Tag Archives: Artistry vs. hackery

Artistry vs. hackery…

The art world is a most curious place.  It hit the news a couple of days ago that “artist” (I put his name in quotes for a very good reason) Richard Prince had created quite the controversy.  Why?  Because he was selling -for quite a good bit of money- instagram photos he appropriated (ie took) from that service.  What exactly did he do with the appropriated items?  He simply blew them up in size without altering the images in any way and then put some new text messages on the bottom of said photos.

That was the extent of his “artistry”.

Read all about it here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/27/richard-prince-instagram_n_7452634.html

While one of the “artistic” pieces sold for as much as $90,000, I suspect this attempt to cash in on others’ works will stall now that the artist has been exposed for what he is.

However, Mr. Price is not a unique figure when it comes to “appropriating” others’ artistic works to make money for themselves.

Ask some prominent comic book artists/fans about the revered Roy Lichtenstein and you’ll find some pretty strong opinions regarding “his” most famous works.  Check out this article, for instance, which gives very clear examples of how Mr. Lichtenstein ripped off various comic book panels to “make” his art:

http://nextpanel.blogspot.com/2011/08/roy-lichtenstein-plagiarist-or-art.html

Perhaps Mr. Lichtenstein’s most famous work of “art” is this one, called “Whaam!”:

The image was ripped off almost whole by Lichtenstein from this panel from DC Comic’s Men at War #89, originally drawn by Russ Heath:

And this is only one of many such works of “art” that Mr. Lichtenstein made off the works of others and which earned him millions while the original creators got nothing.

So Mr. Price isn’t the first to rip off the art of others in an attempt to make themselves money.  Perhaps the most eloquent response to these types of things was created by Mr. Russ Heath himself with regard to Mr. Lichtenstein and his “Whaam” painting…

Bottle of Wine by Russ Heath