Copyrighting, and art theft/quotation

If you are going to reference someone's work, SAY SO in your work.
That's all. Be transparent, be upfront, acknowledge those whose work, and I emphasize WORK, you are including in your work.

Usually you are influenced by other artists or show the style of another artist previously known, and if you have borrowed or been highly involved with another artists specific technique it is only right that you reference that work in some way as there are lots of people out there that can look at what you are doing and know anyway.
If you are showing in a gallery you are usually given the opportunity to have your background available with you work/if not you should ask to have it available with your work, and it should include the influences you have, the skills you have aquired and if you have aquired those from someone else, etc.
If you are publishing work it must be your own, or you must go the long and legal route, its the only fair and legal thing to do.

painters used to paint from prints of famous classical work which circulated ideas through the globe. It was not only common but a form of gratitude to base your self portrait on, say, appolo, or some classical art. It was considered paying a tribute. Now, if someone wanted to, say, take a classical figure/pose and stick it in their painting, it would be seen completely differently. If you do publicy acknowledge you've copied some element of somene's work, worse case scenario they sue you and the people who own the copyrights to their prints sue you, and you are poor and your name is tarnished and so on.

I see what you mean, influenced by is very different than, "took a figure out of and changed the face/hair color."

If you are going to use say a portion of Venus in a work of art but, you have copied that from a book, a website, a commercial endeavor of any kind, you should contact the publisher, owner etc and ask before doing anything of your own. I think thats just logical-and being very prudent in your own work and showing a great deal of gratitude for the artist/owners rights as well. Most of the time, something simple can be arranged-especially for works before I think its 1978 the laws got tighter, still though, 70 years after the passing of an artist their heirs have rights prior to that so..what can you do?
Imagine if you spent a great deal of time, money, effort and produced a fabulous work of art. This work was copied and distributed on the internet, in greeting cards, as merchandise, etc etc etc and you never saw a dime, or profit of anykind for that matter. Would you not be a bit miffed? Now, if a merchandiser approached you and said I have some great ideas and I would like to purchase copywrite, or partial use for a set amount or continuing amount-that wouldnt be so bad. You would be getting approval and profit and it would have been done with your consent and knowledge.
Now, you strive to become a great artist. During that time you successfully begin a new techinique. This technique is found to be quite lovely by all and before you know it, everyone is trying to do it, to copy what that is you are doing. Can you do anything about that? No, not really. You can keep a great many things to yourself but, any educated person might figure it out eventually. If someone is copying your technique but, not your work, I think there is a broad difference.
As far as the work of the masters you know, one my first oil projects was to pick an artist and transform their work to something completely different. It was interesting to find a class full of people with famous works done differently and we all learned something from that. I did OKeefe's Cow Skull and Roses but, did it in all super bright color and my thought was that her work was always soft yet detailed enough to sustain color. Now, would I publish this, probably not..mostly due to its lack of any real quality however, would OKeefe see it as an infringement of her work? (well her heirs at least) I dont think so. If I had copied it directly without change trying to mimic the work exactly..yes. If I did my own work with her techniques, I dont think so in that case either.

I think if you copy work then it should purely be for a learning exercise and not sold - it isn't 'yours'.

However, if you change and develop it into something different then you just need to credit the original.

I once did charcoal drawings from a sort of 'soft porn' Victorian painting in our museum of 2 naked ladies curled into a circle, lying on a beach with curvy hills behind and also of a powerful Sutherland painting of Christ on the cross with slashing anguished marks.

I took the composition of the Procter (the naked ladies) and used the anguished slashing marks of Sutherland, making the soft hills into jagged ones and changing the mood to some sort of ?shipwreck ?war scene ?catastrophe of some sort.

The finished piece (a very large ink an charcoal drawing) was absolutely different from either of the starting points and definitely 'mine' but I still called it ProcterXSutherland to acknowledge the 2 artists who were the starting point.

I was referring to stealing more in the form of what viv was talking about. I would be horrified if some company stole my entire painting, slapped it on a card, made a bunch of money and didn't give me any. However, if an artist took the swan out of one of my paintings, and painted from it into another different painting of theirs, I wouldn't mind - they could sell it for millions and I wouldn't care. I would definately want to be acknowledged, though. What I was wondering is, if you paint from an object in a painting as your source material, not the whole painting, would that break copyright law?

There's that guy who is rich doing reproductions of Van Goghs and the mona lisa and whatnot. Gee, wonder if those will increase in value .

Are you making an exact copy of a piece of work and incorporating it in your own work? Then I would say..yes. If someone was to use half of the Mona Lisa well, its still the Mona Lisa however little of it there is. Half of one of my images is just closly cropped I would say, and yes, a copywrite infringement.
Im trying to get what you are trying to do here. Say I received a museum advertisement. In this advertisement there was a work of art. I cut out this piece of work and incorporated it into a painting. Is it still recognizable as that orginal piece of art? Or could the owner recognize it as part of their work? Then, yes, I think it would be a great deal of copywrite infringement. Is this what you are doing?
You say you would want acknowledgement if someone else used a part of your work in their own and went on to make a fortune. Here where it gets personal. You may simply want acknowledgement, another artist may want a single use fee, another royalties for use of the work. That is why it is important to contact copywrite owner ahead of time.
Anyway, I think that about sums it up as to what you are doing and looking for.

