Richard Prince
Richard Prince is a painter and photographer who is most known for copying other photographers work.
All artists/designers look at other peoples work for inspiration, however, there is a difference between inspiration and infringement and Richard Prince downright copies other peoples hard work. And what’s worse is he is getting away with it, while other artists such as Shepard Fairey are not.
Shepard Fairey was sued for over $1 million for declaration of non-infringement over his “HOPE” poster. This was because Fairey got his inspiration from a photograph owned by Associated Press.
Personally, I see two very different images. One is a digital photograph while the other is a screen print. Yes, you can see the simalarities but this is said to be acceptable. I feel as though AP took advantage of the money Fairey was making from his 2008 “HOPE”.
So, while Shepard Fairey is being sued for his actual artwork, that he created, Richard Prince is getting away with blatantly copying images and presenting them in exhibitions.
Prince got taken to court after he presented a set of Instagram pictures at the Frieze art fair, stolen from SuicideGirls. Doe Deere, a SuicideGirl, posted on Instagram that she had been told the picture of her had been sold for $90,000.
Though Prince was ordered to destroy the pictures, he won an appeal, with the court ruling that copyright had not been infringed. Prince’s gallery sold one of the images for $2.5m.
Rather than sue, Suicide Girls founder Selena Mooney, known as Missy Suicide, has posted on the group’s website that she will sell prints of the images for $90, with proceeds going to charity. She wrote:
“ If i had a nickel for every time someone used our images without permission in a commercial endeavour i’d be able to spend $90,000 on art. I was once really annoyed by forever 21 selling shirts with slightly altered images on them, but an artist?
Richard Prince is an artist and he found the images we and our girls publish on Instagram as representative of something worth commenting on, part of the zeitgeist, I guess? Thanks Richard! “
References:
Zafarris, J. (2018). Graphic Design Copyright Laws: Inspiration vs. Infringement. [online] HOW Design. Available at: http://www.howdesign.com/featured/graphic-design-copyright-laws-inspiration-vs-infringement/ [Accessed 20 Feb. 2018].
Needham, A. (2018). Richard Prince v Suicide Girls in an Instagram price war. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/may/27/suicide-girls-richard-prince-copying-instagram [Accessed 20 Feb. 2018].
