Appropriation Artist Makes Paintings Out Of WSJ Stipple Images... Pisses Off Stipple Artist
from the brewing-legal-battle? dept
If you're sitting around waiting for the Shepard Fairey lawsuit to move forward, here's another brewing situation to follow. As you probably know, the Wall Street Journal is famous for its "stipple" illustrations of various newsmakers -- in fact, some people consider it to be quite an accomplishment in life to be memorialized in a WSJ stipple image. Appropriation artist Jose Maria Cano obviously recognizes this and has created a series of paintings called the Wall Street 100 -- made up of large painted versions of the WSJ's stipple images. There's no effort, whatsoever, to disguise this. In fact, the painting even include snippets of text around the images:
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Filed Under: appropriation art, jose maria cano, noli novak, shepard fairey, stipple art, wall street journal
Companies: news corp.
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All lawsuits...
After all, how damn difficult is it to write a letter to Cano asking to add your name to each painting you created to get this recognition you feel you deserve?
Idiocy.
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The missing person is...
Everything is fair game until I touch it, after that you owe me.
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Re: The missing person is...
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Is there any evidence to support this belief? I wouldn't be surprised if the WSJ hadn't considered the matter before the Fairey suit.
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The future of art will hold more lawsuits over what is and is not acceptable.
Although I wonder why Noli Novak doesn't do a large stippled portrait of Michelle Obama and sell it?
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perfect examples of lying thieving media to get their cut first
The whole jackass lot of you ought to have your own life staved for a solid 22 years and then letter rip...see how THAT sets with you. ALL latins be LIARS, and you knew it before you utter two sentences with this false representation of a story gone beefasterr'd.
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Re: perfect examples of lying thieving media to get their cut first
Use the damn thing, idiot. Then, get counseling.
Or we'll see your face painted as "Idiots 100" and the first on the list.
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Re: Re: perfect examples of lying thieving media to get their cut first
While I'm far too frightened to travel to the site to find what the fuck THAT is about, I am IMMENSELY curious as to its meaning. Here's a few possibilities I came up with:
1. The teenage boy of the family, sex-starved from being ugly, started a protest group called Head Now. His platform was that he wanted fellacio to be performed on him. The family abolished the group post-haste.
2. The entire family lives in Rwanda and is a member of the infamous opposition group there. They all had heads on their bodies until they were found by the Rwandan government. They left the much anticipated hearing that followed without heads.
3. A family of cannibals used to have human heads for dinner every night, but the local government since abolished the practice of eating human heads.
4. Tripe is retarded
Feel free to add your own...
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Re: Re: Re: perfect examples of lying thieving media to get their cut first
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I recognize Tripe's comment as exactly the same words as the owners manual from that $15 digital camera I got off ebay.
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Serious: From the context it seems like he was trying to say befustered (I have no idea if I got the spelling right) which is like FUBAR.
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Re: perfect examples of lying thieving media to get their cut first
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Re: Re: perfect examples of lying thieving media to get their cut first
It's a type of burger meat that is made from the slaughter of a specifically rapid moving cow. Because of the majical speed properties contained within the cow's genetic code (apparently at sometime in the late 90's Sephiroth went around to calving facilities and began just randomly casting haste on everything), the meat is processed by the digestive system at a nearly breakneck pace. Some taste-testing ranchers in east Chile have actually reported that they were shitting their pants before they even finished eating a single hamburger, that's how fast it turns into turd.
Hence, beefasterr'd, or translated: beef fast turd
Cool, huh?
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The bottomless ego of Jose Maria Cano
If I buy a bag of flour, and decide to make cookies, the flour company doesn't come to sue me. How is this any different? I paid for it. Your work is done. Let it go and get your butt back to making more for tomorrow's story.
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Re: The bottomless ego of Jose Maria Cano
You made cookies, not a bag of flour. If you take the flour, go out and say you,re the flour maker you made the flour, you re lying and committing fraud.
The photography rights were attained by the wsj with permission from wsj. Cano
never even tried to get permission. He uses the label "apppropriation" as his "artistic license" to charge 36,000 pounds for his "fine art".