I'm not really doing this, I was wondering about it. Quotation used to be so important to artists - especially in classicism and neoclassicism. I had a teacher who always said "Artists are theives in the night, steal as much as you can." But, being a very honest person, the use of the word "steal" in that sentence bothered me. Some of the paintings both I and society most admire, especially from the renaissance built off the work and good ideas of other artists, sometimes directly - especially through the wide circulation of prints, once that was invented and established. I was wondering if art suffers - if there is a restriction of idea flow because of strict copyright laws (although I am glad they are in place.) Also, should I feel morally bad about taking a composition or a figure that I like and incorporating that into my painting? I think modern society says, that is bad - that is stealing and it is wrong. However, it's what my historical inspiration is all about - using images sort of like exchangable bricks with which to build your own house.

I really want to get a dialogue going about this, because it is a subject that interests and somewhat confuses me. On one hand I love that artists work can be protected under law. On the other hand, the masters used tons of source material from other artists, they even had workshops where their students would help them. I wonder if artwork suffers because of strict laws and burden on the original to create from a little bit of a vaccum, or if artwork prospers because there is more incentive to do original work now that you can hold copyright and make money off of anything created.

I think that artists can certainly benefit from studying and practicing from the techniques of other artists certainly. I do believe also as you do, that stealing isnt the way to go about it. Being an artist, you have a natural talent and strong creativity so, using technique of past and forming yourself into your own vision is certainly the best way to go. If you arent doing that, then arent you simply creating a forgery? Not that the talent of cush a person also isnt of a certain demand however, you and I wouldnt go there, someone may.
I think the copyright laws a certainly positive, and keep those lacking in talent or vision from prospering from the work of others. I dont believe artwork suffers from that. And it would seem thinking about it actually that creativity would prosper to a greater degree.

If I was creating a forgery by doing this, most of the works of the great artists prior to the 1800's are forgeries. Bosch, Benjamin West, Charles wilson Peale, many renaissance sculptors drew heavily from the artwork of the greeks, and do you have any -idea- how many paintings figures from the laocoon show up in? I don't think that these people were thieves or forgers, but maybe we consider that symptomatic of their times. Or, as in the case of the greeks, is there a certain amount of time that can pass before recycling the works of an old civiliztion becomes okay?
Or distance? Americans took a great deal from the japanese prints when we forced them to trade with us. Islamic and Christian art and architecture constantly stole from each other, especially during the contact of the crusades. If is is sanctioned in certain cases, when and how is it sanctioned?

...but each of these you quote move the works on Portal and they become something quite different in the process. So this is 'quoting' or using the work as a jumping off point.

I too feel that even a small piece of my work COPIED is an infringement of copyright (it is in law but of course when artists have been dead for x number of years this no longer applies anyway).

A liiving artist would have the right to sue and some have done so. There is an organisation here that you can join and it protects you and fights your case for you.

A rather different context but one of my tutors saw a screenprint of his used in a TV ad in the background - he contacted the firm, threatened to sue and got a nice lot of money!

DREW from--not outright copied and made their own
Took a great deal--sounds more like association than copyright infringement

I think theres an incredibly large difference from that and forgery.

So, if it is okay to use it as a source, but not as a direct copy, where do you draw the line? Is a stolen pose or scene okay if the color are changed? The context/light is different? The face is different? Should it be unrecognizable to the common eye?

Also, I thought the owners of the copyright or the museum could sue - say, if you used the mona lisa, Bosch, or Botticelli- somthing like that.

I don't think I would sue if I saw my art in the backround of an ad - especially if it just happened to be there b/c someone bought it. Maybe it depends on the ad .

Example of "Borrowing" in literature: the end of the grapes of wrath. It bears similarity to this Greek/ or is it Roman story... Is it aggripina? Where a nursing woman saves her father from starvation by offering her breast daily, while he is in prison.

Tolkien's work takes a great deal from (I think Norse) myths.

It is legal to represent a work of art in the past in any way an artist sees fit providing it isn't copyrighted. The originator of the work is the only one who can copyright it so I don't see Da Vinci giving anyone a problem and certainly not a museum. The work is actually suppose to have the C in a circle on the work and some artists have used the ultra violet ID of a thumbprint on the actual painting. drawing or print.

Most artists title their pieces "Homage to..." It is illegal, of course, to copy a painting and then use the original signature, but if you were to do a pretty good copy and the artist signed their own name there's no problem.

I worked on a case where a pop artist included a "Hard Rock Cafe" sign. They sued and lost -- for one thing, the lettering slightly varied from the original trademark. The person suing does have to prove that a use of their imagery brought money to the artist. Difficult to prove. Camplbell Soups had a suit against Andy Warhol which was eventually dropped by advise of their attorneys -- he was giving them free advertising, basically, and it would be virtually impossible to prove that the reason the painting sold was because it was a Campbell Soup can (and, of course, not even close to the reason Warhol painted them). They eventually commissioned him to do a series of originals and prints depicting their dried Campbell Soup boxes. Warhol died before he could sign the prints.

how do you make an ultra-violet id of a thumbprint? Titanium white?
I think your work is automatically copyrighted by the act of creation, but if you have the "c" on it, it's easier to hold up in court.

That's interesting about the soup. He gave them so much publicity for free, I wonder what idiot decided to sue him. I heard he ate campbell's soup every day for lunch.

I just found this question, interesting to me and will come back to it.

There are some links on the question up in the Featured Topic - Helpful Links, I think under Art - Legal.

invisible ink only visible under ulta violet light????? like they use to tag goods against theft and use at some events so that you can exit and return.

The high salt content of Campbell soups may have been the health problem Warhol was experiencing!
(They are extremely high in salt content).

The act of creation does not copyright anything -- even putting the copyright mark does not copyright anything. One must obtain the proper paperwork (available online), fill it out with and send it in with a photograph. It costs less than a $100.00 for self registering a copyright.

Otherwise, one has no legal position to insitute a lawsuit if one's work was copied verbatim.