New allegations of plagiarism against Roy Lichtenstein
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
But this type of Lichtenstein work never sat well with me. The transformation is extremely minimal - minor changes to the scene, a new cropping, and conversion from ink to painting. If I handed something like that in in school I’d get eviscerated in reviews (or worse!). I’d be curious for somebody more aware of art history to chime in in more detail that the article provides about how this is considered transformative.
Also, it’s good that he was honest that his work appropriated, but it seems rude and maybe even deceptive to not credit the artist he was appropriating from.
To be clear, Lichtenstein is a very capable artist, and can produce very beautiful work that is (as far as I can tell) highly original. For example, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Cap_de_Barcelona . I’m just not sure about the types of work shown in the article.
IMO it can only be considered a feature if Roy Lichtenstein ever demonstrated that he actually could draw correct perspective if he wanted to.
Art doesn't operate through skepticism, through doubting the artist's ability. It is about valuing what is in front of you, whatever it expresses or evokes. Nobody with any sense cares whether Lichtenstein could pass a Perspective Drawing Test.
It's why Roy Lichtenstein isn't Picasso.
I usually side heavily on the side of free speech in intellectual property issues, but it seems like this crosses some line to me. It's not about the value of the form of Roy's presentation, it's about the credit and compensation to the artists he was copying.
In this case one is taking art for sale, and using it as art for sale. Its possible some can view high prestige art and low prestige art as separate markets but I don't really. In my mind its more akin to taking a novel and abridging it to a novella. Same fundamental market.
If he just made a generic comic book styled thing he’d have something but by taking existing, bottom of the barrel culture and transforming it, he made something entirely new.
This is common in art. Picasso for instance would turn prostitutes into beautiful art. Or even something as banal as a news clipping.
In your example I’d say that Lichtenstein meaningfully transformed the source material and is fair use of a drawing in a book of drawings. But making t-shirts of either the source or the painting would not meaningfully transform it nor would it be fair use and therefore a copyright violation.
It would be one thing — and probably more intellectually interesting — if he had credited the original art more openly. For example by including the artist and work in his title ("Untitled, after Private Secretary, Eisman"). But it seems like in many or most cases he didn't even acknowledge that he was copying the work.
I'm not sure what kind of statement he was making by the way he did things. Whatever he intended it's turning into something else.
The Supreme Court is actually ruling on this soon. The argument is that the artwork creates something meaningfully different and is fair use. So far the lower courts agree.
The prostitute comparison was about art in general - taking something considered worthless and making sone beautiful from it.
Comics thrived in other countries, so even if American comics were seen as right behind porn, it was only a matter of time until they eventually made their way into mainstream popularity in the US. Which, as far as I know, comics were already popular—they were just a kids’ thing. Same as how video games were just kids’ things for a solid 2-3 decades until kids who grew up on games became adults and the industry started pivoting towards their adult tastes.
Kind of like how kids who grew up on 1940s and 50s comics and their mainstream media influence started to grow a couple decades after they grew up. Batman was a pretty popular TV show roughly 25 years after being a notably popular comic book. Then 25 years after that, we started getting popular movies and more mature cartoons based on the series.
That was certainly true in the early to mid-60s in the US. (And in the UK.)
I can see it being important to the career of the “appropriating artist” but possibly you see other important concerns as well. I’m interested in learning what these important things are.
[p.s. just occurred that possibly you have a sort of greater good equation in mind. Cultural shackles and stifling establishment and stuff like that. I’d buy that argument if the “appropriating artists” chose to work anonymously for the greater good and not make lucrative careers out of it.]
I saw the examples in the article and agree with you. I wonder what prevents others from similarly appropriating the work of Lichtenstein himself. What if I were to take a Lichtenstein piece, rotate it, crop 2% of it and sell it anew w/o any royalties? Could the Lichtenstein estate really argue against it if the original its-self is stolen?
Or imagine if someone appropriated an original El_Cap_de_Barcelona, could the Lichtenstein estate argue against that when many of their own pieces have done the same?
You should definitely try this, just to see what happens.
The estate wouldn't have a leg to stand on, and any case would make the comic book sell better from notoriety.
If Lichtenstein applied the exact same approach to the Nike logo and plastered it on tshirts, he would be sued to bankruptcy and beyond.
To me it's obvious it's blatant, shameless stealing.
What happens in school stays in school, the real world doesn't care how many footnotes you have.
And, yes, if I literally copy something someone else writes or the substance of it without giving credit and they find out and complain to my company--I'm getting fired if it's blatant (as I should be).
Richard Prince wins for literally printing big Instagram photos, Shepard Fairey has to settle for the 'Hope' poster. A whole generation of artists are making careers from reappropriating classic cartoon characters.
It's a murky line.
