Art is theft, Ctd

By no means a copy or plagiarism, but the remixing of the visual idiom is interesting. Above is Ronald Searle and immediately below is Morten Morland.

Roy Lichtenstein - Art is theft, Ctd

The famous Roy Lichtenstein 'Wham!' panel is the above image. The original by Irv Novick is below it.

Roy Lichtenstein is well known for the painting ‘Whaam!’. But less known is that the image was modelled upon an original panel drawing by comic book artist Irv Novick from the “Star Jockey” DC Comic story. Some say homage. I say plain old plagiarism.

Will Self - Art is theft, Ctd

Kingsley Amis by Anglo-Polish impressionist painter Feliks Topolski

Will Self (@wself) said during a panel conversation on Dubliners by James Joyce:

"Being pray to the anxiety of influence - and if any writer tells you that she or he doesn’t suffer from the anxiety of influence then they’re a stone-cold liar."

He explained how W.H. Auden notoriously used to write "GETS" in the margins of books for "Good Enough To Steal":

"W.H. Auden notoriously used to write in the marginalia "GETS", in the margins of books for "Good Enough To Steal". So I most re-read James Joyce’s Dubliners to steal stuff."

Will Self also explained that he likes to think he's a good enough writer to thieve. He said in the Guardian:

Leo Baxendale - Art is theft

Giles cartoon 25th July 1954

Leo Baxendale wrote:

"The catalyst for my creation of Bash Street was a Giles cartoon of January 1953: kids pouring out of school, heads flying off and sundry mayhems. Straight away, I pencilled a drawing of 'The Kids of Bash Street School' and posted it from my home in Preston to R. D. Low, the managing editor of D.C. Thomson's children's publications in Dundee. I received an offhand response, a dampener. It was only after I'd created Little Plum (April 1953) and Minnie the Minx (September 1953) that the Beano editor George Moonie travelled to Preston on 20 October 1953 and asked me to go ahead with Bash Street (he gave it the provisional title of 'When The Bell Goes'; when it appeared in The Beano in February 1954, it was titled 'When The Bell Rings'."

He also wrote:

"Alan Moore, Steve Bell, Savage Pencil and others have taken the ethos of my work, The Beano Spirit, that uninhibited outlook, and they’re carrying it on in their own work. I think that’s wonderful."

Kenneth Branagh - Art is theft, Ctd

Kenneth Branagh, in an interview with Charlie Rose on June 2014, said:

"Shakespeare was fantastically comprehensive in where he went for all his stories. He knew how to borrow and he knew how to be inspired."

He also said:

"The Barge speech in Thomas North’s ‘Lives of the Ancient Romans’, Shakespeare pilfers fairly comprehensively. He scattered his gatherings but always, always transforming."

Steven Greenblatt wrote in the Telegraph about the move of ideas from Montaigne to Shakespeare:

"The borrowing extends beyond certain expressions – kind of traffic, name of magistrate, use of service, and the like – to a vision of a whole society organised on principles directly counter to those in place in the familiar, grim realm of contemporary European reality. That is, here [The Tempest] as in the case of King Lear, Shakespeare is mining Florio’s Montaigne not simply for turns of phrase but for key concepts central to the play in question."

He continued:

"Scholars have seen Montaigne’s fingerprints on many other works by Shakespeare, whether in the echoing of words or ideas. When Hamlet exclaims to his mother, “Ecstasy? My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time,” (III .iv.130–31), Shakespeare may have picked up a hint from Montaigne’s “during his ecstasy, he seemed to have neither pulse nor breath” from “Of the Force of Imagination.” And Polonius’s “This above all: to thine own self be true” may owe something to “That above all, he be instructed to yield, yea to quit his weapons unto truth” from “Of the Institution of Education of Children.” More broadly, there is something strikingly Montaigne-like in Hamlet’s intertwining of Stoicism — “Give me that man / That is not passion’s slave, and I will wear him / In my heart’s core” — (III .ii.64–66) with philosophical skepticism — “And yet to me what is this quintessence of dust?” — (II .ii.297–98) and inner acceptance — “If it be now, ’tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all.” (V.ii.158–60)...But what is a problem for the scholarly attempt to establish a clear line of influence is, from the perspective of the common reader, a source of deep pleasure. Two of the greatest writers of the Renaissance — two of the greatest writers the world has ever known — were at work almost at the same time, reflecting on the human condition and inventing the stylistic means to register their subtlest perceptions in language."

Art is theft, Ctd

Above is a Michael Ramirez cartoon, dated 17th Dec. 2003. Below is one by Morten Morland, from what looks like 2004. The second is not a copy or a theft, but an example of how artists can borrow and replicate; or, as could be the case, coincidentally come up with strikingly similar ideas. 

