3/22/2011

Plagiarism or Homage

The Artnewspaper recently ran an interesting article by art historian David Eskerdjian about artist copying artists. It is a long held practice, and in many cases the lines between paying homage to a predecessor, or contemporary, and copyright infringement can be unclear.

Eskerdjian documents issues as early the beginning of the 16th century with copies of woodblock prints originally produced by Albrecht Dürer. The question is also asked,  if the original work is iconic and recognized as a great work, is there more latitude allowed when being copied either exactly or only portions.

An interesting article with some very thought provoking questions.

Another common Renaissance procedure was to commission what were in effect replicas of existing works of art, in which the dependence was contractually stipulated by a clause employing the formulation “modo et forma” (in the manner and the form). In the event, artists often preferred to create variants on their models, but the authors of the prototypes plainly had no control over the subsequent fates of their compositions.

In truth, then as now, the real issue concerned the quality of the work of art that emerged, which is why we variously refer to such derivations as plagiarism (boo!) or homage (hoorah!). The other point about homages is the extent to which they were meant to be recognised by their audience—it is hard to imagine artists with superb visual memories hoping to conceal borrowings from their peers, for all that some of them have taken centuries to be spotted by mere art historians.

A more interesting question is whether it is necessary for the prototype to be a work of distinction in its own right. As a rule, artists tended to borrow from what they took to be the major achievements of their predecessors, but over time it has not infrequently become apparent that they were actually plundering non-Leonardos, non-Raphaels, non-Michelangelos and so on. Of course, it goes without saying that some of these productions by lesser figures are excellent works of art, but it is hard to doubt that some of their appeal resided in the mystique of the name associated with them.
To read the complete Artnewspaper article, click HERE.

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