Over the weekend, I got the chance to have an early peak of Retna‘s Hallelujah World Tour show, which opens later this week in NYC. The show is looking like a real next step for Retna. The work is big, beautiful and a definite evolution from what he’s been doing. Here’s a little preview:
Arrested Motion also previewed the show and has more images on their site.
Photos by RJ Rushmore
Roa recently took a trip to Mexico where he got up to a lot of painting, including collaborations with Saner and Sego. Lots more images (including some animals that Roa had not painted before) over on Ekosystem.
Photo by Roa
As mentioned a few days ago, Mr. Brainwash is being sued by Glen E. Friedman over the use of Friedman’s iconic photo of Run DMC. While this lawsuit has been going on for quite a while, attention was first really brought to it after a recent post on Boing Boing. The immediate reaction from the blogosphere seems to be to side with Friedman and against MBW, while somehow trying to explain how this is massively different from Shepard Fairey’s lawsuit with the AP where most of these same people were siding with Shepard.
I would love to, as usual, bash Mr. Brainwash’s work as overpriced, barely qualifying as art, completely derivative and only of any value (monetary, intellectual or otherwise) for the absurdity of him and his career as a whole. And I’d love to back up Glen E. Friedman, a photographer with a uniquely talented eye that combines taking photos of interesting/historic things with aesthetic and technical know-how. If there’s a guy a want to like in this story, it’s Friedman, and if there’s a guy I’d love to hate, it’s Mr. Brainwash. Unfortunately, I’m not going to take the easy sides. All those things I’ve said are true, but in the wider context of fair use and artist rights, Mr. Brainwash is the bastard child of a good idea worth defending.
A lot of MBW’s work relies on taking existing iconic imagery and changing it to fit within his world. With the Run DMC image, he has used it in a variety of ways, including stencils and his portraits made of broken records. He didn’t copy the photograph and start running off copies. He transformed it into something new. Yes, you could overlay MBW’s stencils with Friedman’s photo in photoshop and they would match up, but that’s how references photographs often work. That similarity, the reference, doesn’t mean they two works are the same thing or that MBW is legally obligated to license the use of the image from Friedman. The MBW artwork transforms the Friedman photograph into something new, and even if it doesn’t, street art fans need to be careful about not defending appropriation.
Street art and pop art in particular have relied heavily on the ability to appropriate from other people’s photographs or other imagery, iconic or not and often not licensing or even crediting the original creators. Shepard Fairey (countless times including his early André the Giant image and the Obama poster), Banksy (source), D*face (source), Rene Gagnon (source), C215 INSA (okay this one is within the public domain but it’s still a good example of appropriation) and so many others have used source imagery in their artwork and transformed it into something new. We can debate, particularly with a lot of pop art, the extent to which the original thing was transformed, but there is definitely a change taking place and some sort of artistic or design input involved in making that new image. And if you want to argue that in all those examples I provided except for INSA, the artist should be legally and morally obligated to license the imagery from the creator of the source material, then that’s another debate. What I’m taking particular issue with today is that the same people who defend Shepard Fairey doing his lawsuit with the AP are now rooting for Friedman against Mr. Brainwash for doing essentially the same thing that Fairey did.
Sean Bonner has argued that the key difference between what Fairey and MBW did comes down to how iconic the photograph was to start with. By that logic, any random photograph is fair game to turn into a stencil without credit, but it would become problematic if the source photograph is well-known. Well then Bonner must also think that a lot of street art and pop art is vulnerable to lawsuits. The same argument that Bonner makes on behalf of Friedman would threaten some of the artists mentioned in the last paragraph, Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Can series, the work of Elaine Sturtevant, any artist using Mickey Mouse except in instances of parody and possibly even Shepard Fairey’s Andé sticker since Fairey was basically utilizing the iconic nature of Andé the Giant for his sticker.
Taking that view out of art and looking at music for a moment, mash up artists like Flosstradamus, The Hood Internet, Girl Talk and DJ Dangermouse rely on a combination of iconic and non-iconic sounds for their songs and don’t license that material. The courts have made it clear that a lot of what they do is illegal, but I don’t think that’s a decision conducive to the creation of new art and music. The White Album, The Black Album and The Grey Album are three very different artistic creations.
I hope that MBW wins this lawsuit and the rights to fair use and artistic appropriation are upheld.
