Artist Peter Doig victorious as court agrees '$10m' painting is not his work
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
However, this sentiment is unrealistically simple:
"I feel a living artist should be the one who gets to say yea or nay and not be taken to task and forced to go back 40 years in time."
The way the art market works, attribution (and provenance) is a big part of valuation. If you're a famous artist and I bought one of your paintings without having you sign a bunch of paperwork -- and who does that with young artists and amateur collectors? -- then you have the power to give or withhold a lot of value.
I think the artist was in the right here. But you have to consider what his statement would mean if he had in fact painted that picture. By denying its authenticity he would be trying to destroy its value. You can choose what you acknowledge, but as an artist you don't get to choose your own history retroactively. Like anybody else you can tell your own story, but yours might not be the only version.
Of course, this is why real collectors document provenance, sometimes extensively; and why a lot of artists will by default include a "certificate of authenticity" of some kind with every sale.
I think the things that are very different now (i.e. since about the 80's) are:
1. Much, much more money is involved.
2. In many cases there is a huge gap between what insiders would consider the "underlying work's value" and what average people would find inspiring.
3. Media, obviously, and the Internet.
(And of course even insiders can differ on #2: there are plenty of cases where the market says Yes but the academics say No. The market works hard to "correct" this in its favor.)
Here's a great article on a great artist whose name recognition was a big part of his career in the 1500's, for instance:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/08/18/mystery-of-hieron...
Eg : Jimmy Hendrix's first guitar as a child would auction for quite a lot of money. But the same model and condition guitar instead owned by some random guy in Omaha would be worthless.
I would compare the guitar to a paintbrush. Both are tools which, in the right hands, can make beautiful things. So the value comes from the pairing of the tool to the wielder, and I would expect an artist's paintbrush to be valuable when tied to a specific artist just like Hendrix's guitar, and both mostly worthless otherwise.
But the art itself should have value mostly independently, and I think the analogue to that would be the music. If someone else produced exactly the same music as Hendrix, I think it should be almost as valuable.
Concerts are about more than just the music though. They are often about the stage presence, visual affects, and the nostalgia, in addition to the music.
That being said, if this cover band had just as good a show as the original band, and somehow the same amount of nostalgia (i.e. they've been covering the original band's songs since the start and have always been just as good in concert), then again I would say yes. I don't think that's likely though.
I mean, if you boil down what you are paying for to its essence, and provide an alternative with exactly the same quality in that essence, then you should be willing to pay the same. It's almost by-definition.
The opposite has always been true. I can endorse that painting as an original pessimizer, without caveat. That doesn't imply that I own the image in terms of copyright, any more than R.Mutt endorsing a urinal as his own work, or Jeff Koons claiming various arrangements of vacuum cleaners as his own work gives them any power over any patents covering the design of the object.
This would be a stronger prohibition against libel than (IIUC) is present in US. I also don't see how it could interact with investigative reporting -- a reporter often cannot prove his statements without breaking the confidentiality of his sources.
> The artist’s lawyers said they identified the real Pete Doige, whose records matched Fletcher’s description. Doige died in 2012, but his sister, Marilyn Doige Bovard, testified at the trial that the work was created by her late brother.
Suggests that there was reason for the corrections officer to believe he had a genuine painting, and not a counterfeit. However as this made it to court it may be that the plaintiffs were in a little too deep.
[0] http://i.cbc.ca/1.3675486.1468348236!/cpImage/httpImage/imag...
[1] http://liverampup.com/uploads/images/362E348700000578-0-imag...
[2] https://www.wengcontemporary.com/cdn/uploads/default_site/ar...
But then the defendants found the "real" Pete Doige. At that point the planitiffs should have verified it and dropped the lawsuit, but for some reason they chose to keep going.
Of course this is all hypothetical because Doig obviously did not paint this given what has come out in court.
Imagine Alice is selling Bob a house. Carol comes along and says, "Don't buy that house. It's infested with termites." This is likely to cause Bob to reconsider his offer, and Alice will be somewhat pissed. If Carol is correct, there's nothing Alice can do, but if Carol is lying, Alice will likely sue for unlawful tortuous interference with business or somesuch, whatever the legal words are.
