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Topic: What constitutes a swipe? (Topic Closed Topic Closed) Post ReplyPost New Topic
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Stephen Bergstrom
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Posted: 2008 February 27 at 9:53am | IP Logged | 1  

Nothing says that art can't be used for profit, so long as you're the one who produced it or commissioned it for such.
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Paulo Pereira
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Posted: 2008 February 27 at 10:03am | IP Logged | 2  


 QUOTE:
Paulo - noone is saying that art can't be used for profit. However, in almost all the swiping incidents shown, the swipes were taken from one comic book and used in another. It's commerce. Slightly unsavory commerce, but commerce.

Sorry, I thought you were talking about illustration in general, not as it regards to swiping.


 QUOTE:
In my experience, "art" is not something that a working illustrator, or painter, or sculptor would call their own work.

I don't know if I can agree with that.  I think the word 'art' has taken on a somewhat high falutin connotation.

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Stephen Bergstrom
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Posted: 2008 February 27 at 10:11am | IP Logged | 3  

I think that while Mr. Dallaire has a somewhat cynical take on what "art" is, I don't think he's that far off the mark.

There are certainly those within the art world, and in comics in particular, who look on what they do as simply a "job." They crank out pages and pages without putting anything of themselves into it, seeing the work as mere technical ability, and don't give a second thought to swiping, tracing, or whatever it takes to get the work done.

There are also those who draw comics because they love the medium, and pour their hearts into each page, knowing that someone out there is going to fall in love with the art-form as they did, and that to do less than their best just isn't good enough for the reader.

It's those artists who fall into the second category who take much issue with those in the first who copy and swipe from others. It's a form of intellectual/artistic theft, albeit one without much civil or criminal recourse.


Edited by Stephen Bergstrom on 2008 February 27 at 10:11am
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Erik Larsen
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Posted: 2008 February 27 at 11:39am | IP Logged | 4  

Roy Lichtenstein got a lot of grief for swiping but seeing the physical
paintings really made a huge difference. He took pieces of panels and blew
them up to wall-size and had big ol' dots on them. He truly turned them into
pop art. Of course, when that art was photographed and shrunk down to run
in a magazine it became comic book art again and it looked too much like
the original comics. It lost its intended effect.
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John Byrne
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Posted: 2008 February 27 at 12:40pm | IP Logged | 5  

Roy Lichtenstein got a lot of grief for swiping but seeing the physical paintings really made a huge difference. He took pieces of panels and blew them up to wall-size and had big ol' dots on them. He truly turned them into pop art. Of course, when that art was photographed and shrunk down to run in a magazine it became comic book art again and it looked too much like the original comics. It lost its intended effect.

••

And of course, everybody forgets all the effort he put into tracking down the original artists, and making sure they were properly compensated.

Oh, wait! He didn't do that, did he! He just STOLE their work.

Excellent championing of "creator's rights" there, Erik! Keep talking out of both sides of your mouth, and the whole top of your head will rip right off.

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Erik Larsen
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Posted: 2008 February 27 at 12:54pm | IP Logged | 6  

 John Byrne wrote:
And of course, everybody forgets all the effort he put
into tracking down the original artists, and making sure they were
properly compensated.

Oh, wait! He didn't do that, did he! He just STOLE their work.

Excellent championing of "creator's rights" there, Erik! Keep talking out of
both sides of your mouth, and the whole top of your head will rip right
off.


I seem to have missed the part where I condoned his actions--or the part
where you said that you sent the Kirby estate a check for all the times
you swiped the cover to Fantastic Four #1.
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Knut Robert Knutsen
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Posted: 2008 February 27 at 1:07pm | IP Logged | 7  

What is often ignored about Lichtenstein is that if you look at these "Pop-Art" swipes  next to an enlarged copy of the original panel, the "Pop-Art" piece has lost all the fluidity and variety in the linwork, lost structure etc. Pop-art claims to elevate trash to fine art, but Lichtenstein does it in a way that is fundamentally dishonest: Robbing the work of the excellence of craftsmanship that went into the small "rushed" panels. Easily attributed to the fact that as a draftsman he didn't reach to the ankles of the men he swiped from.

What he in fact proved was that if you take good commercial artwork produced with limited reproductive technology and enlarge it without accounting for maintaining the ILLUSION of a broad colour palette rather than the technology used to create it while BADLY tracing the artwork it'll look like trash.

One anecdote will have it that Lichtenstein was so spineless that when the NCS called him on the carpet for swiping, he excused himself by saying he was hungry and needed the work. Hardly the words of a proud avant-garde artist willing to starve for his artistic integrity. (Which seems to be the criterion employed in so many other discussions of fine art).

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JT Molloy
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Posted: 2008 February 27 at 1:18pm | IP Logged | 8  

Hardly the words of a proud avant-garde artist willing to starve for his artistic integrity. (Which seems to be the criterion employed in so many other discussions of fine art).

--

One of my art teachers at Columbia worked almost solely in Color Composition. I was laughing inside the whole time as she showed off mess after mess. I don't even think I saw the applied rules we learned within the pieces.

I honestly believe there are cases of people who know art as a concept inside out and backwards as compensation for failing on the most basic skill levels.
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F. Ron Miller
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Posted: 2008 February 27 at 1:21pm | IP Logged | 9  

Of course Lichentstein stole those images. Is there really any question
about that? Then or now?

Dragging Pop Art into the discussion is totally beside the point.

Among other things Lictenstein was about investigating the surface of
things. The paintings were never meant to possess the 'life' of the artwork
from which they were taken. That was never the goal of Pop.

Love it or hate it, Pop is not someone doing comics. It's someone using
comics, soup cans, gum wrappers, etc. as subject, --these things exist in
the real world as much as an apple or a vase of flowers-- and as a means
of putting forward the Pop adgenda.

Does Lichtenstien owe Kirby money? That's a question for the lawyers.

Edited by F. Ron Miller on 2008 February 27 at 1:22pm
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Vinny Valenti
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Posted: 2008 February 27 at 1:37pm | IP Logged | 10  

There's a world of difference between the FF#1 homages and Lictenstein's "work". JB never traced FF#1 outright, nor do I think anyone ever really had the impression that the covers were completely original works (i.e. not an homage) . Lictenstein was considered a groundbreaking artist by some people that were likely not aware that most of the work was lifted almost verbatum from other sources.


Edited by Vinny Valenti on 2008 February 27 at 1:38pm
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F. Ron Miller
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Posted: 2008 February 27 at 1:55pm | IP Logged | 11  

How on earth would anyone not think Lichtenstein's paintings were not
copied from a comic? That was practically the point.
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John Byrne
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Posted: 2008 February 27 at 2:29pm | IP Logged | 12  

Does Lichtenstien owe Kirby money? That's a question for the lawyers.

••

It seems artists always manage somehow to get away with stealing each others work. Writers, tho, are protected. By law. How about the dialog Lichtenstein lifted for his thievery? Is that plaigarism?

Here is a SITE worth looking at, if you're on the fence at all.

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