The point made that the illustator has no right to demand $$$ for damages is true, she knows as a hired illustrator, she has no rights to her work published by wsj. So her motive of money by R. Miles is stupid!
when one looks at the works of Ferry, Warhol , Koons, et al you see the artists version and the original version. When i look at these pieces they look identical. Ones a copy.
If this isnt a case of copy right infringment, what is?
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Re: Re: The bottomless ego of Jose Maria Cano
No, you're a retailer.
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Revision: The bottomless ego versus Jose Maria Cano
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Maybe because it's not "serious art"
The actual artist has a name: Noli Novak. She has a blog. There are very few people (and no Photoshop filters) able to create these very old-fashioned stipple images.
Cano is as much of a thief as is any group of guys playing some pop song 40dB louder than the original and claiming themselves as the creators.
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Re: Maybe because it's not "serious art"
Did you read the article with your eyes closed? It states pretty clearly that Cano made PAINTINGS.
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Re: Maybe because it's not "serious art"
I'm not a great fan of "appropriation" art, but things could go very screwy quickly here. What's to stop the trademark of a line width created by a nib? Can brush strokes be copyrighted?
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Re: Re: Maybe because it's not "serious art"
I love Photoshop, but I have to agree this is where a filter or quick tutorial would fail. I've seen tutorials that approximate the effect, but the regularity of it gives it away as a computer work. I COULD do it in Photoshop with my Wacom graphics tablet (pressure sensitive pen would allow for variance in dot sizes), but at that point I am still going to be drawing each and every dot and it would be just as much work as on paper/canvas (not to mention needing the necessary artistic eye).
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Way to pass off your opinion as some sort of statement of fact. I know of many artists who love thier Wacom tablets. To them the nib on bristol "doesn't feel right".
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I use both traditional ink and bristol as well as CS3 and a Wacom. They are very different tools and neither is better than the other and it's all up to the preference of the artist. For the record, I love my Wacom too; but when you're stippling it's an up-and-down motion like a sewing machine rather than strokes, hence the difference in how the nibs feel.
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Somehow this is a transformative work, I just can't explain it. It's like most art, you just kinda know.
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Hey Mike, you think this guy learned something from Facepalm on how to use people for promotion?
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Enlargements?
If I'm wrong, I'm wrong, but I'm not, I don't think the Shep Fairey precedent is germane. What kind of value is being added here?
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Re: Enlargements?
Well actually there are quite a few things that Cano contributed, beyond just making it big. Type of canvas, type of paint, framing, and presentation are all artistic inputs.
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Many comments in her favor were, I thought, incredibly entitle-istic. The guy did not just 'blow up' a picture he found in the paper, he used those pictures as source material to make work by hand - just as she likely did to create her illustration.
But beyond that, she's going after the wrong person. Why hasn't she bitched to WSJ that they didn't think to perhaps credit her?
Because they likely own her work done for hire.
She should be flattered and using to advantage the fact that another artist thought so much of her work to use it as a springboard for his own. Her work has been further immortalized. She should contact him, thank him. She might get mentioned then, since WSJ doesn't seem compelled to do so.
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Exactly.
Obvious plagiarism is obvious.
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Ironic
Oh yes and she has had a band called 'Novakseen' which all of you would never have heard of either, if not for Mr. Cano.
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The fact that cano has let people know he's based his art work on the WSJ stipples is crediting the original artist! He hasn't lied and said 'I did this from scratch' he's said 'I did this, from a WSJ picture, look at how good the WSJ pictures are!'
I'd be proud to have a reprisentation of my art in the White House!
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Only if she speaks out will the artist be able to have pride for her art being in the white house.
Re Ironic
All of us "heard" of her band because of YOU bringing it up, Cano has said nothing about the artist, he doesnt care about who the artist is at all!
Also, the title of Canos exhibition is "The Wall Street 100" but most of the personalities have little if anything to do with wall street, The appropriation (no pun intended) is all 100 personalities were portraited in the wall street JOURNAL. But why wasnt the exhibition rightly titled the Wall Street JOURNAL 100?