Elaine Sturtevant - Art is theft, Ctd

In an obituary on Elaine Sturtevant, Hans Ulrich Obrist wrote:

"[Elaine Sturtevant] made her controversial artistic debut in 1965 at the Bianchini Gallery, New York, when she repeated Andy Warhol's Flowers, a series of silk-screen prints that he had shown a couple of weeks before. Today it is par for the course for images to be sampled, re-used and edited, but in the early 60s, acts of appropriation were yet to become a staple of the art world."

On the occasion of her 2012 retrospective, Sturtevant: Image Over Image, at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Elaine Sturtevant said:

"What is currently compelling is our pervasive cybernetic mode, which plunks copyright into mythology, makes origins a romantic notion, and pushes creativity outside the self. Remake, reuse, reassemble, recombine – that's the way to go."

According to Alexis Petridis, Gerald Scarfe and Ralph Steadman fell out after Steadman's first wife accused Scarfe of plagiarism.

Oliver Jeffers on art as theft here.

Malcolm Jones - Art is theft, Ctd

In an article, 'There’s Nothing Wrong—and a Lot That’s Right—About Copying Other Artists' Malcolm Jones said:

"I learned to draw and paint on my own, and I did it by copying."

He also said:

"I understood more about Vermeer by painting my own Vermeer… than I had ever learned by simply staring at his paintings."

Oliver jeffers said the same:

"Any opportunity I get to see John Singer Sargent, I do. For technical ability. That’s how I learned how to paint, by dissecting his work and trying to work out, how does he make that look like an ear but he’s only done three strokes?"

Oliver Jeffers has previously spoken on art as theft here. Coco Chanel said:

"Only those with no memory insist on their originality."

Andrew Sullivan wrote a piece, 'In defence of duplicating art'.

Previous posts, Julian Opie on art as theft here.

Jonathan Jones - Art is theft, Ctd

Rembrandt, Self Portrait at the Age of 34.

Jonathan Jones wrote an article in the Guardian, 'Contemporary art isn't original – even copying has been done before.' He said:

"Good artists copy, great artists steal," said Pablo Picasso. Or at least he gets the credit for saying it. Perhaps he pinched the words from Oscar Wilde. For there truly is nothing new under the sun, or not entirely new, anyway. Originality does not burst from an artist's head like an alien entity, but is a subtle game of variations and transformations out of which, once in a while, comes the shudder of true artistic surprise.

Art is theft, Ctd

  

Look at the cartoon I did above left and here. Then check out the cartoon of Barack Obama above right by Andre Carrilho. You can see it's not a direct copy or replica, but you should be able to see that I have borrowed the lips and chin. Subtle but remarkable. I learnt how Carrilho does his Obama off by heart. By storing it in my memory bank of cartoons the visual vocabulary comes out in my work.

"Only those with no memory insist on their originality."
— Coco Chanel 

"Imitation is not just the sincerest form of flattery - it's the sincerest form of learning."
― George Bernard Shaw 

I looked at this process previously here where I explained how the work of Ian Knox comes out in my work.

Art is theft, Ctd

By looking at the two cartoons above, you can see a similarity. The one on the left is on I did during an evening of Live Drawing at the Wine Bar, Portush. The one on the right is by Ian Knox for BBC Hearts and Minds, done some years ago.

"Only those with no memory insist on their originality." 

— Coco Chanel 

"Imitation is not just the sincerest form of flattery - it's the sincerest form of learning." 

― George Bernard Shaw 

The point of this is to show, how by learning Ian Knox by heart, I am able to borrow and replicate without reproducing. My piece isn't a like for like, but a homage with an echoe of Ian Knox dancing throught the lines.

The cartoon below is from the same evening. As I looked at my subject I was suddenly reminded of Plug from the Beano. So once again, this work is not a direct reproduction, but a borrowing and reworking.

Art is theft, Ctd

Oliver Jeffers wrote of the subtle influence of Maurice Sendak in his work in The Guardian here:

"There is a reason the character of the Boy in my first picture books wears a red and white stripy jumper, and that reason is Maurice Sendak. Or, more specifically, that reason is an homage to my favorite monster in Sendak's most famous picture book, Where the Wild Things Are... As a young artist trying to find my style, I deliberately tried to avoid being directly influenced by – and thus compared with – such strong and unique work. However, as he so informed my childhood, I could not resist one very direct and visual tribute – a red and white stripy jumper."

Art is theft, Ctd

Davin O'Dwyer said in the Irish Times:

"Of all Isaac Newton’s gifts to humanity, my personal favourite is his famous turn of phrase, written in a letter to Robert Hooke in 1676: “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” 

There is such a beautiful humility and economy in the words, a vivid evocation of the process of human learning. The Principia Mathematica is a work of genius, no doubt, but in that phrase Newton acknowledges how his work builds on the breakthroughs of Kepler, Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Galileo and so on. 