You had me expecting some demonstration of classical skill like early Picasso works, not... that.
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/oct/22/marcel-...
The art from those like Lichtenstein, Warhol, Duchamp, Malevich, Hausmann, Pollock, etc., has to be understood within the broader international conversations around art at the time, particularly so-called "High Art" coming out of classical European traditions. It is intentionally subversive of what was the dominant mode of art at the time, because these artists broke through and fundamentally opened up 'art' to include literally anything. It is hard to describe how hostile the European Establishment of early 20th century High Art was to anything that was outside of the mainstream traditions. These artists were the Punk Rock of the time.
- Malevich paints a single geometric black square on a white canvas, signs it, and puts it on a wall in an art gallery. Utterly unremarkable today, but it was such a scandal at the time when representational art was all people recognized as art.
- Duchamp buys a mens' urinal designed and built by some random hardware manufacturer, signs it, and hangs it up on a wall in an art gallery. Duchamp later takes a print of the Mona Lisa, gives her a mustache, signs it, and puts it on a wall in an art gallery. None of this takes any technical skill in painting, sculpting, etc., which is part of why it was so subversive at the time.
- Hausmann cuts out shapes from magazines, pastes them together into the figure of a man in such a seemingly-haphazard and crude manner that a 7 year old can do it 'better,' signs it, puts it on a wall, and titles it The Art Critic.
The whole point was to raise a middle finger and say, "Who made you in charge of deciding what art 'really' is and isn't?" It intentionally takes very little of what has traditionally been considered fundamental techniques in painting, sculpture, etc. The point is that an untrained 10 year old child could do it just as "good" on a technical level of execution. So it shifts the skills required to constitute art from requiring years of expertise in technical execution of drawing, painting, sculpting, etc., to conceptual intervention.
> If I handed something like that in in school I’d get eviscerated in reviews (or worse!).
As you should be. When you take an art class today, you are almost certainly not training yourself so that you can shock the early 20th century international art establishment who can't see beyond the traditions of the old masters. Besides, that's already been done. They removed so many unwritten rules about what could or could not be considered art, but there is still a lot of value in the old traditions and techniques. It's like saying, "if I performed this punk rock song for my classical piano class, I'd get eviscerated in reviews (or worse!)"
> To be clear, Lichtenstein is a very capable artist, and can produce very beautiful work that is (as far as I can tell) highly original. For example, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Cap_de_Barcelona . I’m just not sure about the types of work shown in the article.
At the time, the art that they were appropriating was not even considered to be art as such. Not even 'bad art' or so-called 'outsider art' or god-forbid 'degenerate art' --- it wasn't even seen as art in the first place. A piece of porcelain designed to be an industrially mass-produced urinal wasn't seen as a creative expression worthy to be considered 'art.' Same with the design of a soup can, or comic books. Today, this seems ridiculous, especially with the recognition of design throughout many industries. But it wasn't at the time.
I'm all for subversive art, but that can be done _and_ credit the original.
> At the time, the art that they were appropriating was not even considered to be art as such.
I know you're saying that the idea, rather than the specific artistic merit of the contents, was the main point of these works, but this sounds super close to the "you should be thankful I published your study under my name, your work would never have gotten so much influence otherwise" argument.
But that’s not an excuse. They didn’t go far enough, and in the process aggrandized (and sometimes enriched) themselves more than they elevated the art they were supposedly freeing from the clutches of the Old Guard. Did Duchamp track down the anonymous artisan who designed his urinal and invite him to the cool artist parties where reputations spread? No? Well that just shows that the elitism these artists were rebelling against is alive and well, and that while they may have gained “low” art recognition, they did much less for “low” artists. And that’s the point of the article.
When Warhol was painting a soup can or a well-known celeb, there was no doubting the source material or who produced the image.
When Duchamp hung a urinal, there was no question about manufacture or who hung it in that way.
With Lichtenstein things get blurrier. Where did those images come from? He didn't tell us. We were not privy (I wanted that to be a Duchamp "privvy" pun but failed) to the trail of provenance that some of us might have found meaningful in other art. No, he treated his sources as though they were worthless, where other artists seemed to exalt them but placing them in the public eye.
All pop artists seemed like they were "getting away with something," but Lichtenstein seemed to be punching down hard to do that.
If you find a work you like, you follow the author to find more works with similar vision. If the author plagiarized it, you're never going to find those other works.
I listen to a lot of Touhou arrangements/remixes. Some of it is barely a cover, some of it is so different you'd be hard pressed to identify what of the original actually remains. But it's clearly labeled, and I've heard the original, and I decided with full knowledge that the new work offered enough new ideas that I wanted to own it independently.
Plagiarism is also disrespectful because it reduces the agency of the fan - it decides for them that the new work has sufficient merit and denies them the ability to make that decision themselves.