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What's really funny, sad, and frustrating about this is not just that Noli Novak doesn't own the rights to the image or seem to understand plagiarism*, it's that the images she makes, and that all the other WSJ staff illustrators have been making since 1979, are based on a 5 step process of tracing from a photograph. It's called a HedCut. (WSJ used to have a tutorial online, but it has been removed: http://www.dowjones.com/DJCom/Uploads/headcuthowto.pdf).
*plagiarism implies an intention to pass something off as one's own, which is almost exactly the opposite of appropriation. The appropriator's intention is clear in this case - even to those unfamiliar with contemporary art --not just by the choice of such a well-known style, but also by the inclusion of newspaper text. The source image is obvious to most people with eyeballs, so to criticize the artist for failure to cite the source falls flat. Credit was given.
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Re: Anonymous Coward's 5 part tracing process
http://search.jacksonville.com/index.php?scope=image&query=novak+stipple
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Re: Ironic
Yes, you heard about the band because I brought it up, but I found out about it because of what Cano did, which made me want to learn more about the artist. I've always thought the WSJ artwork was interesting, but I never took the time to actually look into what and who were behind it. I understand that you don't like him taking credit for a copy, but Cano's work appears to have been acknowledged as an appropriation of WSJ staff artists (of which Novak is only 1 of 6). Has there ever been a claim that that this art was Cano's original likeness of Obama? If you are upset that Cano did not attach a credit to the images, is it not fair to observe that the WSJ, which prints these images every day, doesn't attach any credit to Ms. Novak either.
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We contain multitudes
The hypocrisy of this woman's complaint stinks to high heaven. The last couple of years she and her husband have been trying to make a name for themselves as street artists under the cool as shizzit name URBISMUS. All caps. Very important.
Hey look they have a blog too: http://www.urbismus.blogspot.com
These two have been illegally plastering buildings all over downtown Jacksonville with large photoshopped images snagged form a variety of photographs. Now I might not be the smarted tool in the shed, but judging by the range of subject matter and the style of the photos a lot of them look like they were originally professionally shot stock type images.
I guess that since Novak and her husband have been only pasting these up on properties that they don't own but not trying to make a buck off them then there's no need to credit the original photographers.
Oh, snap! I almost forgot. They have had gallery shows where they've put their work for up for sale.
Bzzzzzt next. Higher Moral Ground Fail.
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Re: We contain multitudes
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Techdirt won't mind if we copy their articles
While I can understand why techdirt might be offended, it's difficult to see what sort of "loss" there would be. You should just be happy that I decided your work is worthy of being ripped from the web.
What's that? Techdirt is upset? That's weird. Didn't you write that the artist should just be "happy" that he work of worthy of being ripped off.
Weird.
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Re: Techdirt won't mind if we copy their articles
Techdirt is not going to be upset!
And BTW, you are not making any point here by your comment... Your analogy is weak (at the very best).
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National Portrait Gallery has an on-line exhibit featuring hedcuts. One might want to take a look.
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National Portrait Gallery site
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Re: Re: We Contain Multitudes
Is it......Lawbreaking?.... Plagiarizing?....... Famewhoring? ......... Kettlecallingpotblacking?
All of the above?
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Novak plagiarizes Shepard Fairy!
Noli Novak and her husband George Cornwell have been selling work in Jacksonville Florida as "street artists" named URBISMUS. Here is a piece that they sold recently. 80% of this image is made up of direct tracings of Shepard Fairy's Obey images. They are selling his work as their own: http://www.flickr.com/photos/shopbogda/2732832234/
I sure hope they got permission from Fairy and are giving him a cut of the money.
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Did the comment touch someone's mind?
Does anybody know the name of any of the photographers that Noli Novak and George Cornwell are appropriating their images from for the Urbismus' works?
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Those stipple hedcuts are completely traced
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Novak stole photos for her "street art" she sells
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jaxscene/2567256691/sizes/o/in/set-72157605535708984/
Now look at where she got that image from
http://www.tineye.com/search/2bb352607855daa69786902d9ad735783983b765/?sort=size&order=d esc
does she credit the original photographer or license image or does she feel too much work to track down photographer so she will just take and use. This appears to make her a thief first if she really thinks what Cano the fine artist did was stealing. I would like to know why she thinks what she does is accepting and what Cano does is not.
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