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Tag: intellectual property

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Art heist, and this one was personal

The one that got away–Lauren Hammond’s color exercise, 9X12, that walked from our Berkshires workshop.

Last week I taught a delightful workshop in the Berkshires. I had demonstrated optical mixing (or broken color), and Lauren Hammond worked hard to execute the concept. Her finished painting was so lovely that I took a photo of it. She set it on the ground while she started something else. Thinking I knew better, I moved it to a nearby table so she didn’t inadvertently step on it. Our group was spread out over many acres, so most of the time, Lauren was alone at her easel.

“I think someone stole my painting!” she texted me. In decades of teaching, the closest I’ve ever come to that was when Sue Leo’s camera was lifted in Rochester’s Mount Hope Cemetery. But Mount Hope is near a sketchy neighborhood in a crime-ridden city. Lauren was in a place where I wouldn’t think twice about leaving my car unlocked.

“She’s just overlooking it,” I told myself, and I went back to help her find it. Other students helped us look and the venue manager contacted all her employees, all to no avail. It was gone. Lauren was the victim of an art heist.

The end of the evidence trail. I photographed it and then cleaned up the mess.

I’m an inveterate reader of mysteries, so I hunted for clues. Aha, I thought, here’s one—a painting imprint on another nearby table. But that, sadly, was where the trail ended. I’m no Miss Marple.

People have posited various alternative theories to me. Perhaps it was mistaken for garbage and thrown away. Perhaps they thought it was left there for someone else to take (as in the Acts of Kindness movement). Perhaps it blew away. Because I saw the scene of the crime, I can tell you with absolute assurance that none of these things happened.

Art heist losses are hard to estimate but they’re estimated at around $4-6 billion US per year. Money laundering in the art market is an even bigger problem. In comparison, Lauren’s painting is a drop in a very big bucket. But I take it personally.

Let this be a lesson to you.

Even the safest painting sites need just one bad person to cause trouble, and there are many worse outcomes than losing a painting. Be in the zone but be aware of what’s going on around you. If you’re at all in doubt, paint in pairs. I’ve painted all over the world and never had a problem, but then again I’ve never had a student’s painting stolen either.

Why you shouldn’t steal paintings. Really.

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you already know this, but humor me. Stealing art is rotten because:

  1. The artist put time, effort, and years of training into creating that work. It’s no different from any other tangible object with value;
  2. Stealing a painting deprives others of the opportunity to experience the work;
  3. Stealing is a crime that usually affects the little guys. We’ve abolished hanging as the punishment for theft, but I sure do understand why stealing riled up our ancestors;
  4. Paintings are personal, so stealing one is personal, too.

But I would never do that!

Photographers are people too, so the next time you’re tempted to use someone else’s online photo as reference for your painting, consider their property rights. Go outside and shoot your own reference picture. If that’s impossible, check Creative Commons for open-access images.

Lauren’s last painting of the workshop. Nice broken color, more challenging design.

All’s well that ends well

My goal on the last day was to encourage Lauren to paint something even stronger than the one that got away. I think she did so. It’s more complex and adventurous in design, but the color is just as well-executed.

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Respect the artist’s copyright

Ravening wolves, 24X30, Carol L. Douglas, $3,478.00, US shipping included

Jeff Koons has done more to keep intellectual-property lawyers busy than any other living artist. He’s won some and lost more, both here and in France. Koons has also returned the favor, accusing a bookstore of infringement for selling copies of his Balloon Dogs. Their attorneys argued, “As virtually any clown can attest, no one owns the idea of making a balloon dog, and the shape created by twisting a balloon into a dog-like form is part of the public domain.” Koons dropped the suit. Some images are so universal that they cannot be copyrighted.

Koons has very deep pockets and can afford to keep a lawyer on retainer. You and I don’t. It behooves us to respect others’ copyright. Furthermore, we should do unto other artists as we would have them do unto us.

In 2011, Shepard Fairey and the Associated Press (AP) settled a case debating who owned the rights to Fairey’s 2008 Hope portrait of President Barack Obama. Fairey copied an AP photograph and then lied about it. He also destroyed evidence. For that he was sentenced to two years of probation, 300 hours of community service, and a fine of $25,000.

Rim Light, 16X20, Carol L. Douglas, oil on archival canvasboard, $1623 unframed, US shipping included

Material changes or ripping the photographer off?

What Fairey and Koons unsuccessfully argued was that they made material alterations to the original work. This is a defense, but it’s subjective, interpreted differently by different courts.

The question of material changes has as much to do with structure as it does with detail. If you were to combine five different photos of white pines in the Adirondacks into one pastiche painting, you would probably sail happily under the radar. You might even include an old Grumman canoe floating poignantly on the water, since you would have to substantially rework it to match the lighting, angle, etc. However, if you included a child in a canoe taken verbatim from a photograph of the same, you’d be stealing someone else’s content.

Copyright in the US is for created works. It doesn’t protect ideas or processes. You can’t sue for an undeveloped scribble on a card in your dresser drawer; you must have executed the work. Copyright is an inherent state that occurs at the time the work was created; registering it just provides one form of legal evidence that you created the work. For visual artists, registering every painting or photograph would be both absurdly expensive and unnecessary; you would only do it if you needed to sue someone.

That means any photo or illustration you find in books, magazines, newspapers, and even on the internet is automatically protected by copyright law.

Spring Allee, 14X18, Carol L. Douglas, $1,594.00, US shipping included

Protect yourself

The best way around this is to take your own reference photos. That’s important for more reasons than just copyright, starting with the greatly-expanded understanding we all have of places we’ve been to and people we’ve known.

Sometimes, sadly, that’s impossible. You’re on the other side of the country or the boat has sunk. If a client sends you their own photo for a painting, you can presume permission. If it’s not their own photo, do some investigating. “He said he got the photo from his cousin,” is not much of a defense.

Vineyard, 30X40, Carol L. Douglas, $5,072.00, US shipping included

If you use someone else’s photo, protect yourself by obtaining written permission from the photographer.

You can use photos that are in the public domain. Copyright doesn’t run forever, no matter what some museums try to tell their website visitors. Copyright expires when the original creator has been dead for more than seventy years. Just google “public domain images” and the word for which you’re searching, like “clouds” or “Grand Canyon.”

Creative Commons also has photos available for reuse, although the terms of use are different for each photo (and exhaustively spelled out).

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025: