Gee Willikers Batman!

For some reason Blogspot wasn't working on my computer for about a month or so, so I started an lj to keep me busy in the meantime. Crossposted from http://cakepirates.livejournal.com/:

Whilst searching for pop art/artists as reference for a uni project I stumbled across this article:Lichtenstein: creator or copycat?

I was surprised, I , like many others thought that Lichtenstein was just parodying/paying homage to 1940's/50's/60's comics, but didn't realise that many of them are pretty much direct lifts from the original with slightly different colouring (he really liked blondes), if even that. If you go check out this: Deconstructing Roy Lichtenstein you can easily see where he got them from. Arguably, you could see it as "fanart" that he got paid for or found object/image art (but not quite as it's copied not collaged/CAD) and if most of the original copyright holders accept it, I suppose it's alright... or is it? I don't know, it just seems rather dishonest, especially when the artist hasn't been asked for permission (George Tuska didn't even know that his work had been used), but at the time nobody did anything for whatever reason and it's far too late now.

However, sometimes copyright can be bad. Nadia Plesner's Simple Living t-shirt design was targeted by Louis Vuitton (http://massdelirium.wordpress.com/2008/05/05/issues-management-louis-vuitton-and-nadia-plesner/) for using a similar logo (but not the same as) to theirs which is, in a way, understandable brand protection yadda-yadda, but it was for charity, surely they could've been seen to support the cause (maybe even make a donation to Save Darfur), they can easily afford to after all. Thousands of genuine fake designer products are seized every year, why not go after the makers of those rather than an artist trying to raise awareness and funds for a charity.

The world is an odd place indeed.