Often the artists didn't even own the original drawings, so the comic publishers could sell the originals as collectors items without the artists warning a penny.
So while I don't particularly care for Lichtenstein, I think the comic book industry itself (and indirectly its consumers) is to blame for the anonymity of comic book artist. Creator-owned comics and artist credits only really became mainstream in the 1990's.
Interestingly, this is quite different from the European tradition, where artist were well known. No artist would get away with just swiping a panel from Tintin and present it as an original work, since everybody knew Tintin was created by Hergé (although to be fair Hergé himself had uncredited assistants.)
Copying from a comic book and not giving credit is a sneaky rotten thing at best, but comics were childish and low-brow. Lichtenstein is like making a joke.
I read Warhol by Gopnick and you get an idea about the pop art movement. Low-brow references were the material of their work just as much as their paint and canvases.
Meh. How many times has Madonna and Child been "plagiarized?" Here[1] is some kind of orgy of "plagiarism." If Lichtenstein had andy-worhalled the original work, enlarged and made prints directly from the original pieces, there could be a point. But even if Lichtenstein had painted these cells faithfully, a painting of another work is not the original work itself. But that's not what Lichtenstein did. He merely used the comic cell originals as subjects and drastically changed the appearance so that they are quite different from the original. If Michelangelo painted a faithful copy of Da Vinci's Mona Lisa such that the two could only be distinguished using paint analysis or something, the feat should and would be applauded rather than Michelangelo being accused of plagiarism.
[1] https://www.pghcitypaper.com/arts-entertainment/a-unique-art...
The art world of the time thought that the very idea of emphasizing low-brow art’s disreputability was in itself high art. The art speculation world agreed, and Liechtenstein made nice bank, as did many speculators.
What these claims fail to take into account is that the buyers never cared about the “source material”. If they did, 1960s romance comics would have a multi-million dollar market today.
I don’t care for most of pop art, and certainly not Liechtenstein, but these types of allegations seem to deliberately misunderstand its appeal.
Steal Leechtenstein work you'll see what happens.
https://twitter.com/neilhimself/status/1459541191310069763
> Hey @MuseumModernArt. You mention the DC comic, SECRET LOVE #83, that Lichtenstein traced his Drowning Girl from. Wouldn’t it be better if you credited the human artist who drew it? His name was Tony Abruzzo.
(MoMA updated their website shortly afterward to credit the artist.)
Similar to High fashion where "stealing" and transformative action is recognized and accepted, in capital A art anything can be capitalized.
For those saying that Roy did not substantially transform the originals: the fact we are having this discussion decades later is proof that it was hugely transformational. Did Roy prevent any of those artists he "stole" from doing what he did?
Copyright is a silly "right" made up by emerging monopolistic hegemons to prevent others from doing what tbey did to achieve emerging hegemon status.
Intellectual "property" is not a real thing. It's not even universal in time or geography.
The artists may have had a conscience that prevented them from stealing.
For the few that didn't have a conscience, perhaps "Roy" had better connections than they did?
People underestimate how hard is to sell something, particularly when it comes to art. It requires not only business and social skills, but access to a very exclusive network which many usually arrive by third party connections (relatives and friends) and just in very rare occasions by luck or by working like a dog.
Lichtenstein was considered at the level of Duchamp who took various everyday objects (most famously an urinal) and exhibited it as art, thereby turning it into art through context. Nobody at the time protested that he was plagiarizing the actual creators of the urinal.
In my opinion Duchamp did make art, or at least a significant artistic statement which changed the perception of art forever. But Lichtenstein is really just an also-ran. And given the comic community long have been very conscious about the artistic merit of the genre, Lichtenstein's ("look what I found") just seem rather silly.
But given the comic industry's continuing reluctance to credit (never mind paying) the original comic creators, I don't think Lichtenstein is a significant sinner in comparison.
Appropriately: appropriated without appropriate attribution from Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, apparently:
a 1917 letter Duchamp wrote to his sister, Susanne, translated: “One of my female friends who had adopted the masculine pseudonym Richard Mutt sent in a porcelain urinal as a sculpture.”
R Mutt was identified as an artist living in Philadelphia, which is where she was living at the time.
Duchamp said he had purchased the urinal from JL Mott Ironworks Company, adapting Mutt from Mott, but the company did not manufacture the model in the photograph
the handwriting on the urinal matches the handwriting Von Freytag-Loringhoven used for her poems.edit: you down voters are allowing the emotional argument get to you. Think this logically. Realize the time this occurred. And realize the legal positions of a successful fine artist and that of a "scummy comic book publisher" and there is no contest, the fine artist will win every time - in our culture at that time.
