at least, not lawfully. Last year, a judge found Prince liable for copyright infringement for using the photographs of another artist without permission. A federal court in New York is set to hear Prince's appeal Monday, and the outcome of that appeal could have major implications for the art world and beyond."

Apropos Appropriation; New York Times, 1/1/12

Randy Kennedy, New York Times; Apropos Appropriation:

"In March a federal district court judge in Manhattan ruled that Mr. Prince — whose career was built on appropriating imagery created by others — broke the law by taking photographs from a book about Rastafarians and using them without permission to create the collages and a series of paintings based on them, which quickly sold for serious money even by today’s gilded art-world standards: almost $2.5 million for one of the works...

The decision, by Judge Deborah A. Batts, set off alarm bells throughout Chelsea and in museums across America that show contemporary art. At the heart of the case, which Mr. Prince is now appealing, is the principle called fair use, a kind of door in the bulwark of copyright protections. It gives artists (or anyone for that matter) the ability to use someone else’s material for certain purposes, especially if the result transforms the thing used — or as Judge Pierre N. Leval described it in an influential 1990 law review article, if the new thing “adds value to the original” so that society as a whole is culturally enriched by it."