Now imagine that Alice is selling Bob a Monet painting. Carol says "That painting is fake." If Carol is some internet rando, probably doesn't matter. But if Carol is well known among Monet collectors, then her statement is likely to dissuade potential buyers. Alice will lose lots of money. If Carol is right, end of story, but if Carol is lying, perhaps to spite Alice, then hello lawsuit.
Now, getting closer to the case at hand, imagine Alice is selling Bob a Peter Doig painting. Carol says "That painting is a fake." Same story, if Carol is lying and that depresses the market price, Alice has a case against Carol.
In this particular case, it turns out that "Carol" is actually Peter Doig himself. But that's somewhat irrelevant to the legal framework. Actually, it just means he's considered an expert, and therefore his statements will affect the price. But being an expert doesn't make his statements true.
Of course, with evidence presented, obvious he's not lying.
(I'm not talking about blatant copies.)
Try doing this at the border with a "rolix" and that offended manufacturer has rights to protect their interests not a responsibility to show up to convince customs that your rolix is a real rolex from back when they had trouble spelling. So I'd say this is an example of different justice for different relative social status.
Which actually should never have mattered, because the trial never should have happened. Doig said, no, that is not my painting. That should have been the end of it, but the other party didn't like that and tried to get the court to say otherwise because they thought they had basically won the lottery.
This case seems odd based on the news coverage though (based on the coverage in respectable publications like The New York Times and Guardian). I would have, perhaps naively, assumed that the plaintiffs would have been expected to have at least some evidence that Doig (with a different spelling) was the artist in question before it went to trial. Which doesn't seem to have been the case.
Of course, this was a civil suit and the reality is that you can sue anyone for just about any reason. For better or worse.
If this concerns you, you should not be as dependent on items whose value hangs so tightly on the word of a disinterested (or worse, interested) party.
This could happen to anyone who creates things.
Their arguments were so detached from reality they may as well have been trying to prove that Elvis made the painting.
Disagree. While the linked case is indeed ridiculous, I can imagine a scenario where an artist might deny creating a work to harm the work's owner. That's something that clearly falls under tort law and a simple denial shouldn't provide immunity.
If you're mean, there are many ways to make individuals miserable through fringe use of the civil courts. All of it perfectly legal.
My instinct is that a lie doesn't need to be told to create harm in a case like this where significant value depends on whether an important person created the work. Might search for some legal blogs to see if this has been analyzed further.
In this case, I think the alleged reason he was required to do so was because he had previously denied authorship, and that doing so was a false statement that harmed the owner of the painting which the acknowledgement of authorship was necessary to undue the harm.
Not really. All that it means to "prove a negative" in this kind of a case (a civil case where the standard is "preponderance of the evidence") is that you have to bring sufficient evidence that the trier of fact (jury or judge, as the case may be) finds that the claims that the other party is making are less likely true than the alternative claims that you are making. It isn't "proof" to a high degree of certainty.
As it was here. The thing is any evidence (however weak) that a claim is true, if uncountered, can suffice for proof by a preponderance of the evidence for the claim. So, it doesn't take strong evidence to create some burden for the defense to disprove the plaintiffs claim, but the degree of proof necessary is set by the strength of the plaintiff's evidence, since the standard is preponderance of the evidence.
The problem is that plaintiff's case is logically flawed at its very core. The argument is that Doig cost him $10 million by refusing to authenticate the painting.
Why is that authentication worth anything? Because Doig is in a position to confirm that it is part of his oeuvre. And any such authentication, if provided, assumes that Doig is telling the truth.
But Doig refused to authenticate the painting. Now plaintiff says he's a liar.
So, if he's a liar, his authentication is worthless.
If he's telling the truth, the painting is not by him.
In other words, plaintiff failed to state a claim upon which relief may be granted. There's no need to even gather further evidence. It's disturbing that it took a federal judge three years to decide this; but then again, they are political appointees, so the standard isn't really whether they are logical thinkers.
(I know it doesn't work that way, Doig is out of pocket to defend himself and that's the shitty way it turns out.)
The really strange thing to me was how little resemblance the painting bore to Doig's work. The former looks like a bad Dali.
At times like this I am happy to have a rare (non-English) last name.
I'm not sure what they do actually.