Copyright provides exclusive rights to creators for derivative works. Just because that derivative is in a new market does not absolve one of copyright obligations.
It seems someone is claiming a kind of fair use? that argument rings hollow, I don't see these paintings as transformative. I wonder if anyone took him or his estate to court for copyright violations.
It's almost a trope in the art world, and the fact that many unoriginal artists use it has made it a usable argument by simple repetition.
It might not be "stealing", but something ok it also is not.
You need to sue in order for anything to happen. Laws do not enforce themselves. But no, you do not need to do anything to be considered "not public domain" but rather the opposite.
No. That's more a matter of trademark law. In general (IANAL) I assume an artist's estate could decide to start suing people even though the artist didn't. Though there may be some other wrinkles to them actually collecting money.
It's the same issue with the beatnik authors: until they wrote their thoughts down, they were considered cultural dropout trash human beings. It's all marketing. Roy successfully marketed the comic industry's own media - as totems no less, not as the stories they originated - to an audience that would have never considered them, and in effect was pivotal to modern culture.
I don't doubt your competence nor your intentions, but do you not agree that marketing to billionaires is not a strong correlation of the value of a piece of art?
Let's assume you are right about everything you are writing. It still does not support the "It is not stealing" narrative. It is supporting the "This is how Roy got away with stealing" narrative.
Additionally, as the article points out, the original artists were blocked from selling their own art as paintings because the publishers had the copyright and no interest in turning the comic book illustrators (lowly paid commodities) into respected artists.
Glancing at the artist's [article on Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Lichtenstein ), it looks like some folks really liked his work and would pay a lot of money for it..? But, why?
But what Lichtenstein did was transform cultural detritus into something considered beautiful and culturally relevant. High art by the people who decide what that is.
As a consumer if you see something and believe it is a copy of something else - and care about it - act on that belief and don't consume it. Not everyone needs to care about your belief system, and surely not wasting public good (judicial resources) enforcing your belief system
https://www.scotusblog.com/2022/10/justices-debate-whether-w...
The oral argument is worth a listen.
We could play the same game with John Williams music as this article does with Lichtenstein's work.
The reality is all art is far more derivative than the average person realizes. If you don't know that, you just aren't aware of the references.
What if I draw some other painting but an obscure artist hanging in the same museum and sell that?
What if I attribute the work as in “My drawing of the Mona Lisa” or “My drawing of this picture I saw by <painter>”
What if my drawings look very different than the original? Does that matter?
In the eyes of international copyright law, attribution times not matter at all. Looking different or being transformative does not matter at all.
These things may matter to some people, being transformative in some ways may matter to some local laws, and the Mona Lisa being too old to be under copyright matters a lot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mona_Lisa_replicas_and_reinter...
You can sell a copy of anything not covered by copyrights. You just can't lie to people about what you are selling.
What, next they're gonna tell us that crypto is a scam?
From thin air comes torrents of manure. Desire is truly the root of bs.
Perhaps art is as much about selection and presentation as creation.
If you take a photograph of another person's photograph and claim it as your own and sell it, you are stealing. Just as the "artist" discussed here.
People straight up clone every good app that shows up on the app markets and you might as well make and sell templates for any good looking, well designed web site you own because someone is going to scrape it and do that for you if you don't. That is what we have to deal with in the software world all the time and any complaints there simply get a shrug and a "welcome to capitalism" from the more experienced developers.
If it were stealing, the artists making the accusation could make their case in court or perhaps the companies could since they own the rights, but that also means the comic artists actually have no grounds for complaint, they sold their rights. You don't get to complain about the use of something you don't own anymore.
I can understand the shock some of the comic artists must have had when discovering later in life that Lichtenstein had done this; but, their anger should be directed at the companies who gave them a bad deal as well as at themselves for accepting that raw deal and never looking for something better.
For any actively working comic strip artists though, if you are aware someone is making 10x, 100x, 1000x off of very similar pieces based on your original work, you have no excuse to keep doing what you're doing.
That person has demonstrated that you are wasting your time and giving up the rights to your work for pennies on the dollar compared to what your work could be worth. If you want to make millions too, the obvious thing to do is make a full sized image of anything you make for the comic strips and sell those in art galleries. If you can't do that under your current contracts, drop those contracts.
You can always out compete copycats. You're the original, so you always have an edge there. And if you can't out compete Lichtenstein, then you must admit that he is doing something other than simply copying you. There's something he's got that people see as more valuable than just the image itself. Figure out what that is and do that too.
By the way, even if your full sized images don't sell well, the fact that you are selling in art galleries gives you grounds to sue the guy if he keeps trying to copy your work.
There were always ways to stop this guy or replicate his success, if any of those comic artists really wanted to. But they didn't start complaining until he was making a bunch more money than they were. That is just raw jealousy.