That said, I want to get back to my earlier comment that MBW is the bastard child of fair use. It doesn’t seem to me like MBW’s artwork is how fair use is intended to work. And he looks like a complete jerk for not licensing imagery which it might have been possible to license (Shepard Fairey has licensed some of Friedman’s photos). The ethical thing to do might have been to at least attempt to license as much of the imagery that MBW uses as is possible. But he can’t legally have an obligation to license the imagery. Otherwise, art and music are screwed. MBW’s art based on iconic imagery is not how fair use is intended to work, but if it doesn’t work for MBW, it stops working for the artists who deserve fair use rights and use them respectfully. Although excessive allowances for fair use can screw good over people like Friedman who get taken advantage of by jerks like MBW, on balance, it’s better to have too many rights for fair use than not enough.
But I’m no expert on fair use. I’m hoping to get a nice discussion going here. What do you think?
PS, if you’re wondering why I’ve not posted Friedman’s original photo, it’s because I don’t have permission or a way to get in touch to ask for permission, and I don’t want to upset him by using his photo without permission even though it probably qualifies as fair use in this case. Just kidding (sort of).
Photos by catheadsix and textdrivebys
In a city with very little street art like Atlanta, Ola Bad is making a big impact with his dreamcatcher project.
Check out his flickr for more info about the project.
This picture was taken right before Christmas:
This is the first in a series about empathy and homelessness. The idea is to draw dreamcatchers and put them up where homeless people sleep and go back at night to photograph them sleeping under it. My goal is in atlanta for the symbol of the dreamcatcher to become synonymous with empathy and gratitude. To see one outside even when noone is sleeping under it is to hopefully become thankful for what you have.
I got to talk to phil in the middle of putting this piece up. Hes been here for a long time and let me know that when the sun goes down thats where i can find him. We discussed the issue of homelessness and why atlanta is spending money on things other than a solution to housing them. I gave him a bottle of rum, canned food , some baked goods, and cigs. He insisted on shaking my hand even though it was covered in wheatpaste.
The next day when i was walking i saw him and he introduced me to his friend, gave me the biggest hug, and told me he loved me. Thats what its about. I could care less on how many views this gets my goal is already accomplished on a personal level. My hopes are to get a show built around a series of these and donate half of what i make to the specific person in the photo.
Have a great holiday and be thankful you arent out in the cold.
Love Ola
and this one right after the snowstorm that hit Atlanta last week:
Photos by Ola Bad
Great news today from Becki Fuller and Luna Park at The Street Spot: Reader/Booker/ReadMoreBooks/Hoodrich/Boans… has a book out. Operation Madman has a 186-page hardcover book called The Reader. Reader is one of my favorite active writers in America and while I haven’t seen this book in the flesh (I’ve just ordered my copy), I’m pretty confident that it will be worth reading.
Based on the sample pages online, this doesn’t look like a typical graff book at all, but then again, Reader isn’t your typical writer.
This weekend, The Reader is available online for $13. After this weekend, it will be $20.
Photo by LoisInWonderland
Yes. Blu and Nunca and Shepard Fairey and all the rest can put up really impressive gigantic murals that tourists will travel from around the world to see and property owners will cover in plexiglass. That’s cool sometimes. But there’s something to be said for the anonymous street art that just makes people smile. It’s an often overlooked segment of the street art world, because a lot of that sort of work is small, very ephemeral, hard to notice, something that doesn’t look like art, hard to capture an image of on film and impossible to experience through a photograph. This is a short post attempting to draw attention to some of that art. To me, it’s just as important, if not more important, than the sort of street art that will one day wind up in museums.
Over the winter break, a high school friend of mine introduced me to Faces in Places. He loves that blog. Me, I’m indifferent, but I see the appeal. When I mentioned to him that there were a bunch of googly eyes appearing on my university campus, where people would put googly eyes on things to help facilitate more Faces-in-Places-like-things, he laughed. Here at Haverford, the googly eyes are a mystery, but it turns out that some of his friends started a bunch of googling (as they call it) on the Wesleyan University campus. I don’t think they were consciously trying to make art, they were just trying to make people smile and take back to the world “googling” from Google. But putting googly eyes on things is amazing street art. Is it as complex as something by MOMO? No. But it makes people smile and it brightens their day! That, to me, is one of the most noble and important goals of street art. And it’s not particularly difficult to achieve. So go and google something or scribble a funny piece of graffiti in the bathroom stall, it’s probably not going to end up in MoMA, but it may just make somebody smile, and that’s much more important.
Another similar project is this one by Oh San Fransisco:
Even though there’s a slight advertising component with that project and it’s not completely anonymous, it’s still a pretty damn good gift to the community. Putting up swings is a simple gift to make the world a better place. Kudos to Oh San Fransisco for getting out and making people have a better day. Random Acts of Greatness also explains well why they like Oh San Francisco’s project.
