inspiration or plagiarism?

[featherlady-jt.livejournal.com]

Hi all, I thought this would be of interest to this community, as it involves a current court battle between Dale Chihuly and a couple of his apprentices.

Chihuly sued these men last year on the basis of plagiarism, claiming that their artworks were Chihuly knockoffs. The big debate was over where the division between plagiarism and artistic inspiration lay.

Now there's a new twist to the drama. Robert Kaindl, one of thsoe being sued, has slapped down a countersuit of his own. He contests that much of the Chihuly glass was not designed, created, or even signed by Dale Chihuly, even though they bear the Chihuly signature. In addition, he charges that some of the pieces have been purchased, their creators' signatures removed, and the Chihuly sig put in place.

Here's the article.

This is one that would behoove all of us as artists to follow, as it may very well result in redefining artistic property and plagiarism.

Comments

[kiwiseeds.livejournal.com]

Wtf. I never really.. understood why one person gets the credit for blowing glass when really, their students tend to do most of the work. That in itself seems like theft to me. I was watching someone blow glass at the glass art museum around here (Tacoma/Seattle area I think) and it's just.. silly to me.

[thaily.livejournal.com]

Agreed, I don't know why they don't just sign the work as a workshop when multiple people have worked on it rather than sign it under one person's name.

[kiwiseeds.livejournal.com]

His students should turn around and sue him :P

[growly.livejournal.com]

It's been that way since the Renaissance, really. The master of the artist's guild would design the sketch and everything, and the students would actually paint/sculpt the work. The master might come in and do a little bit of it, but mostly the work was done by the apprentices.
It's only recently in this modern age that people are getting fussy about it.

[susandeer.livejournal.com]

Man, this stinks of the whole Thomas Kinkade Debacle (http://www.readthehook.com/stories/2003/09/10/newsDimmingLightGalleriesC.html) a few years ago.

[featherlady-jt.livejournal.com]

Indeed. I've been thinking about Kinkade as I've been following this one.

[growly.livejournal.com]

Your icon is adorable. May I snag it? ;3

[featherlady-jt.livejournal.com]

Oh sure, go ahead. ;)

[coyotewings.livejournal.com]

That's quite interesting actually. o.o;

If I'm correct, Chihuly lives/works up here in WA state yeah?

[featherlady-jt.livejournal.com]

Yes, his Museum of Glass is in Tacoma.

[maui-dolphin.livejournal.com]

Heh, didnt Lassen have the same issue as Kinkade as well? It seems its all the rage :P lol. At least we know we'll never do that.

[kategod.livejournal.com]

When I was in highschool, I was in an advanced art class with some friends. Beginning of '98, we got dragged to the Minneapolis Institute of Art in order to see Chuhuly's artwork. It looked cool and stuff... until we sat down and had to watch a video on how his studio worked. He didn't do any of the work... all he would do is smear paint on a big piece of sheet paper, and the students working for him had to figure out how to interpret it. Most of the time, it only vaguely looked like the picture if at all. Of course, the pictures looked like smears so I can't blame them.

So, for at least a solid year after that, we had an ongoing gag between our group of ~8 friends on how he stole art. We came up with a story about how he would sneak into kindergarden classes and pirate his way off with their work to claim as his own. Drew out a comic and everything, really pissed off our art teacher at the time.

I feel for the others working for him. They do insane amounts of work, and he claims it as his own.