Re: Fine Art Reproductions

On 3/29/99, Bob Stock <bstock[_at_]attymail.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/27/99, Lesley Riley <lrileyart[_at_]aol.com> wrote:
> >
> > I make collages. If I use a copy of a work of art in the public
> > domain, but from an art book recently published, am I infringing
> > on copyright?
>
> If the copy that is in the art book is copyrightable as a separate work
> because it adds enough originality to qualify as copyrightable subject
> matter, then your copying that copy would be infringment. Assuming, on
> the other hand, that the copy in the art book is a simple transfer from
> one media to another, then (IMO) there would be no infringement because
> the copy would not be copyrightable. People might argue about this
> distinction.

In a slightly different vein, I recently met the photographer Lauren Greenfield, a professional photographer (National Geographic, NY Times, etc.) whose work recently was "appropriated," as I believe the term is, by a painter named Damien Loeb. Greenfield published a book of photos of LA teens a few years ago. The cover was a picture of four kids driving around. Loeb took this image -- or, rather, painted a completely faithful copy -- onto a large canvas and juxtaposed it against a background taken from another photograph, a gory picture of a white South African cop shooting some prone black people. By the juxtaposition, the kids in Greenfield's picture are made to seem to be speeding by the killing, laughing at the scene. The copy of her photograph occupies about 40% of the painting and is obviously the subject. Loeb exhibited the picture and others like it in the prestigious Mary Boone gallery in Manhattan in January, where it apparently sold for about $15K. Moreover, Greenfield told me, the painting has been reproduced in many places, including the magazine Artforum -- it's apparently become a sort of signature image for the painter. My question is whether there's a copyright-infringement issue.

Before the Boone show, Loeb contacted the photographer to ask permission to use the image. Greenfield says that she refused, because she thought it was unfair to tar the kids, whom she liked, as racist. As the kids are from LA, I also wondered whether the California right of publicity law has any application here.

TIA,
Charles Mann
<ccm[_at_]crocker.com> Received on Wed Mar 31 1999 - 06:11:16 GMT