Photo by waystation
Not sure any comment will do this video justice. RIP NÉTICOS Guigo.
The video is by Choque Photos for the Biennial in Sao Paulo.
This statement was just posted to Shepard Fairey’s website and The AP:
The Associated Press, Shepard Fairey, and Mr. Fairey’s companies Obey Giant Art, Inc., Obey Giant LLC, and Studio Number One, Inc., have agreed in principle to settle their pending copyright infringement lawsuit over rights in the Obama Hope poster and related merchandise.
Mr. Fairey used an AP portrait photograph of Mr. Obama in making the Hope poster. Mr. Fairey did not license the photograph from the AP before using it. The AP contended that Mr. Fairey copied all of the original, creative expression in the AP’s photograph without crediting or compensating the AP, and that Mr. Fairey’s unlicensed use of the photograph was not a fair use.. Mr. Fairey claimed that he did not appropriate any copyrightable material from the AP’s photo, and that, in any event, his use of the photograph constituted a fair use under copyright law.
In settling the lawsuit, the AP and Mr. Fairey have agreed that neither side surrenders its view of the law. Mr. Fairey has agreed that he will not use another AP photo in his work without obtaining a license from the AP. The two sides have also agreed to work together going forward with the Hope image and share the rights to make the posters and merchandise bearing the Hope image and to collaborate on a series of images that Fairey will create based on AP photographs. The parties have agreed to additional financial terms that will remain confidential.
“The Associated Press is pleased to have reached resolution of its lawsuit with Mr. Fairey,” said Tom Curley, president and CEO. “AP will continue to celebrate the outstanding work of its award-winning photographers and use revenue from the licensing of those photos to support its mission as the essential provider of news and photography from around the world. The AP will continue to vigilantly protect its copyrighted photographs against wholesale copying and commercialization where there is no legitimate basis for asserting fair use.”
“I am pleased to have resolved the dispute with the Associated Press,” said Mr. Fairey. “I respect the work of photographers, as well as recognize the need to preserve opportunities for other artists to make fair use of photographic images. I often collaborate with photographers in my work, and I look forward to working with photos provided by the AP’s talented photographers.”
The AP’s copyright infringement lawsuit against Obey Clothing, the marketer of apparel with the Hope image, remains ongoing.
While Shepard claims to still believe that he is in the right in this issue due to fair use (which I would agree with), both this settlement and his post-lawsuit behavior says that he is, at least, being much more careful about appropriating imagery. It sounds like the settlement may result in a series of licensed AP/Shepard Fairey collaborations and Shepard has recently been giving photographers credit for basing his work on their photos and starting to call the work collaborations between him and the photographers, so I’m guessing that he’s licensing those images.
For artists, it’s too bad that this didn’t end up in court as a test of fair use, but the suit certainly wasn’t helping Shepard, so it’s no surprise that he is now working towards a settlement.
But it looks like it isn’t all over, with a separate lawsuit continuing against Obey Clothing for pretty much the same reasons. Perhaps the issue of fair use will be sorted out there.
Photo by sushiesque
tasj vol ii – issue iv is now out – thanks to everyone who picked up a copy at our opening last Saturday and/or has signed up to receive it in the mail for free – we recently got a ton of new subscribers. You can get a deeper sense of the contents of this issue on the tasj tumblr here, but just quickly, street art fans will find Elbow-Toe and Keith Haring in At The Auctions, Sixeart, Dan Witz, Krystian Truth Czaplicki and Boxi in Perspectives, a Conversation with Slinkachu (plus a pull-out poster of one of his recent pieces!), highlights from the collection of Wendy Asher (remember her scene in Exit Through The Giftshop?), which includes Banksy, Mark Jenkins, Shepard Fairey and JR, reviews of Untitled III: This Is Street Art and Barry McGee and Remi/Rough’s monographs in Bookshelf and Aakash Nihalani and Kill Pixie in Limited Edition. Unurth picks for this issue range from Over Under, Labrona, Roa, Vhils, Phillippe Baudelocque and Monsieur Qui to Ericailcane, Sr. X, Jote, Ludo, Liqen and Sten & Lex.
Most importantly for Vandalog readers, however, is the mention of the Faro x Vandalog collaboration t-shirt (also available: Gaia and Other) alongside Rime‘s Balaclava Dude tee in Toolkit!
Grab a copy to see the rest of the issue! If you don’t currently receive it in the mail and would like to, click here. You can also keep up with us on Facebook.
– Elisa