Since then, of course, Newton’s model of classical mechanics has been superseded by quantum physics, with the likes of Einstein, Planck and Bohr building on, and sometimes dismantling, those earlier theories."

Art is theft, Ctd Seth Godin

Seth Godin wrote the most wonderful piece over on the Ted blog here as part of the 'Can I Borrow That?' blog series. His piece was entitled, 'Why I want you to steal my ideas'. He explained that we can build something new and fantastic by stealing and synthesising ideas. He said:

"Please don’t steal my car... But my ideas? Sure, yes, please, by all means, take them...

I got an email from a reader last week. She was spitting angry at another blogger and wanted me to lower the hammer on him. According to my loyal reader, he had plagiarized many of my ideas, writing one post after another that, while not using my words, clearly demonstrated to her that he was hunting on my land. 

Not true, I assured her. He hadn’t plagiarized anything, he had built something new, by synthesizing ideas and experiences to invent the next step, a step available to all of us."

Art is theft, Ctd

The above cartoon by Michael Ramirez is from 2012. The below by Morten Morland is from 2003.

My Art is Theft series featuring Ronald Searle, Quentin Blake and Morten Morland here, with Ian Knox and Brook here, with Morten Morland talking about theft here, and a piece on the links between Morten Morland and Michael Ramirez here. On the theft of Peter Brookes' cartoon, read here. Austen Kleon post here. Jack Vettriano here. Andre Carrilho on the challenge of caricature here.

The post on the BBC Radio 4 Sins of Literature broadcast here. A piece with Christopher Hitchens and Maria Popova on Joyce here. Another piece on Maria Popova here. Post with contributions from Eamonn Mallie here. The Northern Irish poet Ciaran Carson here. With Alexia Tsotsis here. More of my stuff on Maria Popova here, here, here and here. With Picasso and Austin Kleon here.

Christopher Hitchens explains here how parts of the US Declaration of Indepence were built on and even plagiarised from the writings of John Locke. More comments from Hitchens here.

The artist's journey, Maria Popova Explains Our Remix Culture

The above image is a screen shot from a video on remix culture by Kirby Ferguson here and here

Maria Popova gave a Creative Mornings presentation here and included a video by Kirby Ferguson who said:

"George Lucas collected materials, he combined them, he transformed them. Without the films that preceeded it, there could be no Star Wars. Creation requires influence. Everything we make is a remix of existing creations, our lives and the lives of others."

Watch the Kirby Ferson video, Everything is a Remix here. See Ferguson's blog here. Read about the remix culture on Wikipedia here. Watch the Maria Popova video in full here. Daniel Hannan on combinatorial creativity here.

My blog post on Aleks Krotoski on combinatorial creativity is here (Krotoski's blogs here, here and here). My previous posts on the artist's journey featuring political cartoonists Morten Morland, Martin Rowson and Steve Bell here, on the standing on the shoulder of giants cartoon by Thompson here and on Terry Bradley here. With a special focus on my work and on how I moved from a wine label illustration to an exhibition series here, on the elements that were combined to create a wall painting for Michael Deane here, the process behind a wall painting here, my move from pen and ink and into a clay model version of the Michael Deane Decano Man here, and my explanation on how the original Decano man was created here. On the Deaneos wine label, click here. For the Deaneos Prosecco label, click here.

My Art is Theft series featuring Ronald Searle, Quentin Blake and Morten Morland here, with Ian Knox and Brook here, with Morten Morland talking about theft here, and a piece on the links between Morten Morland and Michael Ramirez here. On the theft of Peter Brookes' cartoon, read here.

Art is theft, Ctd Ronald Searle and Morten Morland

Ronald Searle above. Morten Morland remixes below:

And below is Quentin Blake:

Art is theft, Ctd Morten Morland

Morten Morland wrote here:

"Influence, plagiarism, copying etc, is a difficult subject in any creative profession. It’s been said that plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery, but I have a feeling it was a plagiarist who first said it. In court. On his knees. It’s bollocks of course. In its purest form it’s the sincerest form of laziness… 

In a profession like cartooning though, it can often be difficult to distinguish between intentional plagiarism and (unfortunate) coincidence, and between influence and identity theft. I reckon most cartoonist at some point must have drawn a cartoon and realised afterwards that the idea was not a result of their own brilliance, but an unintentional ‘rip-off’ of an idea they’d seen in the past. As most cartoonists themselves are eager follower of cartoons, it is not entirely surprising that this can happen.

Art is theft, Ctd

Michael Ramirez in 2006 above and here. Morten Morland repeated and remixed in 2010 and 2012 below: 

Art is theft, Ctd Peter Brookes

@Blowercartoons ....and here's one I did earlier! pic.twitter.com/gdvqLmPCpR
— Peter Brookes (@BrookesTimes) July 5, 2013