I paint. Occasionally, not very often, I’ll use another painting for inspiration because I like it, or whatever. I don’t try to sell paintings that are “copies” of another painting, but sometimes I’ll give them to people who want them. So today I was doing a painting for my father in law, and I copied this painting, which I’ve always liked, to this effect.
Obviously, this is not an exact copy, but it’s also obviously the “same” painting. Again, I would never try to sell a piece like that, but I was wondering about whether I could, if I wanted to. In other words, how does art copyright work?
‘Real’ artists (dead guys who’s works hang in museums) frequently ‘redo’ a painting from the past but with their own interpertation of the subject or theme.
Absolutely it’s a copyright violation. I remember a real to-do over the cover of a sci-fi magazine called Amaranth (or something similar - it’s 15 years ago) where the cover art appeared to be a blatant copy of another work. IIRC the artist claimed independent inspiration…
I don’t know how copyright law applies here, but I agree that it’s probably a violation. As far as plagiarism goes, I think your intent in selling it would be an issue. If you passed the painting off as totally your own - since taking credit for someone else’s idea is the essence of plagiarism - I can see the issue. If you were open about it being a copy of So and So’s Whatsit, I wouldn’t call it plagiarism. Don’t art students typically learn by copying the masters anyway?
I don’t think so, really. I took lots of art classes in school, and never remember copying anything, but maybe it’s different elsewhere. Mostly we did things like live drawing and still life, or weird experimental shit.
No answer, but some useless trivia: before photo technology the only way to have a copy of a famous artwork was, of course, to have it copied. Rembrandt, who desperately needed money for most of his life (it wasn’t that he didn’t earn it but that he lived lavishly), was irked by the fact that copies of his work (signed by the copy artists- in other words, no attempt to deceive and fully identified as “a copy of Rembrandt’s Man in a Turban” or whatever) often sold for more than his originals. The same was true of many other artists.
That’s how artists used to learn. Contemporary art education is basically how you describe, although I have no doubts that somewhere, at this moment, there’s a scrawny kid in coke bottle glasses huddled over piles of books on Caravaggio and a 11x14 canvas, shitting himself since he should have started weeks ago.
The choices an artist makes when creating a painting are, of course, rife with ambiguities and gray areas; even the choice of subject matter. Copyright law is not.
You won’t find a definite answer to this question.
I was saying that I would interpret that as plagiarism even if it is not a copyright violation. Renee recognized that there is a distinction between those two things.
It seems to me that Renee is asking about the legal implications of what she is doing or might do. Does your “interpretation” have any force of law?
In any case, I think that this expansive view of the notion of “plagiarism” doesn’t make sense in the world of visual art. Most “ideas” of depicting something visually have been done countless numbers of times. Originality, when it comes to art, is in the specific expression of an artist. Defining the creation of a work based on an already used idea essentially invalidates most of the art existing in the world.
And the more that I read your comment, the less sense it makes to me –
How can you agree that it is a violation of copyright law if you don’t know “how” copyright law applies? I think I know quite a bit about copyright law, and I am not sure how to go about answering that question.
Who brought up the question of “plagiarism”? The OP asked about copyright law. Where are you getting your definition of plagiarism? What authority enforces that definition? How does selling something fit into this construct of plagiarism?
Generally speaking, I have not heard of “plagiarism” being applied as a legal concept to a work of visual art. When I do hear about plagiarism, I hear about it in the context of scholarly works, and in such cases, it applies to the copying of expression without proper acknowledgment.
If the expression is hers. In other words, if she didn’t copy the
Again, I have to ask where this definition of “plagiarism” comes from and why you think it should be applied to the OP’s question.
But how does that apply to the OP’s question regarding the legality of what she’s doing? Copyright infringement is illegal. Is plagiarism as you have defined it illegal?
It seems to me that there are a few things we should be able to agree on:
“Plagiarism” is not a legal term. It is not addressed (so far as I know) by any body of law. So if you are trying to understand the legal consequences of what you are doing, then asking whether something is plagiarism doesn’t get you very far.
However, in some specific fields, “plagiarism” is a relevant term that is formally or informally policed by professional organizations. This is particularly relevant to academic and scholarly circles and in journalism, where plagiarism can get you fired. One would have to look to the standards set by relevant organizations to understand what they consider to be plagiarism. It is in my view that in most cases, plagiarism is defined as the copying of another author’s words (rather than just his or her ideas).
An accusation of plagiarism might also be a harm to the accused plagiarist’s reputation. However, it is unclear to me what the operative definition of “plagiarism” is in this case and to what authority one might look to find it. It might in some instances be purely a case of public perception.
But it seem to me rather clear that when considering specifically the art of painting, it would be inappropriate to restrict one artist from using an idea merely because it had been done before. If I paint a picture of fruit in a bowl, which has been done before countless numbers of times, is that plagiarism? I think not. It seems to me that in order for something to constitute improper behaviour, there has to be something more. Perhaps that “something more” comes from some consensus in the world of visual artists.
The issue of copyright infringement is a little more clear. In that case, one looks to whether your work was copied from another work and whether the works are substantially similar in expression. Reusing an idea does not constitute copyright infringement.
